Japanese isn't easy (you're being LIED to) but it's 100% attainable

[@yorozuyaDavid]

If I made a mistake, by all means let me know in the comments. Nobody is perfect and I'm definitely not beyond reproach. I also think it's super important for people to speak up and help to correct things, especially when it comes to language learning. That being said, don't harass anyone in the comments section. (Already had to delete a comment because they were calling someone else stupid for not learning something fast enough) Don't forget to subscribe! I've started on another video already. I 100% believe that you can learn Japanese. I just wish that people would stop saying that it's "easy" or "simple." It can be harmful to new learners or people who perhaps are taking longer than others to learn it.

[@denylsonrubenalvarezcalder2874]

Oh my God, Is this your first video? This explain why you have just 10 suscribers. If you continue giving good advices for japanese learners I will be one of your suscriber. By the way, I'm sorry if my english is not good, I'm learning english at the same time.

[@Entropic_Alloy]

Just because something is "simple" doesn't mean it doesn't take work. Input methods and SRS are SIMPLE, but it still takes time and work.

[@xoLoveTruelySucksxo]

Thank you for posting this video, I was feeling slow because of the exact reason you pointed out; and I felt really bad but I learned to take language learning at my own pace.

[@Kurushimi1729]

I think you made a mistake when talking about irregular verbs. です is not a verb. It's not an action.

[@yorozuyaDavid]

@@Kurushimi1729 Look up what a "copula" is. です is a copula. "a type of verb, of which the most common is "be," that joins the subject of the verb with a complement" (As per cambridge dictionary).

[@japanese2811]

Lol the Japanese learning community is truly something else... We spend more time critiquing study methods than actually studying... 😂 everyone reading this comment knows it is true - go check your KZbin history

[@adnaneizzar4976]

@@japanese2811 fr man all they do is argue like how about you actually get started

[@RantingIdiot]

I been use Busuu, Anki, watch Dragon Ball and call it a day. I've actually improved much more than I thought.

[@srgiggity]

That's how nerds are with any topic. Musicians argue for hours about theory, when the best composers often don't even think about it. Artists in general, about what constitutes "real art", even though when real inspiration strikes you, that's the last thing on the mind. Religions about symbols and interpretations, when it's about belief, intentions, and connections in general. Chefs about "the right way" to cook something, even though if it tastes good, it tastes good. I mean hell, that's basically the entirety of reddit lmao

[@adnaneizzar4976]

@@srgiggity bro the guy in the video is such a stereotypical reddit mod or am I tweaking

[@yorozuyaDavid]

@@adnaneizzar4976 I barely even use reddit and it's mainly just for memes 😢

[@gusslx]

I don't think Trenton's vid title is clickbait. Making progress towards Japanese fluency is hard, but understanding the overall steps to get there isn't, and that what refers as "easy, actually". People often think that the language being hard to master inherently means that its learning process is convoluted, and his video tries to demystify that.

[@nawab256]

Exactly, Trenton is absolutely right and his video is the reason I’m back on the learning Japanese train. I’ve been studying on and off for years but his example of immersion training makes a ton of sense, and if you’re not too hung up about kanji, you can make great strides in your learning. Understanding the steps makes learning so much easier

[@lloykrafnalmusic]

Exactly this. Thank you!

[@spaghettiking653]

His video still is absolutely clickbait, because the whole point is to say something outrageous ("Japanese isn't actually that hard") at first, and then attenuate that claim to total tepidity in the video itself to where it's no longer controversial at all. The videos are always moderate af, but the titles are just crazy clickbait. His other videos insinuate you don't need to study at all to learn JP, you can double your vocab just by using Anki, you can't speak JP as you are (and you have some sort of flaw right now that's stopping you), etc. Which is why people have fault with his vids and why he had to make a react video to someone criticizing him, because he seriously does clickbait a little too hard.

