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   みさと (misato@varishangout.net)'s status on Sunday, 09-Oct-2022 12:06:40 JST みさと
   English learning is too much trouble………
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     みさと (misato@varishangout.net)'s status on Sunday, 09-Oct-2022 12:06:38 JST みさと

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     • マタナ
     @matana
     
     I think, I don't learn Japanese lel when I was born as a English speaker.
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     寮 (ryo@social.076.ne.jp)'s status on Sunday, 09-Oct-2022 12:06:38 JST 寮

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     • マタナ
     @Misato @matana English speakers can't imagine learning Japanese because "hardest language ever".
     Meanwhile, we usually think the same about English and most other languages too.
     
     Very few people realize that reading in and listening to the language as much as possible is way more effective than paying for government approved classes and doing exercises in books once or twice a week.
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     マタナ (matana@gameliberty.club)'s status on Sunday, 09-Oct-2022 12:06:39 JST マタナ

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     @Misato imagine learning Japanese :pepeShotgun:

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     マタナ (matana@gameliberty.club)'s status on Sunday, 09-Oct-2022 12:09:56 JST マタナ

     in reply to

     • 寮

     @ryo @Misato > reading

     *cries in non-Japanese*

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     寮 (ryo@social.076.ne.jp)'s status on Sunday, 09-Oct-2022 13:38:49 JST 寮

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     • マタナ
     • Terminal Autism
     @TerminalAutism @Misato @matana
     Not only Chinese, Japanese also went through simplification after WWII, which also meant making quite a bit number of kanji obsolete.
     Which over time proved that the number that got obsolete was too big, so over time a bunch of them got re-introduced, though in their original form (so without the post-war simplification).
     
     Also, I'd rather say that less than 1% of Japan can speak English, 15% seems a bit too much.
     I guess the 15% includes foreigners and/or Japanese people who are so bad at English that they need to use Goolag Translate most of the time.
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     Terminal Autism (terminalautism@social.076.ne.jp)'s status on Sunday, 09-Oct-2022 13:38:50 JST Terminal Autism

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     • 寮
     • マタナ
     @ryo @Misato @matana Japanese is pretty much objectively harder, though. Evidenced by the fact that Japanese people struggle with their own language a lot more than even people that learn English as a second language struggle with English. A lot of Japanese people seem to not be able to write kanji from memory, which is "not necessary anymore", but still proof that it's definitely harder because in English, if you can't write, you are illiterate.
     
     Translating Japanese is a nightmare compared to translating English. First of all, someone that doesn't know kanji is already limited only to things with furigana, so almost only manga, and some of the scans that I got are blurry enough that I can't see them, so those are out (reading small complicated kanji on a computer screen is also a problem, it's just a black blur and I have to zoom in to actually see the radicals). Then there are way more words that are identical in kana but that mean many many things, that can maybe be differentiated using the kanji, but that's another thing to slow the process down. Then the actual grammar is harder, because there are so many conjugations/forms and combinations of different forms, while English has comparatively very few. There are also a lot of particles, that can generally be used for seemingly different things, but English kinda has "particles" like that too.
     
     All of that memorization is stacked on top of already having to memorize a shitload of vocabulary. In my case, every time I try, I quickly have to stop because my brain starts refusing to memorize more useless information (which is useless, because I can't use it, none of it really feels like it brings me closer to being able to read). So I have been occasionally learning more Japanese since 2017, and I always have to stop after a while because my brain works against me and just says "this shit is useless, I am not going to remember this anymore", and whenever I try to use it, I have to translate most of it and it's boring as hell and after a while my brain does the same thing and I don't remember anything that I translate. It also has to be manga, games are unbearably slow and boring this way and I just feel like skipping the text, and it's the same for anime. So I stop when I can't absorb more information, and I forget most of what I learned this time, and next time I relearn it, and it gets a little more solid every time. The biggest problem is that the breaks tend to be too long, but they are necessary because I get to the point that I can't remember stuff even after trying to memorize it and repeating it 200 times in my head.
     
     There is also the additional benefit of English being so important that you can't not learn it unless you want to be basically illiterate and have access to very little information. It is less nonsensical, but a lot more complicated. English is pure nonsense, but simple enough that you can learn it by accident (like I did). Hell, I think I remember seeing that 15% of the population of Japan knows English, and I think that's definitely a better success rate than even people that actively try to learn Japanese. Horrible by European standards, but the languages are very different, and I assume that it's taught like absolute shit and most people probably don't try to use it, which is necessary for any language, school never being enough other than for the very basics of grammar and vocabulary.
     
     Anyway, Japanese is definitely harder. Everything points in the direction of it being the hardest language on the planet other than maybe Chinese, though Chinese was simplified and I don't know how hard it actually is. Even more characters to memorize, though, and the pronunciations supposedly aren't straight-forward and consistent like they are in Japanese. English is so easy that retard teenage me was able to learn it with almost no actual study (I did passively absorb some grammar and vocabulary in school).
     
     As far as pronunciation goes, Japanese is one of the easiest if not the easiest. You can learn it by accident. And actually, when it comes to pronunciation, I think English is one of the hardest, because there is no consistency, it's pure chaos and you pretty much have to listen enough to memorize how every word is said.
     
     That's my position as an EXPERT and VETERAN at failing to learn Japanese, and also as someone that normally isn't that bad at learning. I didn't even try to read last time I was learning because at this point failure is expected. Also, I don't actually use Anki, because it sucks and I hate it.
     
