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I'm not asking how hard it is, I'm asking when it's all said and done which language is a lot more "organized" and structured to make more sense? Obviously as an English native I find my language to be more 'structured' compared to French. I'm not saying it IS, but to me I find it easier.
For example there is no solid rule on what is masculine or fem in French.. yet everything *IS* one of the two. This, to me, is unorganized. I have a hard time learning because of it. Is Japanese this way with anything also..? I know their counting system can get a bit wonky depending on the size of objects and quantity, is this true?
I know they are two different systems and I know French is closest to English.. but they ARE languages and I was just wondering at the end of the day which 'makes sense' more from an English perspective? I know you may say French, but so far I have to disagree. Learning French so far has made me just want to start over with an entirely different system.. i.e. Japanese because it is just so unstructured imo.
If you make a sentence in French, you can literally throw 80% of the words in any random spot and because of the other 20% that ARE in the right location it will still form some logical statement in French. Or at least that is my understanding of it so far, I could be wrong. I hope you guys understand what I'm saying and are not quick to say French. I know Japanese is different however if overall orgnized I can work with that just as easily. For example math is a 'language' different from English yet it can be organized and makes sense.
I am not trying to offend either language, when I say organized and make sense I mean strictly IMO because of the way I know my brain works I would have hard times with certain issues. I do not want to learn spanish.
Depends on a person language orientation. For example, Koreans will find Japanese very easy grammatically.
As an English native speaker who has studied Spanish/Portugues and Japanese. The latin languages are significantly easier. Many idioms and phrases are the same, just with different words in their places. You can easily start a sentence in a latin language, and translate a few words in the middle in your head, and still be on task.
With Japanese...well, it IS grammatically organized within its own grammar rules. It just requires such a different thinking than with English. For example words like 'because' go at the end of the sentence. You also have to wait until the end of the sentence to know if a 'NOT' will go at the end, which makes everything negative. It is just differnet thinking, but organized grammatically with a certain structure that makes sense once you get into it.
The part that throws me off is the topic markers...the little 'ga' and 'wa' and everything else that isolates the topic subject and such. Sometimes they are there, and sometimes not, and as a non native Japanese person, it is difficult to know when to insert them or not.
On the other hand, Japanese speakers often struggle with where to put the 'the' or 'a' or not to have one of those articles in front of an English noun as well.
OP, please don't take offense but I don't think you're approaching this correctly. You need to understand that language isn't like math, which has clear rules, structures, and right/wrong answers. Languages are much messier because they're all about the cultures that created them and how the people in those cultures interact with each other.
I can't speak for the French language, but I do have some experience with Japanese. An Okinawan friend of mine once gave me a good explanation about the Japanese language: In their culture, how the other person receives your information is just as important as what you're trying to say. They try very hard not to be confrontational, because it might risk embarrassing the other person if you are witnessing their discomfort. Then, both parties are put into the awkward position of having to deal with each other's negative emotions.
If, for instance, you were to ask a person to go on a date, they might say "yes" without ever intending to do so. When you get "stood up" the next day, you're supposed to understand that they were simply trying to spare both of you the embarrassment of them witnessing your distress at being turned down. Actually being stood up is considered less uncomfortable because you get to be pissed off and embarrassed in private (not counting the waiter, of course). And, yes, I have experienced this myself, lol. :P
Another example is to compare how you would tell someone you love them in English vs Japanese:
English: "I love you." You're pretty much committed as soon as you start speaking, because in English we're just trying to make our point; how the other person reacts is their problem, so to speak.
Japanese: "Watashi-waanata-oishtaru-des." Literally "Iyoulove yes." You're not committed until the very last part, the des, which is an affirmation. If the person you're professing your undying devotion to starts to look like they're about to make a break for the nearest exit, you can swap des for tabun (maybe) or even janei (not). In other words, you can completely change your intent at the last moment, leaving both of you an escape hatch: "I love you maybe" or "I love you not."
You can't do that in English, because you have to put "might" or "don't" before the "love you." I suppose you could always bail out by saying "I love cheese," but in our culture you'd only look weak for not saying what's really on your mind, despite the consequences.
Neither of these conventions are "right" or "wrong", they're just different solutions that each of our cultures came up with for how we deal with people in our daily lives. So, trying to figure out which language is "easier" is kind of pointless. Just go with the language that belongs to the culture you're most interested in learning about.
Depends on a person language orientation. For example, Koreans will find Japanese very easy grammatically.
As an English native speaker who has studied Spanish/Portugues and Japanese. The latin languages are significantly easier. Many idioms and phrases are the same, just with different words in their places. You can easily start a sentence in a latin language, and translate a few words in the middle in your head, and still be on task.
