Is Japanese the hardest language to read?
Discussion
As a non-native speaking learner it almost seems designed to be as hard as possible:
- two alphabets with 48 characters each - same sounds but used in different circumstances
- you need to know around 2000 to 2200 commonly used kanji (Chinese characters) and each character usually have at least two (sometimes a lot more) different ways of pronouncing them
- it can be written horizontally, left to right or vertically but then top to bottom and left to right
- there are no gaps between characters so not help identifying where one word ends and the next one begins
What is amazing is that it seems from google that the level of illiteracy in Japan is the same or better than other developed countries.
Anyone know a language even more difficult to read?
- two alphabets with 48 characters each - same sounds but used in different circumstances
- you need to know around 2000 to 2200 commonly used kanji (Chinese characters) and each character usually have at least two (sometimes a lot more) different ways of pronouncing them
- it can be written horizontally, left to right or vertically but then top to bottom and left to right
- there are no gaps between characters so not help identifying where one word ends and the next one begins
What is amazing is that it seems from google that the level of illiteracy in Japan is the same or better than other developed countries.
Anyone know a language even more difficult to read?
From what I've read and heard, Mandarin is even more difficult. It's so complicated that native speakers as children are taught using "Pinyin" which is the words spelt phonetically using our alphabet until they are about 8 years old. I also read somewhere that even native speakers often struggled to fully read newspaper headlines and articles and could only get the gist of them.
Silenoz said:
From what I've read and heard, Mandarin is even more difficult. It's so complicated that native speakers as children are taught using "Pinyin" which is the words spelt phonetically using our alphabet until they are about 8 years old. I also read somewhere that even native speakers often struggled to fully read newspaper headlines and articles and could only get the gist of them.
Interesting. I had thought that Mandarin was easier to read as fewer ways of pronouncing the characters but more difficult to speak because it is a tonal language. Chinese is definitely harder.
Hiragana and Katakana can be learnt in a couple of weeks. Everywhere seems to recommend hiragana first, but Katakana is the foreign words imported, probably 80% of which are from English, so fairly easy to figure out and get you going when in Japan.
Then the kanji is limited to around 2.2k characters (newspapers limit themselves to using this amount). Which is the hard time consuming bit (it's spread out over 12 years for Japanese children which leads to their high literacy, as you'd fall back too far if you don't keep up).
Chinese in comparison, there are around 60-70k characters needed to nail the reading properly, hence it's much easier to just give up early with such an overwhelming number to learn.
Hiragana and Katakana can be learnt in a couple of weeks. Everywhere seems to recommend hiragana first, but Katakana is the foreign words imported, probably 80% of which are from English, so fairly easy to figure out and get you going when in Japan.
Then the kanji is limited to around 2.2k characters (newspapers limit themselves to using this amount). Which is the hard time consuming bit (it's spread out over 12 years for Japanese children which leads to their high literacy, as you'd fall back too far if you don't keep up).
Chinese in comparison, there are around 60-70k characters needed to nail the reading properly, hence it's much easier to just give up early with such an overwhelming number to learn.
I can read and speak a bit of Mandarin.
I was taught to speak and read in Pinyin (basically write the word in English) only, I have never been taught to read and write characters.
However with exposure to the language I began to pick up the characters so I can recognise a fair few.
As far as grammar goes - Mandarin is hilariously easy when I compare it to other languages I know such as Spanish, French and German.
They don't even have names for months and days.
Day 1 is monday
Day 2 is Tuesday
Same for months.
You just put words together to make sentences.
Noon meal is lunch
Evening meal is dinner
Don't be surprised that illiteracy in Japan is the same as other countries as IME if you get exposed to it for a while you begin to read it.
I was taught to speak and read in Pinyin (basically write the word in English) only, I have never been taught to read and write characters.
However with exposure to the language I began to pick up the characters so I can recognise a fair few.
As far as grammar goes - Mandarin is hilariously easy when I compare it to other languages I know such as Spanish, French and German.
They don't even have names for months and days.
