If someone asks me whether or not English language is difficult for me, I’d say no. It is not difficult. I make numerous mistakes in English writings. My pronunciation is still far from perfect. I will not deny these cold facts. Yet English is not very difficult.
Why? Because Japanese is almost as difficult to me as English. I have lived with my mother tongue for more than thirty years. I still forget many Kanji characters. My accent is not correct because of mixed dialects of some places. It doesn’t seem that I could fix it some day. I would say that I’m more fluent in Japanese than in English. That just means that I have more chances to polish my Japanese through practical use in my daily life than those of English not that Japanese is less difficult language to me than English.
When I was at OIT, I had a constant demand for proof readers. All papers to be submitted required a proof reader. All of the forms I filled in were double-checked by the persons behind the counters, as I always asked so. Three out of ten would asked me, when I asked their favors to check my writings, “Is English hard for you?” I would answer most of the times, “As you can imagine.” Though I did not say yes, they took my answer yes. Then one out of the three inquisitive proof-readers would say, “Oh, but your English is okay. You know that? English is the hardest language of all.”
I could not imagine why it was. (Actually I can’t imagine it even now.) So I asked them why. It is both strange and interesting that they all said that English, some called it “American” referring to the language they speak, had deviated from original British English so much that their language had many exceptions to the original grammatical rules. Some explained other reason such as existence of many grammatical exceptions, which was because British English had been formed through the mixture of several languages in the history. Whatever the reason they pointed out, all they wanted to stress was many exceptions to the rule.
So I further burrow their argument. “What kind of grammatical exceptions are there in your language?” Basically they pointed out three kinds. One was irregular conjugation of verbs. “You know. The past form of ‘make’ is ‘made.’ And ‘took’ for ‘take.” Most of them didn’t even mention past particles, with which the Japanese students remember the sets of present form, past form, and past particle of irregular verbs. I myself remembered like “Stand-Stood-Stood,” or “Show-Showed-Shown.”
The second kind was plural form. What’s interesting was that more than 90% of them took “children” as an example of irregular plural form of nouns. In this case, irregular ones are limited. I don’t recall myself paid any effort memorizing these in my school days.
The last kind was comparative degree of adjectives. They again pointed out that most of the adjectives are followed by “than,” whereas some of them like “superior” are followed by “to.” The number of the exceptions in this case seems even smaller than in the case of plural form of nouns.
What I became curious about was not the degree of difficulty of these grammatical exceptions but the examples they showed. They must have been forced to recite the exceptions over and over. Probably they were successful in memorizing. The nuisance of these exceptions must have been carved in their brains so that they would never forget the exceptions. At the same time, they must have psychologically rewarded themselves for putting up with it. The reward must have been self-praise that went like “I conquered this entangled language. This complex language must be the hardest one in the world. But I did it!”
Well, I’ve never interrogated them to prove this psychological self-praising process. I could vividly imagine how much they became content with completely memorizing the grammatical exceptions. When they explained it, they eyes were set somewhere far in the air, and they were cheerfully smiling. The explanation often ended like reminiscence. It must have been their initial great achievement in their lives. And quite possibly, this achievement made them conclude that English is the hardest language of all.
Is English really a very difficult language? It is not exactly difficult to me, as I mentioned. I have seen several non-Japanese people studying the Japanese language. I have an experience of attending a brief training course for instructors of the Japanese language. Those who I know were studying the Japanese language often told me that they felt as if there were no grammatical rules for it.
There are indeed irregularly conjugating English verbs. But the Japanese ones have numerous patterns. Probably the most famous one is “Te-form.” It is one form of conjugation. Te-form does have rules of creating it out of the original form of the verbs. Each pattern of the rules, however, is specifically set for almost every sound at the end of the verbs. In other words, one ending sound of verbs has peculiar conjugation pattern of forming Te-form. Frankly speaking, the rules are too many to let any exceptions existent. No exceptions but only variation.
Characters used in the Japanese language are a little more notorious for its complexity than the grammar. China-oriented symbols, called “Kanji” in Japan, are used as the characters. People need to know about 3000 of them to read newspapers. The situation is the same in the Mandarin or Cantonese. Beside the Kanji characters, the Japanese language has two sets of phonetic letters; each set has about 50 letters. Learning 26 letters is naturally easier than learning 3100.
The pronunciation of the Japanese language is the only saving grace. It involves smaller number of vowels and consonants than that of English. The structures of the sounds in the words are simpler in the Japanese than in English also. For example, almost all the consonants are basically followed by vowels. So the Japanese do not have to pronounce a word like “strike,” in which the consonant “s” is entailed by two consonants of “t” and “r.” Assuming that vowels are easier to pronounce than consonants, the Japanese language is an easy language to pronounce. In this sense, Russian must be much harder, for I heard that there are some Russian words with no vowels.
It is probably impossible to determine whether or not a language is the most difficult to learn. Even in comparison between Japanese and English, English appears to have simple structure in some respects. And of course, whether a language is difficult to learn for the students greatly depends on the similarity between the language and the students’ mother tongues.
In German and Russian, there are three genders to which all the nouns are categorized. They are male, female, and neutral. And the nouns make plural forms. And the nouns are also escorted by particles like “a,” “an,” or “the” in English. The systems of gender, plurality, and the particles are not easy to understand for the Japanese people. Because we, the Japanese, do not have those in the own language. But when the Japanese learn Chinese language, understanding Kanji is the great advantage that the Japanese have over Americans.
I do understand that these facts will not be familiar to one until he learns a foreign language. Those who, however, proudly announced that English had been the hardest language of all surely looked naïve and even cute to me.