Japanese at a Glance

Fortunately, I don't have to start completely from scratch to learn Japanese. I had studied it a little in years past, and have picked it up again not long ago.

On the other hand, though, I still have a long uphill climb ahead of me. While I may have memorized the mess of symbols (called kana) that you see to the right, I still have to learn kanji, which are not only much more complicated, but also much more numerous. It is recommended to learn at least 1,945 kanji in particular, but there are far more than these alone!

And, of course, learning the symbols does not constitute learning Japanese. While I might have a basic understanding of some of the simplest concepts in the language, there is still a lot left to learn. Even if I drill every vocabulary item into my head, speaking Japanese isn't as simple as thinking an English thought and replacing each word with its Japanese equivalent. I don't think it would be expedient to explain this sentiment in detail just yet, but it is actually best to avoid English thought altogether when learning a foreign language.

The grammar is naturally much different from English. A few of the most conspicuous differences are that most words don't have a plural form, and that "am", "is", and "are" are all translated as the same word. Add to this, there is no real future tense (or, as Tae Kim would have it, there is no real present tense), but rather a non-past tense that covers both the present and the future.


Well, I think that has been enough ado over nothing. Let's close up this entry with a great J-Pop song which was shown me by Gon-san at Lang-8. Following is どんなときも (donna toki mo) by Noriyuki Makihara. Now, I have studying to do (ーー;)

First image retrieved from Musings of a Creative Slacker.
Second image retrieved from Joe Park's JLPT Page.