I'm sure some of yall know this already (anime generation) but this is wild. I know somebody who took it in college. She said once she had to learn the character type language she quit. Do anything of you know Japanese and how hard was it to learn?
You can learn one of the alphabets in a week. the second one in a weekend because its just a pointy version of the first one.
Its the chinese characters that take years to learn. The first 400 or so of them are relatively straight forward because the picture tells you what it does, but they eventually ran out of symbols , so the next 1600 characters is just random squiggly lines.
For example ,
A few of the easy ones..
The character for one woman , under a roof means peace. Wheras, the symbol for 3 women together means adultry.
But where it gets hard is when they give random nonsense . Imagine memorizing thousands of random nonsense(s)
If you're interested in the history, japan used to be oral a lot like inner Africa was. Their first foray into written records occurred when the Koreans felt pity on their primitive japanese cousins and gave them script. The easy japanese alphabets are gifts from korea. The koreans mostly gave japan religious knowledge on buhdism through text, but very little substance.
During this same era , the chinese were far more advanced than the japanese and koreans combined, so as a tool of soft power they sent a delegation with science written in their language. The ancient japanese pounced on the Chinese writings like starved piranhas and thats why they have a complex second alphabet in Japan.
The funny thing is that chinese have rehabbed and remixed their language several times since first meeting with the japanese. But the japanese kept most of the original text, so its kinda fascinating that japanese kanji characters in 2025 are more chinese than the modern chinese hanzi characters.
Learning the kana(Hiragana/Katakana) is pretty simple takes 2 weeks tops.
When it comes to Kanji in my case I'm of the opinion you're better off learning the kanji as words instead of in isolation but in all honesty you do what works for you. This and grammar is what's gonna take up most of your time.
This site uses cookies to help personalise content, tailor your experience and to keep you logged in if you register.
By continuing to use this site, you are consenting to our use of cookies.
