Oh yes, I completely agree with you! I was saying this exact thing to my sensei some time ago and she couldn't understand what I mean, despite knowing a few foreign languages herself, Japanese is her native language so she couldn't judge it from the perspective of someone learning it as a foreign language. But I also like how everything is well-structured and it's also not full of exceptions. My husband only started learning a few months ago but he also agrees!
this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2023
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@vivia Yeah! I love how there is no conjugation, and no plurals. I am also learning Russian, and Japanese and Russian are basically complete opposites! I think the only thing that is superior to Japanese in English, is how you count numbers. I love how Japanese is very specific with things like a dedicated word ka for notating a question. Russian is even less specific than English, Russian just relies on the voice! Japanese is definitely far superior in how you can specify stuff.
I love how there is no conjugation
What do people mean when they say this? If anything, I'd say Japanese had more conjugations than English, because you conjugate i-adjectives as well as verbs.
If you use the most formal grammar taught to beginners, then every single language can be broken down this way -- and this is nothing special to Japanese. Unfortunately this sort of nice structure tends to melt away as you transition to more "natural" ways of talking / writing, even in formal contexts. Even things like the -ka suffix (as mentioned in another comment) is really often just not a thing in normal speaking.
And no, Japanese isn't free from conjugations. It simply conjugates in a different way compared to what European languages tend to do. And the use of suffixes and forming "verb chains" is also core to how the language's grammar works.
I guess I have not learned enough Japanese yet to see it...
To be honest that’s also not exactly how I picture Japanese anymore, but I do remember feeling like this at some point during my learning process.
I think it’s partially because of the way in which Japanese is taught at large. You learn that Japanese follows a very rigid [word+particle] structure and these are your building blocks. Which while not completely untrue, obviously doesn’t exactly represent the way the language operates in the wild either.
Nowadays I’m far more likely to see the patchy and very chaotic nature behind Japanese. How okurigana uses are inconsistent a lot of the time, or how you can see the places where Classical Chinese was retrofit to very awkward grammar for it, or how historical changes in pronunciation has led to weird spellings or even entire conjugations.
But I guess that comes with getting more intimate with the language and knowing how to shape it to your own needs. I can see how a first approximation to Japanese language makes it appear blocky and structured. That’s kind of why you start with many of those forms in the first place.
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