Is Japanese Hard to Learn? What Is Hard, and What Is Not

Almost every answer to this question is a single verdict, and a verdict does not tell you what to do. Japanese asks three separate things of you, and only one of them keeps asking once the other two are yours.

Picture telling a coworker what your father does with his mornings:

父は毎日新聞を読みます。ちちはまいにちしんぶんをよみます。 (chichihamainichishinbunwoyomimasu.)

My father reads the newspaper every day.

Three demands meet in that one sentence. Two of them are the scripts it is written in and the order its words come in. The third is the form you chose for your own father in front of an outsider.

Use this note to find out which of the three is in front of you right now. Do not use it to build a schedule, because the parts arrive in an order rather than on dates.

This does not answer how long it takes. That depends on your goal and your hours, and the field note on time covers it.

Japanese difficulty is not one quantity, and that is why a single answer never fits. Ask whether it is hard and you get a score or a mood, and neither one tells you what to do tomorrow.

The three demands are of different kinds. One is a set of characters, one is a rule about order, and one is a choice about the situation you are in.

Two of them are finite work. The character sets have a known size, and the order rule does not change once you have it.

The third one does not finish. Politeness follows the situation, and new situations keep coming for as long as you use the language.

The one number everyone quotes comes from the U.S. State Department, and the field note on time covers what it does and does not mean. Read that note when you want a size for the whole project.

This note is for the other question, which kind of work each part is. Here are the three demands, in the order they reach you:

Read the Does it end column before anything else. Two rows answer yes, one answers no, and that difference is the judgment this question actually needs.

The When it arrives column names an order, not a length of time. Later means after the other two, and how long that takes is a separate question.

Notice also what the table does not do. It does not rank the three by pain, and it does not put any of them beyond you.

The writing is what a beginner sees first, and it is the demand with a known size. Each kana set has 46 characters, and both sets spell the same sounds.

A kana stands for one sound, and it keeps that sound in nearly every word. Very little is left to guess at, so the work is recognition rather than rules.

That makes it a list with an end. You can see all of it on your first day. You can start on it in the week you begin, before you know any grammar.

The second kana set then costs less than the first. It spells sounds you already have, so what is new is the shapes.

Kanji is the part of the writing that keeps growing, and it grows with what you read. How to meet those characters is its own subject, and the kanji note covers it.

Here is the mix in an ordinary sentence, on a morning you buy bread:

毎朝コンビニでパンを買います。まいあさコンビニでパンをかいます。 (maiasakonbinidepanwokaimasu.)

Every morning I buy bread at the convenience store.

The scripts take turns in that sentence, which is why a page of Japanese looks crowded before it looks readable. The writing-system note takes a sentence like it apart, script by script.

The reason this demand comes first is practical. Everything else you study is printed in it, so the sooner the characters are yours, the sooner the rest is available.

And the size is the point of this demand. However far you go in Japanese, there is no further kana to meet, because the sets are closed.

The second demand is the one that feels backwards at first. English keeps its verb near the front of a sentence, and Japanese puts the verb at the very end.

Each noun in front of the verb takes a short particle, and that particle is what names its role. は (ha) marks what the sentence is about, and を (wo) marks the thing the verb acts on.

Because the particle names the role, the position does not have to. You can reorder the pieces in front of the verb without changing who does what.

Say what someone at home will not eat, and the same order applies:

妹は魚を食べません。いもうとはさかなをたべません。 (imoutohasakanawotabemasen.)

My little sister does not eat fish.

The fish comes before the verb, and the verb ends the sentence. The negative is in the verb ending, so nothing in front of it had to move.

That is why this demand is finite even though it is strange on day one. There is one order, it applies to long sentences as well as short ones, and nothing you learn later reverses it.

What takes practice here is the habit, not the rule. You are replacing an order your first language made automatic, and repetition does that work rather than more explanation.

Japanese also drops a subject that the situation already supplies, which makes real sentences shorter than you expect. The field note on sentence structure lays out the rule with the particles that go with it.

So the second demand ends as well. It ends when the order stops feeling backwards, and that change comes with use.

The third demand is different in kind. The form you choose is not decided by the verb, but by the situation you are in and by who is doing the action.

With friends you speak plainly, and with everyone else the polite です (desu)・ます (masu) style covers you. That style is already part of the system, under the name 丁寧語ていねいご (teineigo).

Above that style, the verb itself can change. 尊敬語そんけいご (sonkeigo) raises what the other person does, and 謙譲語けんじょうご (kenjougo) lowers what you do. The doer decides which of them a sentence needs.

A manager is at the next desk, and you offer tea:

部長はお茶を召し上がりますか。ぶちょうはおちゃをめしあがりますか。 (buchouhaochawomeshiagarimasuka.)

Would the manager like some tea?

The verb for drinking changed because of who would be drinking. The word order did not move, and the choice came from the situation rather than from the grammar.

This is the demand with no end, and the word situation is the reason. A new workplace, a first phone call, and a customer at your counter each ask you to choose again.

Japanese speakers train for it as well. New employees are given courses in it at work, which is the clearest sign that nobody finishes this part at home.

The same up and down shows in the plainest words. Your own father is 父ちち (chichi) when you speak to an outsider, and someone else's father is お父さんおとうさん (otousan). The field note on family words works through that pair.

None of this reaches you early in our own course. 尊敬語そんけいご (sonkeigo) and 謙譲語けんじょうご (kenjougo) come at N4, after the N5 sentence patterns, so the early part of the course goes to the two demands that end.

Which words fit which situation is collected in the field note on phrases by scene. The scenes there come in the order you meet them, and that order is what makes this demand workable.

So the honest answer has three parts, and one of them stays open. A single verdict cannot tell you which part you are in. These three can, and two of them show you an end from the start.

Ask which part you are in: the writing and the word order both end, and politeness does not.

The part that never ends is also the part that does not come first.

That comparison has an answer of its own, and it belongs to the field note on how long Japanese takes. That note reads the public source that lists these languages together, and it says what the source measures and what it leaves open.

For your own planning, the more useful question is which of the three demands you are working on right now.

Pronunciation is not the difficult part. Japanese has five vowel sounds, and each one keeps a steady value wherever it appears.

What does need practice is length. Nearly every kana takes one unit of time, and a long vowel or a small っ () takes a unit of its own. Getting that count wrong can turn one word into another.

Start with the writing, because everything else you study is printed in it. Hiragana first, then katakana, and kanji later, met inside words you are already learning.

The beginner roadmap puts that order into a plan you can follow, and it is the next note to read.

Inside Ukiyoe Japanese the three demands are separate things to do. The kana pages cover the closed sets, and Particle gym asks you for the missing particle in short sentences. The N5 grammar shelf takes the word-order patterns one at a time, and the page for 尊敬語そんけいご (sonkeigo) and 謙譲語けんじょうご (kenjougo) comes later, at N4.