I started because I was super into Japanese music. This was almost 10 years ago already. But over time I’ve come to appreciate the lenguaje itself. Especially Kanji. Now I love it, and is the main reason why I still go out of my way to learn new vocabulary that I may never use.
That being said, I’m also trying to get into a Japanese university for my masters degree, and I use Japanese every day at my job, so it has financial and professional uses for me as well, and has sort of gone beyond a mere hobby at this point
Ah, no, this is some Internet slang, and oddly enough it comes from the first meaning. AFAIK, the second one doesn’t exist in Japanese.
Basically, “hahaha” in Katakana is written as ハハハ. If you line up enough ハハ’s, it will look like a series of ｗ’s. In chats, they use ｗ (from 笑い、warai) to denote laughter. If you line up enough ｗｗｗｗ’s, it looks like grass. That’s how 草 ended up meaning LOL.
Pronunciation is a majorly difficult thing for most native English speakers. I know people look at Japanese vowels and consonants and think “wow, only 5 vowels and a limited set of consonants and combinations, this is super easy!” And I guess it is easier than… Russian, Hungarian or French. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy.
But that’s mostly because they’re thinking of the “a” sound in English and the “o” sound, and so on. In reality, Japanese vowels are so radically different from English vowels, the vast majority of learners are going to completely butcher their pronunciation. You have to learn how to simplify all of them to their real sounds, because English vowels are usually rather complex, while Japanese are more similar to Spanish vowels. You also have to get rid of the plosives, which are also a dead giveaway when someone is a native English speaker.
As for what makes Japanese easier than others… hmm… well, not a lot, actually. I guess tenses and verb conjugations are considerably simpler than most Romance languages, for example. There are no gendered nouns but you have Kanji which is far more time consuming to memorise, and grammar structure and logic is usually completely different from English, and you’ll have to learn how to think differently to get your head around many concepts. This happens with most languages but even more so with Japanese.
So uh… the only thing that I think makes Japanese easier is that it’s arguably one of the most studied, documented and resource-rich languages to learn. There are millions of resources focusing on efficient and thorough study methodologies, as well as a lot of very popular media, books, TV shows, you name it. Cultural relevance is, in my opinion, Japanese’s biggest advantage, which is only rivalled by Spanish in the United States, or perhaps (I honestly have no clue but I’m guessing) French in the UK.
This is amazing, and I’m actually going to pin it, and link it on our sidebar.
As I’ve mentioned before, although this instance is fundamentally different from r/learnjapanese and we won’t necessarily have the same approach as them, that doesn’t mean that we won’t be welcoming and discussing learning resources, so this is an incredible resource for us.
Japanese Language
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