Day 1 is monday
Day 2 is Tuesday
Same for months.
You just put words together to make sentences.
Noon meal is lunch
Evening meal is dinner
Don't be surprised that illiteracy in Japan is the same as other countries as IME if you get exposed to it for a while you begin to read it.
Edited by jamoor on Friday 21st August 23:48
Xaero said:
Chinese is definitely harder.
Hiragana and Katakana can be learnt in a couple of weeks. Everywhere seems to recommend hiragana first, but Katakana is the foreign words imported, probably 80% of which are from English, so fairly easy to figure out and get you going when in Japan.
Then the kanji is limited to around 2.2k characters (newspapers limit themselves to using this amount). Which is the hard time consuming bit (it's spread out over 12 years for Japanese children which leads to their high literacy, as you'd fall back too far if you don't keep up).
Chinese in comparison, there are around 60-70k characters needed to nail the reading properly, hence it's much easier to just give up early with such an overwhelming number to learn.
I don't think you need to learn 60-70k characters for Chinese, a typical Chinese person would know about 8000.Hiragana and Katakana can be learnt in a couple of weeks. Everywhere seems to recommend hiragana first, but Katakana is the foreign words imported, probably 80% of which are from English, so fairly easy to figure out and get you going when in Japan.
Then the kanji is limited to around 2.2k characters (newspapers limit themselves to using this amount). Which is the hard time consuming bit (it's spread out over 12 years for Japanese children which leads to their high literacy, as you'd fall back too far if you don't keep up).
Chinese in comparison, there are around 60-70k characters needed to nail the reading properly, hence it's much easier to just give up early with such an overwhelming number to learn.
They are mostly the same as Japanese kanji, but spoken differently. If a Chinese person picked up a Japanese newspaper or vice versa, they would probably get the gist of the articles. The difference is nowadays mainland China uses simplified Chinese whereas Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan use traditional.
What makes Japanese easier is that the Hiragana and Katakana are phonetic. You could actually write Japanese with just those two and it would be fine. Quite often when writing, a rare word will have the Hiragana in brackets next to it, so the reader knows how to say it. If you look in a children's book, this would be done for many of the words, in an upmarket broadsheet, quite rarely. This means that you kind of learn as you go along.
Japanese literacy levels have more to do with their education system. China does still have problems in rural areas with this, probably as they spent over a decade making all their teachers plant rice and smash rocks in the countryside.
Rostfritt said:
Xaero said:
Chinese is definitely harder.
Hiragana and Katakana can be learnt in a couple of weeks. Everywhere seems to recommend hiragana first, but Katakana is the foreign words imported, probably 80% of which are from English, so fairly easy to figure out and get you going when in Japan.
Then the kanji is limited to around 2.2k characters (newspapers limit themselves to using this amount). Which is the hard time consuming bit (it's spread out over 12 years for Japanese children which leads to their high literacy, as you'd fall back too far if you don't keep up).
Chinese in comparison, there are around 60-70k characters needed to nail the reading properly, hence it's much easier to just give up early with such an overwhelming number to learn.
I don't think you need to learn 60-70k characters for Chinese, a typical Chinese person would know about 8000.Hiragana and Katakana can be learnt in a couple of weeks. Everywhere seems to recommend hiragana first, but Katakana is the foreign words imported, probably 80% of which are from English, so fairly easy to figure out and get you going when in Japan.
Then the kanji is limited to around 2.2k characters (newspapers limit themselves to using this amount). Which is the hard time consuming bit (it's spread out over 12 years for Japanese children which leads to their high literacy, as you'd fall back too far if you don't keep up).
Chinese in comparison, there are around 60-70k characters needed to nail the reading properly, hence it's much easier to just give up early with such an overwhelming number to learn.
They are mostly the same as Japanese kanji, but spoken differently. If a Chinese person picked up a Japanese newspaper or vice versa, they would probably get the gist of the articles. The difference is nowadays mainland China uses simplified Chinese whereas Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan use traditional.
