You’re just repeating a lot of what you already said, so I’m not actually going to respond to all of it. What I’m trying to explain is that Japan is considered a level 4 language assuming you need to also learn 3 writing systems. If you remove the writing systems, it’s much easier, because it is.
Additionally, I’ve said multiple times that I’m discussing conversational japanese, not complete mastery.
Really, I’m just going to share links that discuss the difficulty without writing.
I have absolutely no idea where you’re getting the idea that japanese is so deep and complex that it’s a top difficulty language to speak. It’s exclusively the writing style that makes it so hard. Having lived there myself (and in Germany, attempting to speak German) i feel pretty confident in this.
One of many quotes you can find from sources that actually discuss the language and why it’s ranked a certain way:
“Even experts agree that spoken Japanese is not particularly difficult to learn. The sounds of the language are limited (only five vowels and thirteen consonants) and grammatically it is quite regular, without case declensions or other complex issues that are found in languages like Russian, or even German.”
I looked through those articles, and they’re all about how Japanese isn’t that hard, and it goes over the mechanics of it. But it’s not the mechanics that make it hard (esp. if you drop reading/writing), it’s the sheer foreignness of it.
Pretty much everything about it is different:
no articles, and it has particles
order of everything is different (post-position everywhere)
even simple things like plurals are way different
honorifics are embedded in culture, not just grammar
And so on. The foreignness and context is what makes it hard. That’s why I’d put it above German in difficulty, even though German is probably more difficult in an absolute sense due to the complexity of its rules.
You’re just repeating a lot of what you already said, so I’m not actually going to respond to all of it. What I’m trying to explain is that Japan is considered a level 4 language assuming you need to also learn 3 writing systems. If you remove the writing systems, it’s much easier, because it is.
Additionally, I’ve said multiple times that I’m discussing conversational japanese, not complete mastery.
Really, I’m just going to share links that discuss the difficulty without writing.
I have absolutely no idea where you’re getting the idea that japanese is so deep and complex that it’s a top difficulty language to speak. It’s exclusively the writing style that makes it so hard. Having lived there myself (and in Germany, attempting to speak German) i feel pretty confident in this.
One of many quotes you can find from sources that actually discuss the language and why it’s ranked a certain way:
“Even experts agree that spoken Japanese is not particularly difficult to learn. The sounds of the language are limited (only five vowels and thirteen consonants) and grammatically it is quite regular, without case declensions or other complex issues that are found in languages like Russian, or even German.”
https://ai.glossika.com/blog/is-japanese-really-that-hard
https://workinjapan.today/study/how-difficult-is-learning-japanese/
https://90dayjapanese.com/is-japanese-hard-to-learn/
I looked through those articles, and they’re all about how Japanese isn’t that hard, and it goes over the mechanics of it. But it’s not the mechanics that make it hard (esp. if you drop reading/writing), it’s the sheer foreignness of it.
Pretty much everything about it is different:
And so on. The foreignness and context is what makes it hard. That’s why I’d put it above German in difficulty, even though German is probably more difficult in an absolute sense due to the complexity of its rules.