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The Japanese grammar is pretty simple in fact, but it's very confusing coming from a European language because of how different it is. OK, once you get to the h

The Japanese grammar is pretty simple in fact, but it's very confusing coming from a European language because of how different it is. OK, once you get to the high level politeness (keigo) it can get pretty complex but you don't have to learn that until you're fluent in casual and neutral polite forms (teinei). I don't know Chinese but I've read that it's "subject-verb-object" like in English, so maybe that's why you found it easier than Japanese. I got to fluency in Japanese in roughly 6 months to 1 year while living there. And it makes a big difference, if you use it daily they you can catch up whole sentences and understand the grammar logic later on.

brigandish 3y ago
> I got to fluency in Japanese in roughly 6 months to 1 year while living there Your experience is not the norm, not according to research and not according to most people who've tried learning Japanese. Either you have a talent or you had a more effective method for learning, but it does undermine your judgement as something generalisable to others. Let's hope it's the method and you share it.
- psychoslave 3y ago
  While the short time is indeed impressive compared to median learning curve, how much studies can afford a panel of people going through similar conditions of volontary complete immersion over such an extended period?
hoseja 3y ago
I love when watching things in Japanese you can tell they are talking in hyperpolite register because all the words are suddenly dozen-syllable tongue twisters.
rauljordan2020 3y ago
There's no tense, no verb ending, no conjugation, zero of any of that stuff in Chinese...the difference is night and day. There is barely any grammar to learn. I finished the Chinese grammar in less than a week lol A few examples from endless notebook on Japanese grammar notes I have from lessons - Various て forms, which have their own complexity and nuance. Spent almost a year on this - Volitional forms - X-なければ, conditionals, should/shouldn't - the "te-shimau" form - くれる / あげる - Conjugations for past tense for the 3 different verb categories...which were so hard to remember - しか - ばかり - ように - X-ところだ - X-ほうが-Y - Command forms, conjugations, etc.
- thaumasiotes 3y ago
  > There's no tense, no verb ending, no conjugation, zero of any of that stuff in Chinese... This is plainly untrue. Speaking for Mandarin: 1. It's necessary to track tense in negative-polarity sentences because past-tense verbs are negated differently from present-tense ones. Technically this is accomplished by using an auxiliary verb, though in many cases that verb doesn't actually appear in the sentence where you're using it. 2. There are three aspectual verb endings, 了 (perfect), 着 (continuous), and 过 (experiential). 3. Verbs are inflected for possibility and impossibility, so that 动 is "move" and 动不了 is "cannot move". > I finished the Chinese grammar in less than a week lol Right.
- raincole 3y ago
  You feel Chinese grammar simple only because you're a native speaker, or at least have learned Chinese at a very young age. Grab a textbook for Chinese-as-second-language learners and you'll be surprised how many rules there are. You don't deem them as rules cause you've internalized them, as a native speaker should have.
- eloisant 3y ago
  Coming from French I don't consider there is any conjugation in Japanese. The verb is the same no matter what the subject is - I, you, he/she, we, plural you, they... So in French you can multiply by 6 the number of verb ending. In Japanese you never have to care about gender and plural. Same with German, where you have declinaisons on the articles depending on their grammatical position in the sentence (den/der/dem/etc.) So maybe Chinese is even simpler than Japanese, but I would still rank Japanese as a language having a "simple" grammar.
  - lIl-IIIl 3y ago
    There's conjugation but it's on different axes. One unusual feature is that Japanese verbs conjugate on politeness/formality. There's also te- forms, past forms, imperative, "I can verb" form, "I want verb" form, "I must verb" form, causative, etc, etc. The low number of irregular verbs is a blessing though.
  - 3y ago
johngossman 3y ago
I haven't found Japanese grammar to be particularly complex either...at least compared to English or French. It is different. The 80/20 Japanese Book was a great help, as was "English Grammar for Students of Japanese" (the title is confusing, but it really is for learning Japanese, not English). You can get a sample of 80/20 here: https://8020japanese.com/japanese-sentence-structure/ https://8020japanese.com/japanese-sentence-structure/ Pronunciation also isn't that hard (Kanto dialect, at least) compared to, say, French. The writing system is definitely the hardest part for me.

