Learning Asiatic language by Europeans- case of Japanese
Martyna Kosik
University of Warsaw (Poland)
Japanese is considered a very difficult language to learn, especially for native speakers of European languages. Why it is so?
WRITING SYSTEM
The hardest thing to learn in Japanese is a writing system. There are three kinds of writing: kanji (chinese characters or ideographs, each conveying an idea, most of which have at least two readings), hiragana (a phonetic syllabary; the symbols are curvilinear in style) and katakana (the second syllabary used primarily for foreign names and place names and words of foreign origin; the symbols are made up of straight lines). Written Japanese normally makes use of all three types of writing.
Besides these three forms of writing, Japanese is sometimes written in Romaji (roman letters), particularly for the convenience of foreigners.
CALLIGRAPHY
Additionally, calligraphy is a primary part of Japanese education. At an early age, Japanese children learn to draw characters that fit into a box on a fixed grid page. The aesthetics of well drawn and proportioned ("beautiful") characters are appreciated by almost every native speaker.
GRAMMAR
Japanese grammar is simple to understand, but it is very different from english one. Unlike English, where the word order is subject-verb-object, the word order of a Japanese sentence is subject- object- verb. For example, when in English we would say ”Who hit the ball?” in japanese we would say “Who the ball hit?”.
One of the most important elements of the grammar is the Particles. Nouns have neither gender nor number. But plurals of certain words can be expressed by the use of a suffix. Verb conjugation is not affected by number, gender or a person of the subject. Japanese adjectives are showing present and past, affirmative or negative.
Japanese also use "counters"- for counting different objects (different word for counting people, small and big animals, thin and long objects etc.).
Verbs only have the present and past tenses. The future tense is indicated by the present tense used in combination with time indicating adverbs such as “next month”.
HOW MUCH TIME DOES IT TAKE
Comparing to learning European languages, learning japanese takes more time, generally because of complicated writing system and the number of characters a students must recognize and be able to read correctly in order to read and write fluently.
Japanese students begin to learn kanji from their first year at elementary school. A guideline created by the Japanese Ministry of Education, the list of kyōiku kanji ("education kanji") specifies the 1,006 simple characters a child is to learn by the end of sixth grade. Children continue to study another 939 characters in junior high school, covering in total 1,945 jōyō kanji.
BE RESPECTFUL
Japanese people believe in giving respect to people. According to the social level, age, job and experience of the person different level of Japanese is spoken accordingly. Children are allowed to use plain form in the conversation but once they are adults, it is necessary to talk in polite form. Polite form of language also indicates new associates or connections with new and unknown people. Teineigo means polite language. Kenjougo means humble language. Sonkeigo means respectful language. It is tradition in Japan that they never call each other by their given name. It is always by the family name that they refer each other to. In addition, to give more respect they always add "san" after the family name, which means either Mr. or Mrs. or Miss.
It all means that the form of spoken language depend on a person you are having conversation with. For example you need to use different form of a verb whilst you are talking with your professor or your friend.
PEDAGOGICAL PROBLEMS
Asian language study suffers from retarded pedagogical development. Modern Spanish and French foreign language textbooks represent 5th (or later) generations - focusing on aural comprehension and vocal expression to prepare students to be able to think in and use the language.
Ironically enough, the same phenomenon works against Asians learning English because their traditional English language instruction concentrates on the written language and grammar rules. The result: most native Japanese can hardly speak English at all, despite 5 or more years of intense English study.
LEARNING JAPANESE
Many major universities throughout the world provide Japanese language courses, and a number of secondary and even primary schools worldwide offer courses in the language. In Japan, more than 90,000 foreign students studied at Japanese universities and Japanese language school.
The Japanese government provides standardized tests to measure spoken and written comprehension of Japanese for second language learners.
When learning Japanese in a college setting, students are usually first taught how to pronounce romaji. From that point, they are taught the two main syllabaries, with kanji usually being introduced in the second semester. Focus is usually first on polite (distal) speech, which is what students would be expected to use when interacting with native speakers. Casual speech and formal speech usually follow polite speech, as well as the usage of honorifics.
Good article, thanks for your contribution!
Regards.
José Manuel Bautista.