[@-karma-2426]

I'd say it's still click bait a little bit, because it's not like he's specifying all this stuff in the title or thumbnail, but imo you're absolutely right about what he meant by the title

[@TheRedFoxMcCloud]

wtf are you talking about trenton said the bitch is easy

[@genki10key]

I dont even care about this sort of a video anymore. I dont care what is right or wrong. I'm doing what works for me and exploring new avenues and that's what i think matters the most. If it takes me 8 years it takes me 8 years. If it takes me 1 more year it takes me 1 more year. Crazy!

[@Smallchungus77]

Some other small KZbinr just made a video about basically the same thing before this one, and was way less annoying about it too

[@xetrint]

That kind of attitude has given me a lot of comfort during my learning journey. Learning at my own pace and enjoying it all the while does far more good than comparing myself to other people and feeling miserable because of it. Also I had to reply just because I got whiplash from seeing your pfp lol

[@genki10key]

@@xetrint am i buggin or are we both sakamoto

[@genki10key]

@@xetrint WE ARE! SAKAMOTO BROTHERS 4LIFE!!!!

[@xY1N]

Isn't your pfp Sakamoto from Nichijou manga?

[@ZilingShen]

I am a native Chinese speaker and cannot find great learning materials, especially on English speaking platforms. They tell you Kanji's are hard, but I just gained Kanji (writing) ability naturally when I was spawned.

[@aHeroWith1000Names]

Hey that's just cheating lol

[@justinlacek1481]

My immediate reaction to those videos is, "Anyone who's actually studying Japanese knows that it's not easy". I feel like the only people who believe that are people who haven't started studying yet or are still beginners.

[@Sourrags7]

Yeah it makes me feel like I must not be getting it

[@amadeocaterino...]

Or people who have already mastered it. They think that it wasn't so difficult after all, but it was.

[@shhs1227]

or how about this. they simply have a better mindset than you. easy peasy. thinking everything is so haaaard is pathetic.

[@jaYD13473]

Honestly, I think it’s sometimes a case of everything seems easier than it was when you look back at it.

[@Ezaffin]

The demoralizing is real. Before I knew I had adhd I thought I was just stupid. When I would see videos claiming Japanese easy and then felt it wasn't I would get discouraged and constantly give up, even though I really wanted to learn.

[@yorozuyaDavid]

Yeah I wonder how many undiagnosed people there are that currently feel that way...

[@babi9500]

Trenton's video actually, for me, was about how easily accessible the learning materials are. My advice is just get started(you just have to choose which resource you want to use first), watch matt vs Japan, Khatzumoto's vids every once in a while.

[@jamesrgamesoffical]

Matt vs Japan's older videos, newer ones is just cash grabs

[@yorozuyaDavid]

I personally have issues with MattVsJapan... especially considering the whole scam phase. (You can google "MattvsJapan scam) :(

[@Markus.D.K]

Yeah, the scam issue is really a shame :(

[@babi9500]

@@yorozuyaDavid yeah but like james said his old vids are great. not only his tutorials but especially how he is not afraid on reflecting on a habit that was harmful. so i think people can really learn from him.

[@JustYutaJP]

Honestly this needed to be said, but I am so sick of the algorithm sending me these videos.

[@yorozuyaDavid]

I just hope that more people can see this video so they can know the truth.

[@JacesApprentice]

Chiming in to say same, I've watched two of their videos and while some of their points are okay, the message it sends feels really dangerous especially as someone really early in their Japanese learning (6 months).

[@rimenahi]

​​@@yorozuyaDavidJapanese learning content and advice on the internet are so saturated right now that people can't get the truth and keep on watching other videos or experience them by themselves

[@jamesrgamesoffical]

@@yorozuyaDavid tbh kinda seems like you rage baiting by showing Trentons video (probably people that saw that video see this and get mad)

[@yorozuyaDavid]

@@jamesrgamesoffical That's just the unfortunate truth of how KZbin works anymore. I've seen amazing and well put-together videos on KZbin that just never took off because they don't make people interact with the video in crazy ways so it never gets picked up the algorithm and thus the video only ends up having like 37 views. :( Years ago, it used to be based mainly on pure overall watch time, but now it's shifted over to interactions (comments and likes/dislikes. KZbin actually treats likes and dislikes the same in regards to interaction).