     "Learning Japanese takes longer than the lifespan of the universe."
     -Black Science Man
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     Terminal Autism (terminalautism@social.076.ne.jp)'s status on Sunday, 09-Oct-2022 15:54:39 JST Terminal Autism

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     • 寮
     • マタナ
     @ryo @Misato @matana True, I forgot about that. I think I heard that Japanese was simplified, but Chinese was simplified more, except maybe in Taiwan? Might be wrong about that. And I totally forgot that there are foreigners in Japan. Also, that 15% was completely wrong according even to the list that I saw that in ( https://wikiless.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-speaking_population#List ), it's 2.2%. But it was 15% in the universe that I was in when I looked at the list, and it did seem suspiciously big even at the time, so clearly, I must have temporarily moved to another universe, where speaking English is much more common in Japan. That or I'm just retarded. Or the list was wrong when I looked at it, or it said 1.5% and I saw it as 15%. I'm betting on me being retarded, though. Whatever I did, it's incredible that it's possible for someone to get something that wrong.
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     寮 (ryo@social.076.ne.jp)'s status on Sunday, 09-Oct-2022 15:59:26 JST 寮

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     • マタナ
     • Terminal Autism
     @TerminalAutism @Misato @matana Taiwan are the Chinese that didn't want to have anything to do with Mao's communist regime, and took the entire 4 olds (old culture, old customs, old habits, and old ideas) with them, so of course they didn't get through the simplification process.
     The other one being Honk Konk and Macao, as they were still colonialized under European rule (HK = UK, Macao = Portugal) at the time, so they too never received any Maoist influence, as by the time those areas were handed back to CHAINA!!, Mao was long dead anyway, and they were already in the process of opening up more and more until Winnie The Pooh became president for life.
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     Terminal Autism (terminalautism@social.076.ne.jp)'s status on Sunday, 09-Oct-2022 15:59:49 JST Terminal Autism

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     • 寮
     • マタナ
     @matana @ryo @Misato The syllabaries were a good idea, though. Imagine if it didn't have it, it would be a lot more like Chinese. And I suspect that pronunciation would also not be as consistent as it is, because I do believe that the syllabary protects the language and prevents people from going full retard like the English did when they decided that the great vowel shift was a good idea.
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     マタナ (matana@gameliberty.club)'s status on Sunday, 09-Oct-2022 15:59:51 JST マタナ

     in reply to

     • 寮
     • Terminal Autism

     @TerminalAutism @ryo @Misato they say that the most difficult writing system is Thai one, but at least it is a single writing system, because on top of borrowing funny pictures from China Japanese invented not one, but TWO syllabaries on top of that :cry_konata:

     people say that it is due to "continuity" issues but here you go, @ryo outright says that kanji go obsolete right and left, and get simplified, and all that, and it results to people not reading because Fuck That or simply being unable to, because granny used to this particular chinese picture meaning something completely different or being nonsense

     also just for the note, trying to read kanji gave my SO a seizure once, "Japan hates epileptics" joke strikes again

     I am just beginning to understand *some* kanji, but then my brain forgets how "ta" is in kana and this is literally a part of my username

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     寮 (ryo@social.076.ne.jp)'s status on Sunday, 09-Oct-2022 16:01:10 JST 寮

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     • マタナ
     • Terminal Autism
     @TerminalAutism @matana @Misato I do wish that more words would be Kanji-nized rather than Anglofied.
     Because writing words in Kanji (like 貴方 instead of あなた for example) just looks more beautiful.
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     Terminal Autism (terminalautism@social.076.ne.jp)'s status on Sunday, 09-Oct-2022 16:01:32 JST Terminal Autism

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     • 寮
     • マタナ
     @matana @ryo @Misato Though of course, they should have just invented spaces and had only a single syllabary Too late to change it now, though, it would erase too much cultural material. And it works perfectly fine for people that know the language.
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     yasu (yasu@social.076.ne.jp)'s status on Sunday, 09-Oct-2022 16:02:00 JST yasu

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     • 寮
     • マタナ
     @ryo @Misato @matana Can't agree more. I learned English without really thinking about learning it, just by immersing myself. Funny enough, most of it was with Japanese content. The number of Portuguese translations for manga and anime is pretty low compared to English (specially if you go away from the most popular ones), so it was enough motivation (well, tech stuff too). I also changed my OS language, started using it for searches as the results were better, even started thinking in it. My input is way better than my output, though. I still take time to write stuff and the accent isn't that great.
     
     Last week I sat down and decided to learn Japanese too, just for fun. I only knew basic words and sentences from listening to anime, now I'm almost done with Kana. Just being able to read and understand some stuff feels great, no moon runes anymore! (There's still 9999 kanjis, I know). Speaking with a reasonable accent isn't so hard, as the pronunciation is pretty close to Portuguese, only with some pitch changes due to how words are made. We have accent marks to help with that, but there's none in Japanese, so the only way to properly learn is by listening or reading frankenstein stuff like "arigatô", "mangá" and "dôzo". Watching anime without subtitles is a quite fun and immersive experience, as I am able to pay more attention to sounds and visuals instead of reading.
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     applejack 🇮🇸:hitlergrin2: (applejack@gameliberty.club)'s status on Sunday, 09-Oct-2022 16:16:23 JST applejack 🇮🇸:hitlergrin2:

     in reply to

     • 寮
     • マタナ

     @ryo @matana @Misato There was noticeably faster learning when I was doing more clozes, reading, and chatting with my friend than anything else

     Jap seems harder though. Non-Jap/Chinese kids can read their entire alphabets in elementary at least

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     Terminal Autism (terminalautism@social.076.ne.jp)'s status on Monday, 10-Oct-2022 01:52:47 JST Terminal Autism

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     • 寮
     • マタナ
     @ryo @Misato @matana Japanese is fine as it is. Kanji do look very cool, though. Japanese in general does.
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