They’re all used in tandem in Japanese writing, which gives the language it’s unique look, in contrast to other East Asiatic languages like Korean or Mandarin, that only use a single writing system.īut if you can see past all those hurdles, you’ll find a beautiful language that goes back millennia. To put it in perspective, languages such as English, Portuguese, Danish, Persian, Greek and Russian are all members of one large language family, the Indo-European language family.īut by far the biggest obstacle that Japanese learners have to face are the three different writing systems, Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji. That information on its own already frightens a lot of potential learners.Īnother point that’s worth mentioning is that Japanese is from the Japonic language family, that means there are no other languages related to it outside of Japan. These are said to be “exceptionally difficult for English speakers”. Why is that? Well, according to the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) of the Department of State, Japanese is categorized as a category 4 language, together with Arabic, Korean, Cantonese and Mandarin. Needless to say, it’s certainly not a common sight. Now try to remember the last time you saw a non-Japanese person speaking fluent Japanese.
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