I have heard that Japanese in one of the hardest languages for English speakers to learn. And, I have been practicing my characters less than diligently this last month. In the past two weeks, my Japanese practice has consisted of watching a Japanese movie with subtitles. At one time, I could confidently say that I knew the readings of 600 kanji (Chinese characters used in Japanese). Then I remember that I was told that learning 1000 characters, my goal last fall semester, 'isn't all that hard.' I will not say who it was, but it was someone who's primary focus is Chinese.
One of the easiest ways for Chinese and Japanese learners to measure their progress is by the number of characters they've learned. In Chinese, everything is written entirely with characters. The number of characters one learns corresponds closely with the number of vocabulary words learned. Japanese, on the other hand, has two phonetic alphabets. Though most words can be written in characters, the number of characters taught in class represent a fraction of the total vocabulary. I think some Japanese learners (myself at least) can feel defensive when comparing themselves to Chinese learners. But the nature of the languages is different. In Chinese, a sizable minority of characters have two possible pronunciation. In Japanese, every character has at least two possible readings; more common characters have three or four or five. The following is one of my favorite examples to demonstrate this:
美月
mi(gatsu)
美人
bi(jin)
美 美い
mei3 uma(i)
美しい
utsuku(shii)
美味しい
o(ishii)
One of the things that kept happening in my review this weekend, would be that I'd remember one or two readings, but not the correct one for the example the review program gave me.
On top of that, grammar is completely different in both languages. A lot of people are intimidated by pronunciation in Chinese. I believe that, though hit is not tonal, Japanese is structurally more difficult for English speakers to think in. Let me give another example from first year Chinese/Japanese respectively. Let's say you want to say the simple sentence, 'I eat rice.'
我 吃 飯。
I eat rice.
私 は ご飯 を 食べます。
I subject marker rice object marker eat.
Now, let's say, 'I ate rice yesterday.'
我 昨天 吃 飯。
I yesterday eat rice.
私 は 昨日 ご飯 を 食べました。
I sub.marker yesterday rice obj. marker ate.
You can see, even if you don't read Japanese or Chinese, the differences in sentence structure. You can also compare visually the sentences. You can see, for example, when present tense becomes past tense the end of the verb changes in Japanese, but does not in Chinese. Don't get me wrong. Chinese does have grammar, and it is very difficult for English speakers to learn. But even though after three years of study the Japanese learner knows several hundred fewer characters than their counterparts in Chinese, the Japanese learner knows more than a few things the Chinese learner doesn't.