[@jonathanadamsson6201]

Great points in this video. Sometimes I think "difficulty" is a word that people don't actually understand or they have different ideas of what it means. If we replace that word with "amount of effort" or similar it can become more clear. It doesn't mean every step is super complicated or anything. Nothing is if it's broken down into granular pieces. It just means it will take time and great persistence to get there and to have things click.

[@yorozuyaDavid]

Yeah, I personally think that if something takes a lot of time, effort, and persistence, it suggests to me that it has a degree of difficulty. Like you said, if you breakdown pretty much anything into the smallest bits, you can showcase each part as being easy, but that doesn't mean the whole thing is easy when it's combined, imo.

[@sophieeee_____a]

Learning kanji and grammar isn't too hard, and the vocabulary is pretty easy. But the problem is you have to learn all 3 at once (plus a lot extra stuff). THAT is the hard part

[@mapl3mage]

"vocabulary is easy" - famous last words.

[@babi9500]

@@mapl3mage i can't with the vocabs man. it's like my memory is getting worse everyday

[@teacheremilio]

awesome video David, I tell this to my students all the time when they feel frustrated their English isn't improving fast. The law of diminishing returns is key, and consistency is also really important. Regardless of the language that you study it is important to remember that it is all about how relatable it can be for you based on your mother tongue. For example, it took me over 5 times the amount of time I put into self-learning Portuguese to self-learn Japanese. My mother tongue is Spanish, so it will be much easier to learn languages like Portuguese, Italian and French, vs any language spoken in Asia. It is a marathon and we are always learning new things. Also, setting clear goals at different stages is key.

[@nargaman261]

I always cringe a little with these types of discussions as a non-native english speaker. Because most of the time it feels like it is held by english natives that are arguing how hard japanese is without any point of reference to any other language, because most of them have not learned any other second language apart from like a spanish class they skipped in school. I am german, I can speak a near-native level of english, I am also fluent in norwegian, and have to know a lot of spanish because of family reasons. These are the types of experiences I can compare japanese to, and I wonder, how tf does any english speaker that has never learned anything besides english try to evaluate anything about language difficulty? From my personal position I think japanese is in fact very hard to learn not only because it is so fundamentally different then indo-european languages, but also straight up closely tied to the fact that learning vocabulary comes hand in hand with learning kanji. However there is something to be said about the simplicity of the grammar and the lack of irregulars compared to the hellscape european languages usually provide

[@yo2trader539]

That's so true. Your comment reminded me about an Uzbek student I met in college. She grew up speaking Uzbek (Turkic) and Tajik (Farsi) at home, received education primarily in Russian, learned English in Russian school, and studied Japanese language in university in Uzbekistan. In other words, Japanese is her 5th language, yet she was a near-native speaker. I can guess the reason behind her fluency is: (1) Turkic grammar is similar to Mongolian, Korean, and Japanese; (2) Slavic/Russian speakers have an easier time with Japanese pronunciation due to phonetic overlap; (3) Universities in former Soviet Union countries have excellent language training; (4) being exposed to various languages make her know how to study a foreign language; and (5) naturally gifted with languages. FYI, there is a Swedish lady who used to be on Japanese TV. She's a near-native speaker too. (johannainjapan).

[@daniel.castillo]

Yes. I think the same as you. For the rest of the world is normal to learn more than one language. I would add to your comment that, on the other hand, I feel kind of jealous for americans who already achieved to learn japanese because they didn't have to worry about learning another language their hole life, so it was kind of "easy"

[@WGGplant]

not reading all'at

[@RosalioRedPanda]

@@WGGplant pfp checks out

[@WGGplant]

@@RosalioRedPanda i try to stay consistent

[@KanjiEater]