brigandish 3y ago

> I got to fluency in Japanese in roughly 6 months to 1 year while living there Your experience is not the norm, not according to research and not according to most people who've tried learning Japanese. Either you have a talent or you had a more effective method for learning, but it does undermine your judgement as something generalisable to others. Let's hope it's the method and you share it.

psychoslave 3y ago
While the short time is indeed impressive compared to median learning curve, how much studies can afford a panel of people going through similar conditions of volontary complete immersion over such an extended period?

hoseja 3y ago

I love when watching things in Japanese you can tell they are talking in hyperpolite register because all the words are suddenly dozen-syllable tongue twisters.

rauljordan2020 3y ago

There's no tense, no verb ending, no conjugation, zero of any of that stuff in Chinese...the difference is night and day. There is barely any grammar to learn. I finished the Chinese grammar in less than a week lol A few examples from endless notebook on Japanese grammar notes I have from lessons - Various て forms, which have their own complexity and nuance. Spent almost a year on this - Volitional forms - X-なければ, conditionals, should/shouldn't - the "te-shimau" form - くれる / あげる - Conjugations for past tense for the 3 different verb categories...which were so hard to remember - しか - ばかり - ように - X-ところだ - X-ほうが-Y - Command forms, conjugations, etc.

thaumasiotes 3y ago
> There's no tense, no verb ending, no conjugation, zero of any of that stuff in Chinese... This is plainly untrue. Speaking for Mandarin: 1. It's necessary to track tense in negative-polarity sentences because past-tense verbs are negated differently from present-tense ones. Technically this is accomplished by using an auxiliary verb, though in many cases that verb doesn't actually appear in the sentence where you're using it. 2. There are three aspectual verb endings, 了 (perfect), 着 (continuous), and 过 (experiential). 3. Verbs are inflected for possibility and impossibility, so that 动 is "move" and 动不了 is "cannot move". > I finished the Chinese grammar in less than a week lol Right.
raincole 3y ago
You feel Chinese grammar simple only because you're a native speaker, or at least have learned Chinese at a very young age. Grab a textbook for Chinese-as-second-language learners and you'll be surprised how many rules there are. You don't deem them as rules cause you've internalized them, as a native speaker should have.
eloisant 3y ago
Coming from French I don't consider there is any conjugation in Japanese. The verb is the same no matter what the subject is - I, you, he/she, we, plural you, they... So in French you can multiply by 6 the number of verb ending. In Japanese you never have to care about gender and plural. Same with German, where you have declinaisons on the articles depending on their grammatical position in the sentence (den/der/dem/etc.) So maybe Chinese is even simpler than Japanese, but I would still rank Japanese as a language having a "simple" grammar.
- lIl-IIIl 3y ago
  There's conjugation but it's on different axes. One unusual feature is that Japanese verbs conjugate on politeness/formality. There's also te- forms, past forms, imperative, "I can verb" form, "I want verb" form, "I must verb" form, causative, etc, etc. The low number of irregular verbs is a blessing though.
- 3y ago

johngossman 3y ago

I haven't found Japanese grammar to be particularly complex either...at least compared to English or French. It is different. The 80/20 Japanese Book was a great help, as was "English Grammar for Students of Japanese" (the title is confusing, but it really is for learning Japanese, not English). You can get a sample of 80/20 here: https://8020japanese.com/japanese-sentence-structure/ https://8020japanese.com/japanese-sentence-structure/ Pronunciation also isn't that hard (Kanto dialect, at least) compared to, say, French. The writing system is definitely the hardest part for me.