Is English or Japanese harder to learn?

In fact, the US Foreign Service Institute considers Japanese to be one of the most difficult languages to learn for an English speaker (along with Arabic, Chinese, and Korean). While it may take an average learner 30 weeks to master French, it will take approximately 88 weeks for Japanese.
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Is learning Japanese harder than English?

Japanese is ranked by the U.S. Foreign Services Institute as the most difficult language for native English speakers to learn. The institute uses the time it takes to learn a language to determine its difficulty 23-24 weeks for the easiest and 88 weeks for the hardest.
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Is it harder for a Japanese person to learn English or an English person to learn Japanese?

Since learning Japanese is harder than learning English for the above stated reason, consider learning Japanese that much more of an accomplishment. You have worked so much harder than any Japanese person studying English. You mastering Japanese is special.
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Why is Japanese easier than English?

First of all, Japanese pronunciation is so much simpler than English! All five vowels in Japanese already exist in English, so that's one barrier out of the way. Moreover, Japanese words are pronounced exactly the way they are written, so there's no need to search up the dictionary every time you see a new word.
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What is the hardest language to learn?

1. Mandarin Chinese. Interestingly, the hardest language to learn is also the most widely spoken native language in the world. Mandarin Chinese is challenging for a number of reasons.
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Is it so difficult for the Japanese to learn English? #1 Language



How difficult is Japanese?

The Japanese language is considered one of the most difficult to learn by many English speakers. With three separate writing systems, an opposite sentence structure to English, and a complicated hierarchy of politeness, it's decidedly complex.
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What's the easiest language?

15 of the easiest languages to learn for English speakers - ranked
  • Frisian. Frisian is thought to be one of the languages most closely related to English, and therefore also the easiest for English-speakers to pick up. ...
  • Dutch. ...
  • Norwegian. ...
  • Spanish. ...
  • Portuguese. ...
  • Italian. ...
  • French. ...
  • Swedish.
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Is learning Japanese worth it?

Understanding the Japanese language will open your eyes to Japanese history, martial arts, entertainment, culture and fashion. Learning Japanese will help you to appreciate your own culture as well as your own language because it improves your communication and cognitive skills.
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Should I learn to speak or write Japanese first?

Speaking helps your accent

Like other languages, Japanese has a certain accent that most speakers will love to have. However, you will hardly know the accent if you only focus on reading. Learning to speak first will let you understand how you can pronounce different words even before you can read or write them.
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Is duolingo good for Japanese?

Duolingo Japanese is not perfect. But it is a fun and effective way to learn some basic Japanese. If you really only have five minutes in a day to study, Duolingo is probably one of the most effective ways to spend your time.
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Do Japanese want to learn English?

Since Japan is quite far from America and Europe, the number of foreign visitors is still quite low. As a result, as long as Japanese people are in Japan most of them do not need to speak English on a regular basis. This is one of the main reasons why the English ability of most Japanese people does not improve.
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Why is Japanese grammar so hard?

Japanese makes extremely heavy use of particles to form the grammar. In some respects these are similar to prepositions in English, but far more widely used. For example, the logical structure for the sentence, “I will read a book in the library” is: I [particle] library [particle] book [particle] read.
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Is it true that English is the hardest language to learn?

The English language is widely regarded as one of the most difficult to master. Because of its unpredictable spelling and challenging to learn grammar, it is challenging for both learners and native speakers.
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Is English easy for Japanese speakers?

English is often considered one of the most complicated languages on Earth to learn, and Japanese is sometimes considered one of the easiest by speakers of languages other than English. Clearly, English and Japanese do not interchange very well.
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Is Japanese pronunciation easy?

Compared to English, Japanese pronunciation is easier as it has less vowels and consonants than English does. Further, each syllable in Japanese has the same length and strength, as opposed to English where you have to be careful about which syllables to stress and speak strongly.
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How long does it take to learn Japanese?

According to the US Department of State, Japanese is one of the hardest languages for English natives to learn. It doesn't have many similarities in structure to English. They estimate it takes 88 weeks of learning, or 2200 hours, to reach fluency.
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What are the ABC's in Japanese?

The Japanese alphabet is really three writing systems that work together. These three systems are called hiragana, katakana and kanji. If that sounds overwhelming, don't worry!
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Can Japanese read English letters?

Although many Japanese players won't respond in English, they can probably get most of what you're saying. They may not be conversational, but English is compulsory from age 10 onward. Their best language skills are generally reading.
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How long will it take to read Japanese?

Learning Japanese isn't easy and it will take time. It's probably fair to say that you can expect a commitment of at least three years in order to achieve something resembling fluency. The average learner gets to the advanced level in three or four years.
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Is learning Japanese useless?

There's one particular case where learning Japanese is a positive thing, no matter what you're learning it for. It's in case you're using the time you previously used for doing less useful things like playing games or watching TV. No matter how anyone would think it's not useful, it's totally more useful in your case.
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Does learning Japanese make you smarter?

A study with first-time learners of Japanese has measured how brain activity changes after just a few months of studying a new language. The results show that acquiring a new language initially boosts brain activity, which then reduces as language skills improve.
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Can you learn Japanese by listening?

One of the biggest advantages to listening to lots of Japanese before you actually learn how to speak it is getting nice and familiar with how Japanese should sound. You get a much better handle for pronunciation, accent, and tone than if you just went into it without any prior listening experience.
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What language is English closest to?

The closest language to English is one called Frisian, which is a Germanic language spoken by a small population of about 480,000 people. There are three separate dialects of the language, and it's only spoken at the southern fringes of the North Sea in the Netherlands and Germany.
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What third language should I learn?

All in all, Mandarin is the best language to learn because of its growing economy and number of language speakers. Spanish and Arabic are next for the the top spots for the best language to learn abroad because of the sheer demand and job opportunities for them.
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What is the most useful language to learn?

8 Useful Languages to Learn
  • English. You might be surprised that English isn't the most commonly spoken language in the world. ...
  • Chinese. With more than 1 billion native speakers, Chinese dominates Asia and the world as the most frequently spoken language. ...
  • Spanish. ...
  • Arabic. ...
  • French. ...
  • German. ...
  • Portuguese. ...
  • Russian.
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