I was wondering what anyone experienced would have issues with in Trenton's video - actually largely agree with him on everything thus far (though I haven't gone into detail to nitpick). I would agree with you 1 year to get conversationally fluent is fast & the exception not the rule, I think it's encouraging to see more cases of people figuring out how to close the gaps faster to get to that point quickly & have done a handful of interviews with various people around this. Also, Trenton told me your a cool dude, so I wont be calling any of my yakuza colleagues on you, but I am curious what points you disagree with? I'll also say, I don't think you need to extend your study time to learn more kanji. Rather if you spend time reading & using the kanji, eventually you build up a critical mass of them to use naturally. People find the "don't study kanji" think controversial (and clickbait, as reading becomes the study) but it mirrors how we learn anything, by emphasizing practical experience over passive knowledge. Having not learned any other languages well previously, learning Japanese is unintuitive to most people. That's probably the more accurate stance. Not as great as clickbait, but that's probably where the narrative should shift imo. Most people don't develop x years of consistency "easily". The acquiring steps actually are easy though just not intuitive imo. I'm a long term learner myself. I did a lot of things that seemed to slow me down & eventually plateau for years. I was using textbooks & classes as a measure of progress instead of the content consumed & raw time in the language. I used the same methods Trenton described and it got me out of my rut, and steadily progressing. That's a big mistake I see other traditional learners like my past self falling into. You make a lot of fair points in this though that are worth people hearing, it's just hard to capture all the nuance and exceptions to all the things you covered even in this. If only someone made a textbook covering all of it (kidding XD). Sorry for the long first comment 🙇

[@yorozuyaDavid]

I think one of the issues with people posting how "fast" they learned Japanese is that we never actually know if that's the truth. Some people hide how long they've actually studied or things are framed in a specific way to mislead people. Even people like MattVsJapan are framed as "just some guy who became fluent from watching anime", but the truth is that he did a short study abroad in high school, took Japanese in high school, did a longer study abroad in college, and even studied at a Japanese university (and who knows what else). One of the things that I think Trenton and I disagree on is when someone should start speaking. He actually just posted a video talking about this subject and I think his stance has maybe shifted to include a little more nuance. I feel like I remember him saying previously that he was more for waiting quite a while before speaking. I think that maybe through the process of interacting with other learners and through the process of doing research for his videos for KZbin, Trenton has introduced some nuance to the topics that he talks about, and I'm definitely glad that he does. A lot of the Japanese videos out there are just completely void of any nuance. Interestingly, my Japanese friend watched this video and she told me that the English learning community for Japanese people is exactly like the Japanese learning community, in that they have a bunch of people that put out "English is easy!" "Learn English in ___ days!" and such.

[@TheStellarJay]

Criticizes Trenton for using a clickbait thumbnail then uses a clickbait thumbnail himself????????????????

[@samrtperson]

guys coach is right

[@yorozuyaDavid]

I didn't even criticize him for it though? I asked the question "This is clickbait, right?". And it is. Saying something is something isn't inherently criticism. "That apple is red, right?" "Are you criticizing my apple?!"

[@トレントン]

He actually asked if it was cool to use my thumbnail for his own clickbait and I was fine with it, no problems here :)

[@napaphonchaichit2055]

it's hypocritical nonetheless

[@marisa.555]

@@napaphonchaichit2055 how is it hypocritical if he didnt say anything bad about it 😭

[@TheJohnblyth]

