sethnintendo said:
DJjazzyGETH said:
Learning Kanji is the hardest part for sure, but it's easier in Japanese because they use a combination of Kanji and Kana, which is phoenetic. Japanese is often written up->down, right->left (the traditional method, used in books), but it can be used horizontally left to right too.
Basically you can read it by being constantly bombarded by it 24/7, and practically no other way. Japanese and Chinese students go through intensive learning in middle and high school to get a couple thousand memorized. There are advanatages to it, particularly if you're a visual person, in that words are often constucted using kanji that are representative of ideas. It's basically how root woods work in English (television = tele, distant; vision, to see), and can simplify reading if you've truly memorized it all and understand how the words are constructed. It sounds daunting from outside, but native speakers can't imagine not using them.
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Sounds challenging for sure. I would never attempt such a feat but applaud anyone that can undertake such a task. I'm sure it is easier if you are a native but still seems a lot harder than English. I could learn a few simple words probably but that is about it. Pretty much I'm happy that the few Spanish phrases that I retained were important questions like where is the bathroom, I'm thirsty/hungry, etc... One language that I would never attempt to learn would be Vietnamese. Such an ugly sounding language.
One thing I like about Japanese is that it always sounds like they are pissed off. Kind of like German.
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Another thing is, characters are composed of seperate radicals. Instead of trying to treat the character as one whole component, it's easier to learn the radicals so that you can treat is as multiple components put together.
