Too Vague and that's Depressing

how long will it take to be able to read japanese? cause it has like 3 different alphabets and i dont know where to start ;_;

— Anonymous

raspomme:

bruh you wanna read Japanese, or you wanna understand Japanese? Because three alphabets are the least of your troubles. (They aren’t even alphabets btw, hiragana and katakana are syllabaries and kanji is a logography borrowed from Chinese.)

Think how long it took to memorize A-Z. Chances are, it was so long ago that you don’t even remember how long it took.

So? Hiragana and katakana are like alphabets. There are a limited number of symbols and each corresponds to a sound. You can probably learn both in like, two weeks, if you’re really lazy. Three days if you really mean it. And then you’ll be able to read this: あけいまずとウオゲムふぁりおころウンジュべたがりちゃめるない. What does it mean? Nothing.

So, heck, you can learn to read Japanese kana in three days.

Kanji is a whole ‘nother story. I’ve been learning kanji (via Chinese, then Japanese) ever since I was five and I’m still not done learning. never will be. 

Reading aside, you know whats probably 23842 times bigger than reading? Grammar. And vocab, but let’s focus on grammar. You don’t need it to be able to read, but it’s what lets you understand a language. Anyway, grammar is big.

You don’t know where to start? Take classes in person or online. Look for resources, like the ones I’ve collected here. Heck, look things up on Wikipedia. Start on the Japanese article and go wherever your heart desires. it’s good stuff.

Anyway, this turned into a lecture, but remember this:

Japanese is fucking hard. It’s a whole language, of course it’s hard.

Japanese is a lot more structured than English in terms of grammar and word usage. Logic can take you very far, and I’m glad for it.

Three alphabets is the least of your problems, and in fact, it solves a hell of a lot more problems than it creates. The amount of literary flexibility offered by three orthographic choices is astounding. Three alphabets is nothing. You wanna be scared of Japanese? Implied subject. Sentence structure that varies vastly from English. Context-dependent pronoun dropping. Humble language. Honorific language. Artificial honorific language. Case particles. Ooh, case particles. The phrase should send shivers up the spine of every student. Four-word idioms. Past, present, progressive, passive, perfective aspect, stative aspect, durative aspect, potential, and conditional conjugations. Wasei-Eigo. Set phrases. Pitch accent. Sound symbolism. Don’t even get me started on Classical Japanese.

Don’t forget, it’s a language, not a secret handshake. How long did it take you to learn English?