I always make a point of telling my undergrad students that the difficulty of learning a language is relative. I give them an example, typically using kanjigo (漢字語) – 信号無視 (shingou-mushi) versus 신호무시 (shino-mushi). Literally, it means “traffic signal ignore”. I then compare it to its English equivalent – ‘run a red light’. It’s a very different construction!
So, I thought I’d post a similar example for learners on the opposite side of the spectrum. Of course, this is all common sense, and I’m sure most learners already considered this in the beginning of their language journey, but it’s still a quick, fun look from a linguistic bird’s-eye view.
Consider the following two sentences:
German: Anne ist eine sehr attraktive Frau.
Japanese: アンさんはとてもきれいな女性です。
Clearly, it’s much easier for the native English speaker to wrap their head around the German version, assuming zero knowledge of either language. Actually, with cognates like ‘ist’ and ‘attraktive’ and the common name ‘Anne’, without having studied German at all a native English speaker would be able to guess the fundamental meaning of the sentence – “Anne is attractive.” Add to that the word Frau, which has made its way into the English dialect, and the only word that might trip up a native English speaker is ’sehr’. When you learn that ’sehr’ means ‘very’, it’s not a difficult sentence to memorize at all.
Now look at the Japanese sentence. First off, the characters are different. The name has a title appended to it (or else we might be committing a faux pas), and there are no cognates. There’s a copula at the end of the sentence, and no article. The Japanese version has a lot more to process.
I’m not trying to put anyone off from studying Japanese – Quite the opposite, actually. If you can get through Japanese, you can pretty much rest assured with the confidence that you can learn any language.
Special note: Did you know that the Japanese slang word チュッス [used as a greeting by, for example, fellow high school tennis club members] comes from the German word Tschüß [meaning "see ya"]? Tschüß itself is said to be derived from Adieu (‘Ad-jöh’ –> ‘atschöh’ –> ‘tschöh’ –> ‘tschüß’). Just a fun example of the flow of language across borders.
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