the most commonly used. This means you will get maximum output of communicative ability relative to the input of time and effort. Unless you are a professional who requires a full command of the written language, few Japanese will think badly of you if you have only a very limited ability to write kanji. They too know the challenges involved! On the contrary, they will respect the fact that you have made an effort to communicate in something approaching proper written Japanese. Of course, when it comes to reading, you will still not be able to read newspapers, or indeed anything but Grade One elementary school texts! However, to get to that newspaper stage is a bit of a quantum leap, and everyone understands that.
If you want to go further, a good way is to concentrate on learning kanji passively rather than actively, that is, simply to recognize them rather than write them. Many students try to learn actively each kanji they encounter, which is a great strain on the memory cells, and they all too often end up after several years being able to recognize something like 1,000 and being able to write about 700 of those. It would be far better, after the same period of time spent studying, for you to be able to recognize all 2,000, even if you could only write a few hundred. The key thing is to understand what is put before you, and Japanese written material typically involves a liberal use of kanji, so you need to be able to know their meanings or at least be able to look them up quickly in a dictionary. You can use a smaller number of kanji, writing words in kana when you don't know the kanji for them.
And, when it comes to using a kanji dictionary, it will be much quicker if you can just make sure you remember at least one reading for each, since with modern dictionaries this will usually enable you to look up that kanji more quickly than trying to work out stroke count or radical component—a radical being the key element in a kanji, the traditional way of listing and searching for them. (Of course, this doesn't work for characters you encounter for the first time, unless you recognize a phonetic component.)
One plus about the kanji script is that, once you understand the core meanings, you can actually make fairly accurate guesses when you encounter new kanji compound words. This is not always the case with newly encountered words in English, unless you are familiar with Latin and Greek. Some advanced students even feel that speed-reading can be easier in Japanese than in English. For example, the meaning of the English word "glacier" is not immediately apparent to those encountering it for the first time, whereas the Japanese term hyoga involves the two kanji for "ice" and "river"—much easier to understand, provided you know the core kanji meanings.
2.2.3 The strangely worded challenge
The second major challenge is the lack of familiarity with much of the vocabulary, meaning that it is in that sense "strange" to the typical English speaker. If the English student of French or Spanish hears or sees the word liberté or libertad for the first time they would almost certainly understand this straightaway as "liberty," or similarly the German frei as "free." By contrast, the Japanese for both "liberty" and "free" is jiyū. That is, there is no clue for the English speaker.
Jiyū is actually a Chinese-derived word, one of many that have become an integral part of Japanese since the introduction of Chinese script many centuries ago. But pure Japanese words are no more helpful. For example, English cat-lovers would soon overcome language barriers in identifying a French chat, Spanish gato, or German Katze. They might need more time, however, to become familiar with a Japanese neko.
FIGURE 2c: Answer me a riddle
| "I'm not a Spanish gato | "What am I? |
| Or an English cat. | I'm a Japanese NEKO, |
| I'm not a German Katze, | And I'm very proud of that! |
| And not a French chat." | —And I'm famous too!"* |
* I am a Cat (Wagahai wa neko de aru) is one of Japan's best-known novels, written in 1905 by Natsume Soseki. (Wagahai is an old word for "I"; wa is a subject-marker; de aru means "am.")
It is true that you don't have much control over the vocabulary the other party uses, though many Japanese people, recognizing the obvious fact that you are foreign, will often make a special effort to use loan words that they assume you will probably be familiar with. And certainly when it comes to speaking Japanese yourself, because Japanese has in recent times absorbed so many foreign words, especially English, you can use this very much to your advantage by using "Japanized English" should you forget or not know the "real" Japanese. For example, the "real" Japanese word for "book" is hon, but nowadays bukku can also be used. Likewise miruku for "milk" (as opposed to gyūnyū), kā for "car" (as opposed to kuruma or jidōsha), konpyūta for "computer," and so on. English words for material and/or technical objects are particularly common, though they are sometimes abbreviated. Thus "differential gear" is difu-giya. You do need to appreciate, however, that equivalents might not be exactly the same with some terms, with for example miruku and gyūnyū having slightly different usages (this will be discussed in Part Two), but at least your basic meaning will be understood.
And as mentioned in the section on "easy bits," as a worst-case scenario, just try using simple English. There's no need to shout, which is the typical English speaker's method of communicating with foreigners, but saying a word slowly and clearly will be helpful. Japanese people all learn English at school and often have a good passive knowledge of English words, though they may never have heard them actually articulated (at least by a native speaker).
2.2.4 The unspoken challenge
Another significant challenge lies in the grammar, which, like its vocabulary, is generally not familiar to native English speakers. As mentioned earlier this is seen in the word order, in the use of particles to indicate case (grammatical role), and in overlaps between adjectives and verbs (with adjectives being marked for tense as if they were verbs proper).
The grammar is generally less explicit and thus more vague and more potentially confusing than most Western languages. That is, more is left unsaid. For example, there is often no distinction made between singular and plural. Thus neko can mean "cat" or "cats." Verbs within a given tense do not conjugate according to person, as, for example, in English "I see, he sees," or even more so the French endings -e, -es, -e, -ons, -ez, -ent. Combined with the frequent omission of pronouns which indicate the subject of the verb, this can be particularly vague. And speaking of tenses, there is no dedicated future tense in Japanese, as the tense used is the same as the habitual present. Thus, eiga ("movie") o ("object particle") mimasu ("watch/see") can mean "I watch movies (as a regular thing)" or "I will watch a movie" or "somebody other than myself regularly watches movies or will watch a movie or multiple movies"!
Basically, though the language can certainly be specific and precise when necessary, in general Japanese is often implicit whereas Westerners are used to explicit language. That is, it is not what is spoken but often what is left unspoken that can be a challenge. Therefore the context becomes particularly important for inferring precise meaning, and this in itself can be challenging (as discussed in 1.1.4, on socio-cultural context).
But this "vague" grammar can actually be a plus depending on how you look at it. Unlike French and many other languages, when using Japanese you do not have to worry about the gender of nouns, the conjugation of verbs according to subject, or the formation of plurals. And, let's face it, sometimes it pays to be vague! How many times have you stuck your neck out to be specific about something only to regret it!
2.2.5 The challenge with a difference
There are numerous other particular points that will strike the English speaker as challenging simply because they are different and unfamiliar. For example, Japanese uses a wide range of different number-suffixes when
