Every once in a while, a Japanese person will pose this question to me. They always seem flabbergasted that I think English is more complicated. Actually, I try to clarify that I think English is much easer to learn. Learning Japanese often feels like learning four or five languages at once.
To learn Japanese, you have to cover:
Two sylaballaries
about 2,000 standard Chinese characters
maybe about 1,000 more if you want a specialized job
stroke order, if you want to be able to write
the multiple readings for Chinese characters
the local dialect
familiarity with major dialects
slang
common punchlines
old Japanese is a plus
idioms are a plus
Humble, middle, and honorific language
How to juggle in-group to out-group speech
Katakana words from other languages
Learning which words are too technical/archaic to be used (often after you have already memorized them).
So I think it's a challenge to learn Japanese in the first place. But I still think the grammar is ridiculously simple. Only two verbs in the entire language are irregular. The spelling is fairly simple. And most of the elements reinforce each other. I am actually thankful for kanji, cause sometimes it's the only way I remember a word's meaning, and there can be nice nuance communicated through them (見るvs.観る for example).
Anyways, I don't really think I need to go into why English is harder. But I will share this link with you. Maybe you'll see my point through it.
The punchline, “Obeika?”, becomes double when you use it or it is used by you. That must be much funnier.
ReplyDeleteMayumi, you know way too much English... Obeika?
ReplyDeleteEnglish can get extremely complicated. One thing can be said in a million different ways. It's inherited quite a few nuances over the years that add to that complexity. Particularly in Standard English spelling.
ReplyDeleted
One example is this, which I think is corrected in American English, but still, it has bugged me since junior school here in England
We spell 'plough' thusly, and 'rough' again as you see here. Where the former is pronounced 'plow', the later is pronounced 'ruff'. It makes no sense ! :oS
I declare that either we start pronouncing 'plough' as 'pluff' or 'rough' as 'row'. Or even better we take a leaf out of our colonial brothers colonial brothers book, and change a few of these silly spellings.
What say you? :D
The wiki article on English Orthography does indeed provide many instances of stupid spelling. I can't spell in the first place. But anyways, some words I would favor changing, others not, for the linguistic and entmological ramifications.
ReplyDeleteDefinately, there has to be a balance between etymology and efficiency of use. A nostalgic link to the past is always important.
ReplyDeleteThis is one of the reasons why studying the writing systems used in 1337 is fasinating, because it seems to mostly disregard both of the above concerns :D