Apples and Oranges

        This past weekend I decided to exercise my mind a bit and review some vocabulary.  I have been regularly reviewing Chinese, but this time I decided to use several DS games that are supposed to build vocabulary, 大人の漢字練習 (a Japanese game for practicing characters), and My Spanish Coach.  I was dismayed to learn my faulty memory in both games and languages.  While my only formal exposure to Spanish was through a series of teachers in high school whom I can now safely say were the most uninspiring teachers of all my years of schooling, I have spent the better part of my college career trying to learn Japanese.
      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.