When an interest in certain aspects of Japanese culture, be it martial arts, Japanese food or esthetics, or
anime and manga, leads one to consider studying the Japanese language, the potential learner can be easily discouraged before even getting started. The complexity of the written form of Japanese, the lack of similarities with one’s own language, and a lack of opportunity to practice or be taught can lead to the conclusion that this is a linguistic mountain that can never be climbed.

However, while Japanese may indeed be very different from languages that one studied at school or one’s mother tongue, this difference should not automatically be equated with inherent difficulty. Many a Japanese person will tell you with great pride that it is surely the most difficult language in the world Nonetheless, when considering only listening and speaking, this is not really accurate, and it is possible to develop some real and useful skills in a short time, upon which you can subsequently build.

Getting Started

The very first thing to be aware of is the difference in sentence structure from many other languages. While the sentences of most European languages are generally arranged in the order of subject-verb- object (SVO), the typical format in Japanese is subject-object-verb (SOV), that is, the verb generally comes at the end of sentences or clauses within sentences.

After remembering this basic rule, the memorization of some vocabulary could be a good starting point, since no language learning can be completely devoid of this. One advantage of Japanese for beginners is that the way that words sound can be generally deduced from the way they are written (read the words Yamaha, Kawasaki, and Mitsubishi to a Japanese person and they will understand you, but the same cannot be said in the case of Chinese, or indeed in English: who could read and then correctly pronounce rough, though, bough, and cough without learning them beforehand). To start with, you could learn, say, 30 of the most common verbs (to be, to do, to go, etc.), 100 useful nouns (for example, related to travel, eating out, accommodation, family members), and 20 adjectives (good, bad, tasty – which is a very important word in Japan). Already you are developing the capacity to say thousands of alternative sentences when following the SOV rule, especially with a basic understanding of the use of prepositions (wa, ga, ni, o, etc.) between these main words in simple sentences.

The range of things that you can say can be further expanded by learning to change verb forms, such as into the past tense. Another advantage of Japanese for beginners is that there are only two irregular verbs (compare with the hundreds in French, Spanish, and English) and that the future tense is the same as the present tense. Add the ability to make questions by adding the term ka to the ends of sentences or phrases (in polite situations), then learn some key phrases (hello, goodbye, thank you, I’m lost), and you are on your way.

Obviously, there is no substitute for the use of textbooks, lessons, online learning aids, and speaking to people in order to progress along the long journey to competence in Japanese, and learning to read hiragana should also be a main goal early on. However, these steps involving self-study can enable you to express yourself in basic situations, show you that the task of learning Japanese is not insurmountable, and give you a base on which to build.

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