With Japanese...well, it IS grammatically organized within its own grammar rules. It just requires such a different thinking than with English. For example words like 'because' go at the end of the sentence. You also have to wait until the end of the sentence to know if a 'NOT' will go at the end, which makes everything negative. It is just differnet thinking, but organized grammatically with a certain structure that makes sense once you get into it.
The part that throws me off is the topic markers...the little 'ga' and 'wa' and everything else that isolates the topic subject and such. Sometimes they are there, and sometimes not, and as a non native Japanese person, it is difficult to know when to insert them or not.
On the other hand, Japanese speakers often struggle with where to put the 'the' or 'a' or not to have one of those articles in front of an English noun as well.
Yes, the little (participles, if that is what they are called), using the correct one is very difficult. I think they are like the "is" and "are" in English. Another difficulty in the Japanese language is the different ways to describe the quantity of something, and it all depends on the object. I just learned the other night (at a sushi-go-around), that if you order 1 nama (draft) beer, its "ii-pai" while in a can (or bottle?), its "ii-pon". Conjugating verbs is also challenging in Japanese grammar, especially in relation to the object person of the sentence.
OP, please don't take offense but I don't think you're approaching this correctly. You need to understand that language isn't like math, which has clear rules, structures, and right/wrong answers. Languages are much messier because they're all about the cultures that created them and how the people in those cultures interact with each other.
I can't speak for the French language, but I do have some experience with Japanese. An Okinawan friend of mine once gave me a good explanation about the Japanese language: In their culture, how the other person receives your information is just as important as what you're trying to say. They try very hard not to be confrontational, because it might risk embarrassing the other person if you are witnessing their discomfort. Then, both parties are put into the awkward position of having to deal with each other's negative emotions.
If, for instance, you were to ask a person to go on a date, they might say "yes" without ever intending to do so. When you get "stood up" the next day, you're supposed to understand that they were simply trying to spare both of you the embarrassment of them witnessing your distress at being turned down. Actually being stood up is considered less uncomfortable because you get to be pissed off and embarrassed in private (not counting the waiter, of course). And, yes, I have experienced this myself, lol. :P
Another example is to compare how you would tell someone you love them in English vs Japanese:
English: "I love you." You're pretty much committed as soon as you start speaking, because in English we're just trying to make our point; how the other person reacts is their problem, so to speak.
Japanese: "Watashi-waanata-oishtaru-des." Literally "Iyoulove yes." You're not committed until the very last part, the des, which is an affirmation. If the person you're professing your undying devotion to starts to look like they're about to make a break for the nearest exit, you can swap des for tabun (maybe) or even janei (not). In other words, you can completely change your intent at the last moment, leaving both of you an escape hatch: "I love you maybe" or "I love you not."
You can't do that in English, because you have to put "might" or "don't" before the "love you." I suppose you could always bail out by saying "I love cheese," but in our culture you'd only look weak for not saying what's really on your mind, despite the consequences.
Neither of these conventions are "right" or "wrong", they're just different solutions that each of our cultures came up with for how we deal with people in our daily lives. So, trying to figure out which language is "easier" is kind of pointless. Just go with the language that belongs to the culture you're most interested in learning about.
Hope that helps
I agree that languages go beyond grammar and are a product of their own culture and the language itself can become a language within a language, a grammar within a grammar.
Many languages are about nuances and subtle underlying "codes" which can be very difficult decipher unless you hold the key to it all.
I know nothing of Japanese but French is definitely an extremely structured and very defined language grammatically , one of the reason it is such a nightmare for foreigners to learn fluently as it requires so much subtlety.
I came to the UK 22 years ago after 3 years in the US ( only having had "School English" to integrate into an Anglophone society) and was fluent withing three months due to full immersion, both cultural and linguistic ( reading a lot, listening to a lot of radio , watching TV and trying to fathom Anglo-cultural traits as much as possible by forming new friendships and joining actitivities). English is the easiest language I have ever encountered. I believe this is one of the main reasons for its prevalence as the international language , not simply because of an Imperialistic past of Anglo-Dominance.
Its grammar is complex but the subtext IMO is an easy code to decipher and I did find it really fairly simple. I do still discover certain subtleties 2 decades after my first cultural forray into the language of Shakespeare and Thoreau but find that on the whole I often speak much better and more precise English than many native Anglo-phones. I believe this is because of grammatical training from a child in French.
French relies heavily on grammatical structure and from tiny tots French children are taught grammar ( and spelling another crucial aspect of the language) repeatedly as a mantra. English kids on the whole do not. The teaching of English is a lot less structured and a lot more relaxed.
I know a lot more about English grammar than my native English Husband for example. Because I had a grounding in grammar since I was 4.
I used to speak Spanish, Italian and German relatively fluently ( Portuguese I could understand and read but not speak so well) . Spanish and Italian grammar were a lot easier than French grammar. I found them much more flowing languages both in terms of rhythm but also in their linguistic patterns.
