I currently have to use Subtitles, kinda annoying. And I despise dubs since the voice acting is so bad, I mean like the emotions in the voice, its so emotionless in English.

I am a English speaker with some fluency in Cantonese and Mandarin.

How difficult is Japanese? Am I gonna waste a lot of time?

Also what’s the best resource to learn?

  • FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.websiteEnglish
    5·
    3 days ago

    It’s not an easy language to master even if you lived full-time in Japan. Everything about the language is needlessly complicated. The grammar, the writing system, the social conventions that influence word choices. Anime Japanese is its own kettle of fish. Overly colloquial or stylized samurai talk - neither of which you’ll get taught in most language courses.

    Now, you could be a savant who picks it up in no time. More likely you’ll be in it for a couple of weeks and give up - or life. It’s not a bad hobby. Even beyond Duolingo you’ll find plenty of resources online and lots of it free.

    • NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io
      6·
      3 days ago

      Everything about the language is needlessly complicated.

      I mean, there is no language that isn’t needlessly complicated. At least Japanese doesn’t have gendered nouns.

      • Tanis Nikana@lemmy.world
        72·
        3 days ago

        I mean, I thought Japanese was super straightforward compared to English. I’ve been speaking English for three goddamn decades and I:

        • still occasionally flip my Rs and Ls when I’m going fast and being careless
        • have to pause a beat before saying “Canada” to make sure I don’t use the rhythm structure/emphasis pattern for “banana”
        • sometimes just get really lost when I make a complicated sentence and have to stop and try again
        • can barely remember that English speakers take pills, and not drink them (you don’t chew them, for fucks sake! Just say drink!)
        • fucking hate that OUGH has more readings than most kanji
        • realized a couple years into learning English, that English has twenty-six radicals, stacked horizontally, and they make a word, and that word may not be pronounced how the radicals suggest, and it’s best just to memorize 116,000 kanji-words (and you English speakers bitch about kanji so endlessly, not understanding the sheer absolute fucking monster you came from)
        • Eq0@literature.cafe
          51·
          3 days ago

          The last point resonates with me! 😭 all other European languages are actually write-as-you-speak. Why, English, why???

          • FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.websiteEnglish
            5·
            3 days ago

            Danish has entered the chat. They don’t pronounce anything the way it’s written either. And French consists of 80 percent silent letters or thereabouts. It’s not just English in Europe.

          • NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io
            4·
            3 days ago

            The Great Vowel Shift. English writing was sensible in the early 14th century around the time of Chaucer, but then shit got out of whack speaking-wise and the writing system was never adjusted to reconcile the difference. So you can blame the Black Death I guess.

            • Eq0@literature.cafe
              4·
              3 days ago

              It’s not only vowels, but consonants disappearing or just having a different flavor of sounds in each word. Like word, sword, swan…

        • ltxrtquq@lemmy.mlEnglish
          3·
          3 days ago

          can barely remember that English speakers take pills, and not drink them (you don’t chew them, for fucks sake! Just say drink!)

          In my mind drink is exclusively for liquids, which is why drinking a solid sounds weird to me. Because there’s no chewing involved swallowing pills makes more sense than eating them, but I’ll admit I don’t know why “take” is the usual verb.

      • FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.websiteEnglish
        2·
        3 days ago

        Consider the needlessly complicated to be applied on top of a general baseline of needlessly complicated that applies to any language.

        While they don’t have gendered nouns, they have something equally unnerving for the beginner learner. Their noun classes evolve mostly around the nature of shapes and sizes, which becomes an issue the moment you need to count anything. For which there are two systems, one of which stops at ten, and the other is highly irregular in its forms. And don’t get me started on the calendar. English is relatively unsophisticated by comparison.

        • NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io
          12·
          3 days ago

          For which there are two systems, one of which stops at ten, and the other is highly irregular in its forms.

          I think you mean Wago and Kango counting, in which case Kango isn’t irregular at all. There are sound changes, but they almost all follow a handful of basic rules. Wago is plenty irregular, but it also stops at ten and is only used for a handful of things. It’s messed up, sure, but not the end of the world.

          And don’t get me started on the calendar.

          The calendar? Their months are literally just firstmonth, secondmonth, thirdmonth, etc.