An important reason I have been studying Japanese is that it is hard (but also so much of my world has been influenced by Japan for a very long time. The combination of it becoming available on Duolingo just as the Pandemic was really getting serious, only months after I took early retirement, had me drop a lot of other things to concentrate on it. I like languages, and can be moderately conversational in a very few of them, and at one point I estimated that Japanese was about 10-13 times harder for an English speaker to learn than Spanish or Norwegian. After 4 and a half years I’ve since revised that estimate upwards, to around the 15x level, because of the many different omponents of Japanese that have to mesh before you can use them properly. But all languages are hard if you want to be genuinely proficient at a high level-such as being able to read novels or follow tv discussions that have people with different dialect backgrounds and accents. When I visited Japan about a year ago I made a point of staying in areas where people weren’t used to foreigners (which also means a lot of Tokyo too) most Japanese people are not comfortable with English at all. I could get by minimally, because a lot of things are set up to make things easy, but getting chopsticks or a bag for your purchases at a konbini are a long way from being able to discuss philosophical, scientific or social topics, or from being able to cut through the immense amounts of padding that even colloquial Japanese has (keigo is just the tip of the iceberg). Kanji is a challenge, but it’s also fun, and it’s worth taking years and years to learn a completely different way of thinking in a language and about language generally. Having said that I’m only inching closer to where I want to be with the language. I really like to read, and I have a huge English vocabulary largely because I’ve read thousands of books-so you can imagine that it’s frustrating when I can’t even read one grown-up book in Japanese. But I’m getting there. Another couple of years and I might be ready for a light novel in the original, which seems to me to be a reasonable intermediate goal. That will have been 6-7 years, to get to the level of a fairly dull middle schooler. I want more, but it is going to take still more years. Languages are huge, and Japanese is even bigger. But it’s Japanese, which is something special, I believe.

[@amandamcintyre8159]

At the heart of it, there is a distinction between being painful, and simply taking a long time to learn. And hearing the message that you WILL get there eventually, if you put in the hours, and that those hours don't have to be miserable, is a good one. I have seen a handful of the videos you mentioned and found them motivating because that's the message I got from them... but I agree that they didn't present the information in the clearest way, and you could just as easily become demotivated if you take the wrong conclusion from them. Thanks for the video, you made great points. And for being a realistic voice of reason.

[@benjaminrogers8875]

18:10 I just need to point out that there is no such thing as a learning style, be it a visual/auditory learner or whatever. They are a complete myth that came from a suggestion as an addendum to one study, multiple studies since have roundly debunked the idea. Please see Benjamin Keep PhD videos regarding this subject. You might have some individual abilities that help study; for example it would be hard to learn pitch accents if you are not musically inclined or happen to be tone deaf, but that is not "learning style." 15:03 Just to flesh out the numbers here a 40 hour/week job is 2080 hours/year. It takes approximately 2200 hours to pass the JLPT N1, which is not the same as being fluent, or being able to properly speak or read Japanese. It's like working full time for a year with no lunch breaks.

[@jonathanadamsson6201]

I think "Kanji reviewing" has so strong diminishing returns, it works OK in the beginning. But as soon as you hit intermediate level it just gets out of hand. And probably most importantly. It's not fun. At that point it's probably better learning kanji by reading light novels or articles. Places where you ecounter the vocuabulary in a natrual context is just a lot more engaging, and I personally feel like the knowledge sticks better. I might not be able to write the Kanji and I might even not recognize it if I see it out of context. But I can always read it in a sentence. And that makes more practical sense I think

[@Skgaton]

よく“モチベーション”という言葉をコメントで見たりするけど、 モチベーションを使って日本語を勉強するなんて絶対続かないと思う 言語に限らず何か膨大な量をこなす必要がある時って、淡々と機械のようにやるような習慣化が適してる あと、日本人でも文法間違えてたり、知らない単語無限にあるし大人になってから知る言葉もあるからあんまり気負わなくていい スマホの普及で漢字書けない人沢山いるし 1:00 この人の発音は日本人が聞いてもめちゃくちゃ流暢だから参考になると思う ひたすら聞きまくったと言ってた

[@yorozuyaDavid]

1:00についてですが、あの女性の方のことですか？彼女はかなり長く日本に住んでいるんじゃなかったっけ？

[@blasianking4827]

僕もほんとにそうだと思います。ハーフなんですけど、日本で長く住んでなかったので、日本語は下手でした。18歳の時に日本に来た後で、何も全く分からなかったけど、一年半間で会話とどんどん日本語力が増えました。 実はスペイン語も話せるんですが、高校で勉強し始めなかったらスペイン語を勉強するの理由がなかったはずです。 言語を学ぶために、自分の大事な理由が持てなければ、モチベーションしかなかったら全然できないと思います。