German grammar however was so incredibly complex because everything needs to be declined and it almost becomes a mathematical game of codes and tight rules to follow.
Russian was also very difficult. A lot of people assume the difficulty lies in the Cyrillic alphabet when this can be taught in one afternoon. Russian grammar is complex and rich . It needs to be tackled in quite a different way than French in many ways.
Finnish and Hungarian have been the two languages which have thoroughly defeated me. I can muster a few "touristy" sentences but that is about it and it frustrates me deeply.
Languages are about communication but certain languages are far richer with deeper meanings and cultural signals which some foreigners can easily miss.
That is why I am so enthralled with languages and dialects. It is the perfect example of our unique and incredibly varied way of expressing ourselves as human beings. It shows a great delicacy of intent in many ways, it goes beyond simply communicating on one level and indicates great subtlety in the way our brains work and evolve.
I am not trying to offend either language, when I say organized and make sense I mean strictly IMO because of the way I know my brain works I would have hard times with certain issues. I do not want to learn spanish.
Written French is exclusively based on an alphabet, and you'll probably study written Japanese based on characters and not one of the Japanese syllabaries. That alone will make French more structued since you learn somewhere between two and three dozen letters and you can make any word instead of having to recall and write thousands of characters.
For example math is a 'language' different from English yet it can be organized and makes sense.
Math only has a few dozen elements in it though (at least until you get beyond whatever comes after Taylor-McLauren Series in calculus). It is very stripped down, and ultimately you can't express very much in it. Even a very simple programming language will be much more complicated than math, but you'll be able to say a lot more in it. Most spoken languages will be much more complex than a programming language, but you can express a whole lot more in them too.
If, for instance, you were to ask a person to go on a date, they might say "yes" without ever intending to do so. When you get "stood up" the next day, you're supposed to understand that they were simply trying to spare both of you the embarrassment of them witnessing your distress at being turned down. Actually being stood up is considered less uncomfortable because you get to be pissed off and embarrassed in private (not counting the waiter, of course). And, yes, I have experienced this myself, lol. :P
OMG ! - You mean to tell me that in Japan, if you were to reorganize your whole day's plans, and pay, for instance, $100 for advance theater or concert tickets for 2 people, and then phone and make fine dinner reservations for 2 people, then it's perfectly all right for your date to not show up and waste all the money you've spent, besides wasting all your time traveling to the supposed rendevous ?? I don't understand - this seems very rude and absurd.
If, for instance, you were to ask a person to go on a date, they might say "yes" without ever intending to do so. When you get "stood up" the next day, you're supposed to understand that they were simply trying to spare both of you the embarrassment of them witnessing your distress at being turned down. Actually being stood up is considered less uncomfortable because you get to be pissed off and embarrassed in private (not counting the waiter, of course). And, yes, I have experienced this myself, lol. :P
OMG ! - You mean to tell me that in Japan, if you were to reorganize your whole day's plans, and pay, for instance, $100 for advance theater or concert tickets for 2 people, and then phone and make fine dinner reservations for 2 people, then it's perfectly all right for your date to not show up and waste all the money you've spent, besides wasting all your time traveling to the supposed rendevous ?? I don't understand - this seems very rude and absurd.
I live in Japan. I haven't had this experience before.
I live in Japan. I haven't had this experience before.
It might be an Okinawa thing, they're supposedly more "traditional". Also, I lived there in the early-mid 1980's, so I'm sure things have changed a bit.
BTW, because of family obligations, another very common thing was that you were expected to wait at least an hour before considering someone to be tardy. My girlfriend's grandmother used to to love to stop her at the last moment to help her, knowing damn well I was waiting outside in my car. And she LIKED me!
Quote:
Originally Posted by slowlane
If, for instance, you were to ask a person to go on a date, they might say "yes" without ever intending to do so. When you get "stood up" the next day, you're supposed to understand that they were simply trying to spare both of you the embarrassment of them witnessing your distress at being turned down. Actually being stood up is considered less uncomfortable because you get to be pissed off and embarrassed in private (not counting the waiter, of course). And, yes, I have experienced this myself, lol. :P
OMG ! - You mean to tell me that in Japan, if you were to reorganize your whole day's plans, and pay, for instance, $100 for advance theater or concert tickets for 2 people, and then phone and make fine dinner reservations for 2 people, then it's perfectly all right for your date to not show up and waste all the money you've spent, besides wasting all your time traveling to the supposed rendevous ?? I don't understand - this seems very rude and absurd.
Something simple and lowkey, like a coffehouse or cafe, would be more appropriate. Maybe go see a local band or whatever if things go well.
In fact, I'm pretty sure most women in any culture would be uncomfortable if you made such a big production on a first date. Puts a lot of pressure on them.
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Last edited by elcoyoteloco; 09-10-2010 at 10:21 PM..
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