What makes Japanese easier is that the Hiragana and Katakana are phonetic. You could actually write Japanese with just those two and it would be fine. Quite often when writing, a rare word will have the Hiragana in brackets next to it, so the reader knows how to say it. If you look in a children's book, this would be done for many of the words, in an upmarket broadsheet, quite rarely. This means that you kind of learn as you go along.
Japanese literacy levels have more to do with their education system. China does still have problems in rural areas with this, probably as they spent over a decade making all their teachers plant rice and smash rocks in the countryside.
On the other hand Japanese people are terrible at English, I have been to Japan several times and its rooted in the education system. Basically learning text book answers and not knowing how to react in the real world which is why private tuition is a lucrative business
Rostfritt said:
I don't think you need to learn 60-70k characters for Chinese, a typical Chinese person would know about 8000.
They are mostly the same as Japanese kanji, but spoken differently. If a Chinese person picked up a Japanese newspaper or vice versa, they would probably get the gist of the articles. The difference is nowadays mainland China uses simplified Chinese whereas Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan use traditional.
What makes Japanese easier is that the Hiragana and Katakana are phonetic. You could actually write Japanese with just those two and it would be fine. Quite often when writing, a rare word will have the Hiragana in brackets next to it, so the reader knows how to say it. If you look in a children's book, this would be done for many of the words, in an upmarket broadsheet, quite rarely. This means that you kind of learn as you go along.
Japanese literacy levels have more to do with their education system. China does still have problems in rural areas with this, probably as they spent over a decade making all their teachers plant rice and smash rocks in the countryside.
But if you want or need to read things as an adult (like newspapers or adult books), rather than kid’s books or shounen/shoujo manga then you need to learn the two thousand kanji. I believe there are many tens of thousands more kanji but not widely used.They are mostly the same as Japanese kanji, but spoken differently. If a Chinese person picked up a Japanese newspaper or vice versa, they would probably get the gist of the articles. The difference is nowadays mainland China uses simplified Chinese whereas Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan use traditional.
What makes Japanese easier is that the Hiragana and Katakana are phonetic. You could actually write Japanese with just those two and it would be fine. Quite often when writing, a rare word will have the Hiragana in brackets next to it, so the reader knows how to say it. If you look in a children's book, this would be done for many of the words, in an upmarket broadsheet, quite rarely. This means that you kind of learn as you go along.
Japanese literacy levels have more to do with their education system. China does still have problems in rural areas with this, probably as they spent over a decade making all their teachers plant rice and smash rocks in the countryside.
I am surprised by the 8000 Chinese characters needed to read fluently. Even in Japanese I think the most frequently used 500 characters account for something like 70% you would generally encounter reading Japanese. But even 500 is a lot to memorise unless you are reading or writing every day. I spent about a year doing an hour a day memorising kanji and learning vocabulary and learnt 1400 characters but having stopped learning every day I’ve found I’ve forgotten a (depressingly) large number. I suppose if I lived there and was using it every day it would be different.
I worked in a Japanese bank and we had lunchtime language classes. The bit I found hardest was numbers. Whereas we use 1000 as a unit they use 10,000. So 100,000 is ten units of 10,000. So before you can translate a number you first have to convert to units of 10,000. So a million is hyaku (100) man (10,000).
Esceptico said:
- two alphabets with 48 characters each - same sounds but used in different circumstances
- you need to know around 2000 to 2200 commonly used kanji (Chinese characters) and each character usually have at least two (sometimes a lot more) different ways of pronouncing them
- it can be written horizontally, left to right or vertically but then top to bottom and left to right
- there are no gaps between characters so not help identifying where one word ends and the next one begins
Bloody hell! No wonder they have to work 150 hours a week. - you need to know around 2000 to 2200 commonly used kanji (Chinese characters) and each character usually have at least two (sometimes a lot more) different ways of pronouncing them
- it can be written horizontally, left to right or vertically but then top to bottom and left to right
- there are no gaps between characters so not help identifying where one word ends and the next one begins
Gassing Station | The Lounge | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff