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Is Japanese Hard to Learn? Not Really, and Here Are 17 Reasons Why

For English speakers, Japanese is one of the most difficult languages to learn.

In fact, the Foreign Services Institute—which trains US diplomats in foreign languages from scratch—classifies Japanese as a “Category IV” language, meaning it takes at least 2,200 class hours (excluding separate study hours!) to become fluent in it.

But here’s the thing: Any language can be hard to learn. And I can tell you from personal experience that Japanese isn’t as difficult as you might think.

In this post, we’ll take an in-depth look at the 17 reasons Japanese is actually easy to learn.

Contents

1. Consistent Pronunciation

Japanese only has five vowels: , , , and . Each syllable is pronounced with the same rhythm without any stress, and the pronunciation of Japanese words is generally predictable.

The same certainly can’t be said of English, where the spelling doesn’t always match up with the pronunciation. You have to learn each word individually to be sure about how to pronounce them.

When you’re learning Japanese, this won’t be an issue. None of this eau, samhain or tschüss of the European languages, either.

2. No Tones

“Tone,” in the context of languages, refers to a particular way of pronouncing a syllable or word.

For example, in Mandarin Chinese (mā) — mother and (mǎ) — horse sound like exactly the same word to someone who doesn’t speak a tonal language. They are, in fact, completely different words and are pronounced using different tones. This is how most tonal languages work.

Japanese isn’t a tonal language. This might be surprising to hear, since so many East Asian languages are spoken with tones, including Mandarin Chinese, Thai and Vietnamese.

It also cuts down a lot of the work, since otherwise, you’d have to learn the tones for every word!

3. (Similar) Parts of Speech

Japanese parts of speech are pretty similar to their English counterparts:

Part of SpeechKanjiHiragana ReadingEnglish Translation
Noun はなflower
Adjective 美しい うつくしいbeautiful
Adverb 早く はやくearly
Verb 食べる たべるto eat
Pronoun 彼女 かのじょshe

One difference is that Japanese has particles that act like prepositions, except they come after the word to which they refer:

Japanese ParticlesEnglish Translation
at/in
by/for

Here’s an example sentence:

オストラーリアで魚にキスされて、びっくりした。
(おーすとらりあで さかなに きすされて、びっくりした。)
In Australia, I was kissed by a fish and I was surprised.

In this example, the particles and come after Australia and a fish.

4. Gender Neutrality

Aside from a few nouns, Japanese doesn’t really change word form based on gender.

Pronouns are only gender-specific in two cases: third person (she, he and they) and first person (I). Here are gender-specific options for referring to oneself:

Men:

 (おれ) 

 (ぼく)

Women:

あたし

That being said, the gender-neutral option,  (わたし / わたくし), is not only more polite, it’s also far more common.

There are the basic boy, girl, son, daughter and so on. Otherwise, gender is omitted from nouns and adjectives.

Japanese Gender WordsHiragana ReadingEnglish Translation
俳優 はいゆうactor
女優 じょゆうactress
若い男の子 わかい おとこのこa young boy
可愛い女の子 かわいい おんなのこa cute girl
キャビンアテンダント きゃびん あてんだんとcabin attendant

Learning nouns and adjectives becomes much easier with this in mind. For adjectives, you’ll only need to remember one form. For nouns, you’ll never have to worry about whether it’s masculine, feminine or neuter.

5. No Noun Declension

Noun declension means changing the form of nouns based on their purpose or location in a sentence. This happens with languages like German, Greek and Russian. Japanese doesn’t do this at all!

Instead, Japanese uses particles such as  and  to indicate purpose:

Part of the SentenceExampleEnglish Translation
Subject 先生 (せんせい)the teacher
Direct object 先生 (を) the teacher
Indirect object (to/for) 先生 (に) [to/for] the teacher
Possessive 先生 (の) [of] the teacher, the teacher’s

As with the lack of gender, this makes learning nouns and adjectives easier because they never change form.

6. Basically No Plurals

Japanese essentially has no plurals. You can pluralize pronouns, words referring to people and a few animal words. But even then, there are only three possible options:

Japanese Pluralization MethodSingularPlural
Double the word  (ひと) 
person
人々 (ひとびと)
people
Add  ( たち )  (わたし) 
I
私達  (わたしたち) 
we
Add  (かれ) 
he
彼ら  (かれら) 
they

I’d like to emphasize the word “option,” as in you don’t necessarily need to use plural forms.

俺の猫は3匹のネズミと遊んで、犬を追いかけて、俺の友達を無視した。
(おれのねこは、さんびきの ねずみとあそんで、いぬをおいかけて、おれのともだちをむしした。)
My cat(s) played with three mice, chased a dog (some dogs, the dog, the dogs) and ignored my friend(s).

Japanese often indicates how many there are of each object. When it doesn’t, you’ll be able to infer from context.

7. Limited Word Forms

In Japanese, adjectives and adverbs each have only two forms. Even verbs have three—one of which is a small family of irregulars (to have, to do, to be and to come).

Japanese Parts of SpeechSuffixes
Adjectives-i words and -na words
Adverbs-ku words and -ni words
Verbs-ru verbs and -u verbs

Each category has its own set of rules. But once you master one form of a word, then you’ve learned the same form of hundreds of similar words.

8. Only Two Verb Tenses

In Japanese, there are only two tenses: present/future tense and past tense.

The present tense (I do) is the same as the future tense (I will do/I’m going to do). There’s a separate verb form for I am doing, but for all intents and purposes, the only proper tenses are these two.

You can express a variety of moods and voices, as well, such as passive (it was done by) ability (you can do) imperative (do it) and so on. But the two basic tenses, plus the conjunctive/gerund form (doing or I do…) will get you where you need to go.

Japanese Verb TensesKanjiHiragana ReadingEnglish Translation
Present and future 見る みるI (will) watch/look
Past 見た みたI watched/looked

9. Simpler Verb Conjugations

In Japanese, the verb really doesn’t change based on who does the action or how many people there are. In fact, you can even remove the subject of the sentence and infer the who or how many from context.

日曜日に何をするの?
(にちようびに なにをするの?)
What do you do on Sundays? (On Sunday what do?)

眠るだけ。
(ねむるだけ。)
I just sleep. (Sleep only.)

In this sentence, the person doing the action could be anyone. (What does s/he do? What do they do? What will we do?) If we were to expand the conversation, it would be obvious who is doing what. But here, even with only two sentences, both speakers still understand each other.  

10. No Articles

In Japanese, there are ways of indicating definite or indefinite relationships based on context, but there are no words for a, an or the.

English TranslationKanjiHiragana
(The) bird dove into the pool! 鳥は、プールに飛び込んだ! とりは、ぷーるに とびこんだ!
(A) bird dove into the pool! プールに、鳥が飛び込んだ! ぷーるに、とりが とびこんだ!

You’ll find you don’t even notice the articles are gone, and it’s one less thing to learn.

11. Optional Words

In Japanese, subjects and objects are optional if they’re already understood based on context.

Type of OmissionJapanese SentenceHiragana ReadingEnglish Translation
Verb omitted 誰が今日の晩ご飯を作るの? だれが きょうの ばんごはんをつくるの?Who's going to make dinner tonight?
私です! わたしですI am! (It’s me!)
Subject omitted 今、何してるの? いま、なに してるの?What (are you) doing now?
泳いでる。 およいでる。(I am) swimming.

Japanese conversations often include one-word sentences, with a depth of meaning buried underneath.

12. Super Flexible Word Order

There are only two rules about word order in Japanese:

  • Verbs come last.
  • In compound sentences, each clause must keep its kids in the assigned seating area.

Otherwise, go crazy with word order. Japanese uses particles to designate each piece of a statement. The particle follows the noun wherever it goes.

Therefore, nouns can go wherever they please, assuming you use particles correctly:

庭で、犬が遊んでいる。
(にわで、いぬが あそんでいる。)
In the garden, the dog is playing.

犬は、庭で遊んでる。
(いぬは、にわで あそんでいる。)
The dog is playing in the garden.

Because the particles follow the nouns to which they refer, you can’t confuse in the garden with in the dog, but you can move each piece around as you please.

13. Familiar Vocabulary

There are many common Japanese words that we use in English all the time.

A few you’re sure to recognize include:

KanjiHiragana ReadingEnglish Translation
絵文字 えもじemoji
台風 たいふうtyphoon
可愛い かわいいkawaii
豆腐 とうふtofu
寿司 すしsushi
空手 からてkarate
大君 たいくん tycoon
津波 つなみtsunami
忍者 にんじゃninja
布団 ふとんfuton

There are certainly even more than these, all of which amount to a hefty vocabulary list that you’re already familiar with.

The opposite is true, as well: Japanese uses many English words, like:

LoanwordHiragana ReadingEnglish Translation
ハンバーガー はんばーがーhamburger
エスカレーター えすかれーたーescalator
アニメ あにめanime (short for "animation")

Notice how the English words incorporated into Japanese use the katakana writing system. If you see a word written in katakana, there’s a good chance (though not always) that it’s a loanword.

