Re: Enter the Linguistic Pagan! 参上!言語学の異教徒!
Yeah, I have an Indonesian friend and she says there are a lot of things you can't directly express in Indonesian because the language is so limited. She did also say there's a fair bit of regional variation that can be tricky for a learner.
Japanese is like learning the guitar; easy to learn, difficult to master! You can express yourself pretty well with the very basics, but there is so much superfluous grammar. I'm currently studying N1 (highest level of Japanese proficiency exam) and it's all literary, or formal grammar. There is not a single meaning in this book that I can't easily express with several different structures from N2 or N3 grammar (I can think of five ways just of expressing 'if' off the top of my head and know there are many others). However, because Japanese takes formality so seriously, just because I can technically say anything I want to in Japanese, I can't get away with not learning these things if I want to master the language. They're frequently used expressions that I'll come by often if I want to translate. It's a slog!
Originally posted by Heka
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Japanese is like learning the guitar; easy to learn, difficult to master! You can express yourself pretty well with the very basics, but there is so much superfluous grammar. I'm currently studying N1 (highest level of Japanese proficiency exam) and it's all literary, or formal grammar. There is not a single meaning in this book that I can't easily express with several different structures from N2 or N3 grammar (I can think of five ways just of expressing 'if' off the top of my head and know there are many others). However, because Japanese takes formality so seriously, just because I can technically say anything I want to in Japanese, I can't get away with not learning these things if I want to master the language. They're frequently used expressions that I'll come by often if I want to translate. It's a slog!
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