[@yo2trader539]

@@yorozuyaDavid彼女はオーストリア人のミュージシャン＆KZbinrで、日本に住んでるのはまだ1~2年ぐらいのはず。邦楽が好きで子供の頃から日本の音楽を聴いてたようです。ウィーンの大学で日本語を学び、日本人留学生の友達も多かったようです。ひたすらその言語に触れる"Shadowing" を薦めてました。英語圏の人が使う"immersion"と同じことなのでしょうか。 但し、一つだけで彼女が他人とは違うことがあり、ミュージシャンであることです。日本でも洋楽（≒英語の歌）を良く聴くボーカリストは英語の発音が上手いと言われてました。語感やリズムやイントネーションを聞き分ける耳を持ってるという事です。

[@yorozuyaDavid]

@@yo2trader539 今調べたら、２年前からに日本に住んでいますね。しかも、１２歳の時からずっと日本の音楽を聴いて、大学に入ったらちゃんと日本語の授業を取っていたらしいです。かなり昔から日本語を勉強していますね。

[@theamazingmoro3981]

yeah a friend of mine started studying Japanese because he saw one of those videos and got hella discouraged after a month because he thought that he had a problem. finally i can show him a video of someone explaining what he went through. thanks dude.

[@yorozuyaDavid]

I think it's important to have reasonable expectations when starting a new journey.

[@garyc6183]

I can't believe you didn't mention my favorite, "Learn Japanese While You Sleep". Seriously though, I'm three years in and my problem is consistently studying. I was taking an online Japanese class through our state university and quit in the middle of repeating the second semester class. We kept getting bogged down with students who had been to Japan and kept saying things that people had taught them while they were there. The class was only 2 hours once a week and the constant interruptions , and the teacher having to correct the person or explain what they were saying, made the class a waste of time.

[@yorozuyaDavid]

I think it definitely helps to find a method of study that integrates something that you already enjoy. If you like games, there are games out there that teach you Japanese (I wouldn't put too much time into these though), as well as many games out there that have very simple Japanese and even have furigana above the Kanji (like Animal Crossing).

[@thatsubarulife9817]

Honestly most of those channels focusing on how easy the language is are all great examples of the Dunning-Kruger Effect. The most confident people are usually the less competent i.e. they might be able to have simple conversations in Japanese but truly don't know the difficulty of the language because they haven't reached a high enough level yet to be able to truly make a valid viewpoint yet.

[@yorozuyaDavid]

This isn't the first time I've heard Dunning-Kruger Effect used in regards to Japanese learners... I've even seen the meme about it. I find that the people I meet that are actually good at the language are the ones that say it was difficult to get to their level. I guess it depends what people are aiming for by learning Japanese. If they want to just visit Japan and learn enough phrases to get by, that's easy enough. But if you want to have proper conversations and/or read and write in Japanese, it's going to be more difficult.

[@tinyz7575]

A grand amount of them recommend to not use a textbook. But I feel like I wasted months until I finally decided to try some and finally got a direction.

[@yorozuyaDavid]

I think textbooks can be good for people who need structure (like me).

[@Oceanwaves-d8l]

Same but with just learning grammar stuff online. I've wasted ages trying to intuitively understand how the tenses work, especially. There's a reason even native people need to learn their own grammar for hours every day at school.

[@KenjaTimu]

​​​​​​​​​​​@@Oceanwaves-d8l really? I honestly thought those classes were a colossal waste of time. My grammar was already excellent and I certainly didn't learn anything. I know a verb from a noun but that's it. I don't think of any language that way. I know some Spanish and some Japanese. Donde esta El quarto de bano? Toilet wa doko?

[@Thomas48484]

A lot of them might not like textbooks because of the way they treat certain topics like verbs or grammar, but in general always recommend another guide to use as subsitution. Guides like Tae Kim's, Cure Dolly's or this other super detailed grammar guide that I can't remember the name of. I personally use Tae Kim's grammar guide because it's concise and I can refer back to it quickly when I'm reading something. I tend to not like textbooks because they remind me too much of school and school has made me hate learning in a specific way.