14. Set Phrases

Once you get to business Japanese, there are a lot of phrases that are figurative, so you won’t necessarily figure out the meaning just by analyzing the individual words.

You can make it much easier on yourself by simply learning set phrases to start with.

For example:

ペンを下さい。
(ぺんをください。)
A pen, please. / May I have a pen? (Hand me down a pen.)

大変お世話になりました。
(たいへん おせわに なりました。)
Thank you very much. (I greatly became taken care of.)

Learning set phrases is at least as useful as building a base of vocabulary. They’ll take you successfully through many a conversation. And once you feel more secure with the language, it’s interesting to break them down! 

15. Purposeful Writing Systems

Japanese has more writing systems than English. Each system has its own function, though, so determining when to use one or the other isn’t difficult:

  • ローマ字  (ろーまじ) — Romaji means Roman letters, so they’re good for easy reading. You’ll start with this as a Japanese learner.
  • 漢字 (かんじ) — Kanji are words in and of themselves, adopted from Chinese. Because there are no spaces in Japanese text, 漢字 help break up blocks of letters into meaningful parts.
  • 仮名  (かな ) — Kana are Japanese characters that are used for pronunciation, grammatical structures, scientific names and non-Chinese foreign loanwords.

漢字 and かな are often mixed in sentences:

私の新しい猫は意地悪だけど、意外に可愛いから大好きだ。 (わたしの あたらしい ねこは いじわるだけど、いがいに かわいいから だいすきだ。)
My new cat is mean, but because s/he is unexpectedly cute, I love him/her.

Above, the 漢字 represents the meanings (me, new, cat and so on), while the かな represents grammatical structures (of, adjective endings, subject marker, however, and so on).

If you want Japanese writing to come more naturally to you—and improve your listening skills, vocabulary and grammar at the same time—I recommend using a platform that lets you watch Japanese videos, movies, TV series, etc. with subtitles.

For example, FluentU has hundreds of Japanese videos perfect for learning.

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16. No Spacing Between Words

Admittedly, this makes it difficult when you start learning Japanese characters. And usually when you’re learning with romaji, there will be spaces between words.

But once you start using kanji, writing becomes a lot easier.

No need to worry about where to insert the space, how wide the spaces should be or how many times to hit the space bar after a period.

17. No Capitalization

When writing romaji, it’s customary, though not required, to capitalize the first letter of a sentence and the first letter of proper nouns.

When writing in Japanese characters, however, the character never changes. In fact, there’s actually no way to indicate the importance of a subject or object.

That’s one less copyediting issue to think of!

Why Most People Think Japanese Is Hard to Learn

You’ve just seen 17 aspects of the language that make Japanese easy to learn. Now, let’s compare with reasons it seems difficult:

  • The kanji look scary and intimidating. I think that kanji takes the cake when it comes to the most intimidating part of Japanese. Since there’s nothing like it in almost any other language—apart from Chinese characters and the occasional Hanja in Korean—people who speak other languages (especially non-Asian) think it will take them an eternity to master.
  • Japanese sounds so different from English. Japanese is spoken very fast—in fact, research has found it to be the fastest-spoken language in the world. And since Japanese doesn’t stress most of its syllables, it sounds very different and unnatural to untrained ears. But little do people know that this no-stress pronunciation rule actually makes Japanese words way easier to say.
  • There are three Japanese writing systems. Japanese uses kanji, hiragana and katakana to spell and write words. But they’re not used interchangeably, and you’ll see sentences that use all three types. Again, kanji are Chinese characters for Japanese words, hiragana is the Japanese script for native Japanese words and katakana is the alphabet that’s often used to spell foreign words, like loanwords from English.
  • Japanese grammar is very different from English grammar. Japanese sentences follow the subject-object-verb (SOV) word order, whereas English uses the subject-verb-object (SVO) order. Plus, Japanese particles are used to identify the roles certain words play in a sentence. Grammar points like these can be confusing at first, but once you get used to them, you’re golden.

If you’re looking for more answers to the question “Is Japanese hard to learn?”, check out this video by polyglot Olly Richards:

 

All these concepts make Japanese a very subtle, nuanced language. There is a structure, but it’s light like rice wine vinegar—not heavy like blue cheese.

So, is Japanese hard to learn?

You may have your own opinion still, but I hope that by viewing the language through a “big picture” lens, and seeing that it’s sometimes pretty easy, you can now approach it more confidently!

And One More Thing...

If you love learning Japanese with authentic materials, then I should also tell you more about FluentU.

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