Is It Hard to Learn Japanese? - The Linguist Blog

Yes, it’ll take an English speaker longer to grasp Japanese than Spanish. However, does this really make the Japanese more difficult?

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I’m an English-speaking Canadian who learned foundational French in school, but in many respects I find French much more challenging than Japanese (particularly verb tenses and conjugations, pronunciation, grammar).

Japanese is very different from English but the grammar is quite consistent. The pronunciation is also simple, with (I believe) all sounds existing in English. The writing system (or systems, really) is the biggest hurdle but learning kanji, hiragana, and katakana have been part of the fun challenge for me - I’d recommend the Heisig books for learning kanji.

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