[@Oceanwaves-d8l]

@@KenjaTimu I guess some people just intuitively get grammar and some don't. I sucked even with my native language classes. failed first time round. It's during primary school where you learn most grammar, and not a lot of people think to back then so they assume either they never had classes or it never helped them because it's been so long ago. Verbs and tenses are hard, in any language. I remember spending time in class having to learn how to properly make words past tense, especially irregulars because I hated them.

[@CodeBlue981]

You really hit the nail on the head with your point that these clickbait thumbnails can be demoralizing, and finally hearing someone else say *some peoples brains are just wired differently* took a large weight off my shoulders. It sucks doing a 10 hour shift, coming home to study/review for 2 hours, then hearing someone say Japanese is easy. It's all the more frustrating when they talk about how they spent time living in Japan or spent 4 years studying Japanese at university. As someone who didn't have those options, someone starting from nothing and going off of the advice of complete strangers online, it sucks! I really appreciate you speaking out on these videos.

[@generikadeyo]

I'm so sick of these geeks talking about learning Japanese (and maybe this is selection bias but it always seems to be Japanese) no one ever seems to be talking about like memory science, or acquisition, or like how to have fun with the language you're learning. I feel like I'm fucking torturing myself every time I click one one of these videos instead of clicking on some guy's shitpost in Japanese and just enjoying the language. I'm like 4 years deep into this god forsaken language and I'm like conversationally fluent but I'm still trying to improve my approach to language learning. Why am I taking advice from guys who can't pronounce 音読み correctly I'm going insane

[@KenjaTimu]

90 percent of the videos are just trying to make money. Either they're peddling nonsense easy answers or they're selling a product.

[@Nosajskie]

Not just 音読み. They can't even pronounce あいうえお properly. Most of them are trying so hard to sound like Japanese like the guy Trenton who's following the footsteps of matt vs japan.😂

[@アベティ]

@@NosajskieReal 😭🙏

[@fernandozenomiranda9470]

​@@Nosajskiewatch the full video. Trenton does speak some japanese properly ish after the half way mark in a VR chat clip. Edit: Watch his reaction video to people's response on that video😂. Saw it not long after this comment

[@lloykrafnalmusic]

@@Nosajskie You hear people that have been acquiring a language spoken for the most part by Japanese people by consuming native content/material and when they sound a bit Japanese in the way they speak you assume it's disingenuous or forced? 🤔

[@cassc7669]

Been trying to learn Japanese on and off for 16 ish years, with more focus the last 4 years. Still a beginner 😅. I'll get it eventually 🙃

[@typicallatenightgamer7122]

I have been learning Japanese after watching Trentons video, and honestly, I find Japanese somewhat hard to get into, but id gets easier when it comes to just learning words, and then becomes extremely when you get around to learning how to read and write, mostly because of kanji, especially if you want to master the language. Trendon seems to know this, that is why his video is mostly focused on getting to the point where you can consume Japanese content seamlessly, since that is what most people are interested in when learning Japanese, myself included. thus he tells people to stay away from the hardest parts of learning Japanese, like learning all grammar rules and learning a lot of kanji, and instead tells people to just learn the basics of grammar, then focus on vocab and listening practice, which has brought me to the point where I can start watching Japanese content in about a month, and was generally not as hard as it seems, so at least for the learning purposes with the provided methods, Japanese was quite easy. ´But I might also be good with languages since Japanese is my 6th language which I started learning, and I do speak 3 languages fluently.

[@RealNTAF]

the difficulty comes from the learning method. if you do traditional method, Japanese is really difficult. if you use the comprehensible input method, its easy but it does take longer. that was the main point in a lot of those videos. easy doesn't mean it does not require work, effort, and focus though.

[@surprisedchar2458]

Generally the smartest approach, in my opinion, is a hybrid approach. Textbooks and instructors have an important place, but so does finding methodology that helps you learn on your own.

