There are many rich and varied dialects in Japan, more so than in England, but in this book we focus on standard "NHK Japanese."
CHAPTER TWO
Challenges and Rewards
Every language has, for the learner from another language background, what might be termed "good news" and "not quite so good news." Japanese is no exception. In this chapter, from an English speaker's perspective, we consider the straight-out good news first, in Section 2.1. Then in 2.2 we introduce you to the challenges, but soften these by giving you tips along the way so as to reduce the level of challenge. That's why we refer to it as "not quite so good news" rather than simply "bad news."
All points raised in this chapter will be discussed in more detail later in the book, so don't worry if you are left wanting more information on some particular point.
2.1 The good news
We shall consider here different types of "good news." These are the rewards of learning Japanese, and the downright "easy bits."
2.1.1 The rewards
Although Japanese does have its challenges, it is almost always seen as rewarding, even by those who do not pursue their studies beyond an introductory level. These rewards are both material and personal.
Japan is one of the world's major nations. Even though its economy has been relatively unhealthy for more than a decade now, it is not going to cease being a world superpower. And yet, despite increasing numbers of native English speakers becoming competent in Japanese, especially proportionately in countries such as Australia and New Zealand, worldwide these are still few relative to those competent in the traditional foreign languages of French and German. That is, Westerners competent in Japanese have a very useful rarity, and possess a skill much in demand. (Having said that, the growth of students of Japanese mentioned earlier may eventually erode that rarity value.)
A recent UK survey revealed that more and more young Britons are keen to study Japanese because they love Japanese anime, and other surveys show that young Americans also think it is a "cool" language. This interest value is another significant factor, in that learning Japanese clearly satisfies a personal interest for many students, and is not merely a planned career decision. In terms of personal development and satisfaction, there is also great reward in the very learning of a language characterized by different concepts and cultural associations. Japan's culture, along with its history, is one of the richest in the world, and command of the language provides an extra dimension of accessibility to it. And in terms of broadening the mind by learning another language, it follows that the more different from English that language is, the more the English speaker's mind will be broadened.
2.1.2 The easy bits
Some things about using Japanese—certainly in its spoken form—are downright easy. For example, you don't have to worry about gender of nouns or conjugating verbs according to person, or noun/pronoun changes depending on whether they are subject or object. And, compared with many languages, Japanese verbs do not contain many irregularities at all in terms of tense change.
English has become such a part of the linguistic consciousness of the Japanese that in many cases you can simply use English words and be understood. Even if a word has not formally entered the Japanese language, many Japanese would be familiar enough with the English vocabulary to understand it from the given context. (The Japanese grasp of English grammar is not quite so advanced, so whole English sentences and long phrases should be avoided.) This would be especially true if you put it into an appropriate Japanese sound structure—basically sequences of syllables comprising consonant plus vowel, as will be discussed in Part Two. But even if you didn't feel confident about "Japanizing" a word, there would be little misunderstanding, for example, if you just said "biscuit" instead of the properly Japanized word bisuketto. As an extra plus, the use of English terminology in Japanese can actually appear very stylish, just as using French in English seems a little chic and conveys a certain je ne sais quoi.
Japanese has fewer sounds to master than English, and there is no need to worry about stress or tones, as in Chinese. There is however a differentiation in pitch (making a sound high or low), which in particular can help distinguish between certain homophones (words with the same pronunciation) or near-homophones. Many students, especially in the past, have not worried about pitch at all, but it will help your accent and communicative efficiency greatly if you pay attention to it. We will return to this in Part Two.
In reading and writing too, at least in the kana scripts, the pronunciation and spelling of words are also much easier than in English, as there is a more consistent correspondence in Japanese between symbol and sound—not completely consistent, and not perhaps as straightforward as some languages such as French or Italian, but more so than in English.
There are many other pleasant surprises you will find along the way, when you discover that the particular aspect of Japanese that you are learning at a given time proves to be much easier than you expected.
2.2 The not quite so good news
Being in a language category of its own, it is not surprising that many of the more challenging aspects of Japanese can be attributed in large part to unfamiliarity—as foreshadowed earlier. In this section we look at the main features that most English speakers would consider challenging, but lessen the challenge by giving you advice along the way.
2.2.1 Japanese as "the Devil's language"
In the sixteenth century a certain Portuguese priest, one of the first-ever Westerners to visit Japan, became frustrated at his inability to master the language rapidly so as to spread God's word through it, and even termed it "the Devil's language."
It does indeed take time to become fully competent in all four skills of the language—listening, speaking, reading and writing, with the last two being very much more time-consuming. In fact, for native English speakers it takes about five times longer to achieve equivalent full competency in Japanese than in French, with its easier script and greater familiarity to English speakers. To start off your study without an awareness of this relativity can result in considerable frustration.
But let's put this into context. The skills of listening and speaking are by no means difficult to master in Japanese, though it is true you are disadvantaged to some extent if you can't reinforce verbal material by reading and writing it. But certainly, the spoken language is not quite so super-humanly inaccessible as our Portuguese friend suggests.
Its accessibility is borne out by (among other things) the increasing numbers of Japan-based Westerners who quite quickly become fluent in Japanese, even to the point of appearing as regulars on television quiz shows or similar conducted in Japanese. The Japanese word for a TV star is tarento, from the English word "talent." While these foreign personalities may be talented performers, they are not all abnormally talented linguists. Nevertheless, they have responded highly successfully to the challenge of spoken Japanese, showing clearly that it is very "doable."
And as for the skills of reading and writing, individuals differ in their approach to learning Japanese. Some prefer to tackle the written language straightaway, which is the norm for most second languages. Others, mindful of the time-consuming nature of the writing system, concentrate first on the spoken language, to provide a sound base for later study of the written version—and of course, "later" can be anywhere between "just a bit later" and "so much later it's close to never." The "spoken first" approach is certainly how we learn our mother tongue, so it is by no means unnatural and ineffective. Unless your circumstances leave you no option, we suggest the obvious: choose whatever approach you feel