The two languages I’m most confident in are Spanish and Japanese. My primary motivation for learning languages is to read, and I’ve read dozens of books in each one. Common sense should tell you that Japanese was much harder to learn than Spanish was… but that wasn’t true. I was ...
Pronunciation is the simplest part of Japanese, compared to its complex writing system. Korean: all phonetic The pronunciation of Korean is harder than Japanese. Korean has some complex syllables, such as compound vowels and synthetic consonants, which many people find difficult when they first try...
aA Japanese said, "I think the relationship between those two mice was that of mother and son." Once again the others thought for a while and felt this was more reasonable. So they expressed agreement another time.[translate] a我突然觉得自己好失败 I thought suddenly oneself good is defeated...
Is there any point in studying traditional characters? Honestly, I learnt mandarin Chinese first in simplified characters (although I knew some traditional beforehand from learning Japanese). I never thought there was much point in learning traditional characters, and always thought they were pretty...
Cooking traditional recipes from a country can make learning its language more interesting. Or maybe you're really into anime or Asian dramas? If your school teaches a language like Japanese or Korean, you could one day enjoy those shows without subtitles. ...
That all depends on your native language. For a Japanese person, Mandarin Chinese is a lot easier than English. For a German or Dutch person English is very easy to learn. For an Italian, French is simple. Polish is easy for a speaker of another slavic tongue like Russian. Then again ...
By all means start a course of Japanese at home, but if you want to progress at all, pencil in a month of intensive practice in the Land of the Rising Sun. Cantonese/Mandarin (2,200 hours each) One of the challenges of mastering Mandarin is learning all of the characters. ...