Japanese is very frustrating – but not for the reasons you’d think.
You might think it’s because there are so many kanji with so many different readings. This isn’t the reason it’s frustrating. Learning those is a time-consuming slog, but it’s straightforward. Tools like wanikani can help with that.
You might think it’s because the grammar is so backwards from English. That isn’t really the reason it’s frustrating. It’s fairly easy to adapt to, once you get into the right mindset.
You might think it’s because there are so many different words. That isn’t the reason it’s frustrating. Again, learning those is a time-consuming slog, but it’s straightforward. Tools like wanikani, kamesame, or even jisho can help with that.
You might even think it’s because it has an entirely different syllabary, but those really aren’t that hard. Once you become familiar with it, it becomes like second nature.
No, the reason is simple: You don’t know what you don’t know, and no one tells you.
I recently had some extra money, and they had a really deep sale, so I bought a two-year premium subscription to Japanese Pod 101. In some ways it’s not a great resource, but it’s the very things that make it not great that, well, make it kinda great.
It’s scattershot. By which I mean they have a prodigious amount of information and it’s somewhat poorly organized. You can learn pretty much anything you want in little bite-sized pieces, and those pieces are organized in a somewhat random way, and it’s hard to find out what you need to know, especially if you don’t know you need to know it. But, on the other hand, if you at least know what it is you’re weak at, and seek that content, you can actually learn some really useful stuff.
For example, my sensei tells me my weak point is particles. So I look up content on particles. And I learn things I had no idea bout.
For example, many of the common particles, such as wa, ga, no, etc., have multiple uses.
Now, we’re taught those multiple uses. But they’re all shoehorned into the one function of the particle we know about. For example, “wa” has several uses. One is as a topic marker. Another is as a comparison (kinda) marker. Or maybe for a better example, “no” is taught as a possessive marker, and that’s one purpose for it, but it has quite a few more.
The missing part is that these particles don’t just have one role. But no one really tells you that. They only tell you about the primary role, and then try to shoehorn the rest of the uses into the context of that role, and the grammar just doesn’t make any sense that way. Like “no” is possessive, so the aspect of the particle that is used to add information or indicate placement or movement is seen as possessive. “watashi no namae” (my name) is not the same function as “teburu no ue ni” (on the table). And don’t even get me started on “ga” and “wo”, not to mention “ni” and “de”.
I found that info on Japanese Pod 101 – by trial and error.
But at least I found it.
This is the frustrating thing about Japanese. You’re never taught things in the proper context. If someone had just told me straight up years ago that these particles have different purposes that are at best only tangentially related to each other, my learning life would have been so much easier. But I had to find it myself.
Maybe I just don’t learn things like other people. That’s entirely possible. But I’m still not understanding why they don’t at least tell you what you don’t know, because that would really help down the road with getting you in the proper mindset of being able to learn it, when it’s time.
Japanese isn’t just about kanji and words. It’s so much more than that. And trying to shoehorn it into direct English translations just doesn’t work. Even from the beginning, it doesn’t work.