So you think Japanese is hard?
Many of you have already seen this amusing description of the difficulty of Japanese. Well, here is my counter-argument of why Japanese is so much easier than English
Why Japanese is approximately 1.342×10^6 times easier than English
So you’re all bruised up from having engaged in a 2 hour royal rumble match with your Japanese teacher in which you failed to convince her to curve your grade even after 2 DDT’s and a Moonsault off the top rope. Well, what you need realize is that you’re a big sissy (yes, you) for not realizing just how easy Japanese is to learn. But after reading this, you’ll understand why your massive beer drinking is the root cause of your bad grade and not some intrinsic difficulty of the language.
1. Pronunciation is easy because Japanese people have a tongue disability
Japanese people can only make about 102 sounds. No, really. As a result, it’s incredibly difficult for Japanese people to correctly pronounce other languages. This is why simple English words like, “TV” sounds like “terraybi” in Japanese.
On the other hand, much to your benefit, pronouncing Japanese is a cinch. Unfortunately, your brain has been so thoroughly messed up by English that for some reason “karaoke” looks like “kery-okay”. I mean look at the word “thoroughly”, just look at it. Does the spelling make any sense? So the next time you ask in Japanese, “Where is the elevator?” and the Japanese person smiles and says, “yua japaniizu bery guddo” and just walks away, you’ll know that it’s really your fault he thought you were speaking in Swahili.
2. Grammar is easy because Japanese people are mind readers
In Japanese, there’s something called 以心伝心, which basically means that Japanese people can read each other’s minds, thereby creating a hive consciousness that is currently plotting to take over the world with giant robots. That’s why Japanese doesn’t have a singular/plural distinction and only past/non-past tenses. There really isn’t any sentence structure to speak of for that matter, either. You might think that leaving the subject and object out of a sentence would make it too ambiguous to say anything. Ahh, but you’re forgetting that Japanese people can read your mind. As a result, you don’t have to worry about subjects, objects, participles, sentence order, subject-verb agreement, articles, prepositions, pronouns, and pretty much the rest of English grammar.
For instance, if you wanted to say, “Hi, I’m looking for a cheap place to stay,” all you have to do is say, “Me…”, trail off into silence, nod, and point knowingly to your head. The Japanese person will nod knowingly back and then go back to whatever he was doing. In all likelihood, that’s probably his way of saying, “Back off you foreign infidel, you shall not have my daughters!” But you should have expected that since you were probably thinking nasty thoughts about his daughters.
3. Spelling is easy because it’s impossible
In Japanese, you don’t have to worry about spelling because each sound has a corresponding letter. Most words consists of 2 or 3 Chinese characters anyway. You might complain that it’s so hard to figure which Chinese character to use but since no one actually knows how to write Japanese without a computer, you don’t have to worry about it. Not to mention the fact that Japanese classes and textbooks don’t use Chinese characters because of the fear that it’ll make your head explode (which I imagine would create a huge headache for the janitors).
4. Japanese people are friendly to foreigners and are willing to help
In the unlikely event that you find yourself in a bind, you can easily ask any Japanese person for assistance and she’ll gladly oblige. The only catch is that you’ll have to be fluent in Japanese since Japanese people can’t speak any other language. (See the first reason) Also, when I said foreigners, what I really meant was white (and possibly black) English-speaking foreigners. That’s because Japanese people will only give you the time of day if they think it’ll land them some free English conversation practice.*
For some reason, most Japanese people are brainwashed from childhood to have an irrepressible desire to learn how to speak English. This is quite sad because it’s practically impossible considering how much more difficult English is compared to Japanese. But that doesn’t stop them for trying for 10 or 20 years. What results is a very interesting language that, unfortunately, no one understands. So remember, as long as you are either 1) fluent in Japanese, or 2) own a 200 processor Beowulf cluster that can parse Japanese English into real English, you should have no problems finding help.
Conclusion
I hope I have convinced you with my clear and concise arguments that Japanese really is just about the easiest language there is to learn. While this amusing essay makes quite a few jokes about the difficulty of Japanese, I just wanted to clear the air with a somber discussion of what Japanese is really like.
Author’s Note
I would like to clarify that I am, in no way, trying to prove that learning Japanese will make your teeth crooked and turn ugly colors. If that’s what you were thinking, you totally missed the point of this treatise.
*Then there’s the type of Japanese people who are so terrified of speaking English that they run away from you as if you were the living dead. I left that part out because it would disprove my argument, which I was told to never do in High School English class.