[@water1374]

I wouldn't call comprehensible input easy and I definitely wouldn't say that it takes longer. If the theory of language acquisition, the thing that comprehensible input is based on, is true, then acquiring language through constant input is objectively going to be way more efficient than the traditional study method and you should see results after a *shorter* period of time. However, I wouldn't call it "easy" because actually putting in the hours and effort needed to make noteworthy progress all on your own can be VERY difficult and is the reason that a lot of people get burnt out of it.

[@OfficialIvy2006]

I have been learning for almost 2 years. I listened to the penguin's advice but got discouraged for around a month. Having autism and ADHD is a difficult sense of abstract thing to cope. But it's not just my discouragement; my low attention span is to blame as well. I have gone throughout the time of watching videos from isaacwhy, Flamingo, and probably play Roblox TOH and chat with friends. I want to say "enough is enough" to that and progress my immersion and vocab/grammar count. I have written down 55 cards of each kanji with one English translation below, and to test if I remember that glyph or not for each day up until added. In my point of view, learning Japanese can be easy when you make it simple mixed with advice from others; it's just that the progress is slow and it takes a lot of time to save and spend for actually learning Japanese and outside of that (such as doing chores and going to school), and following paths you can't see from the future. In addition, what they get the advise from is their way and not everyone has to have that enforced. I support your argument although, I just need to get my lazy ass back to work. Wanna know the worst part? I started learning Japanese by textbooks lol

[@Clouds_546]

Don’t be Discouraged about your attention span mate, as someone who is autistic as well. I know how hard it’s to listening and trying not to get distracted, but remember we all get distracted or lose focus while listening sometimes, just keep trying and Try not to beat yourself up for that. :)

[@yorozuyaDavid]

I have a bunch of friends who have ADHD and autism (they often go hand-in-hand), and I feel like they're the ones that get hit the hardest by "Japanese is easy" rhetoric. They're still pushing along with their Japanese learning through and I'm proud of them for their determination. They might learn a bit slower sometimes, but I've seen their progress and improvement first hand.

[@p_serdiuk]

I have AuDHD. Took me what, 15 years to become roughly C1 in English at the moment? On one hand, it really was uncomfortable at first, on the other, now something like 80% of what I read and write is in English, and my native languages are Russian and Ukrainian. And yeah, I only _studied_ it for the first handful of years. The rest was all exposure.

[@Kawabunguh]

These videos are just the tip of the iceberg. Instagram is littered with reels, all with the same generic “beginner Japanese lessons” when the substance of the video is nothing more than “DID YOU KNOW ARIGATO MEANS THANK YOU?!!1!”

[@GrizikYugno-ku2zs]

Those are so cringe. I imagine those people who watch them are the same as those who are on Twitter all the time. I can see them watching several of those in a row and telling everyone about it for a significantly longer time than the sum total of the videos' length.

[@YoshiComments]

Hi, I just wanted to say other that this video is nice, thank you for giving me (but aswell the other viewers) support at the end of the video. I really needed such support since I'm a sort of hiatus with my progress with Japanese, since my teacher is not available at the moment, and I've got stuff to figure out before continuing. Another thing that makes me struggle is Aspergers. I usually don't feel confident when trying to (at least attempt) to speak Japanese, but I try my best. Am I rambling? Nonetheless, from the bottom of my heart, ありがとう. Edit: Sorry for the massive text bomb in the comments, have a good day. Forgot to mention, greetings from Italy!

[@uwukia]

Hi, as soon as I saw the video I was confident the only problem you would have with Trenton's video is clickbait, because Trenton's advice is spot on, and completely unlike the nature of "japanese is easy" arguments like you point out in the video. Considering Trenton's thumbnail is the one that takes the *most* space in your thumbnail, while being the least problematic by your analysis, I'm assuming you did it that way for the exact same reason. Not necessarily clickbait in your case, but more like... an artifact to attract more clicks. In fact, Trenton's videos are one of the most enlightening and motivational videos I've ever watched, and I've been managing to study and immerse myself steadily every day. I'm not saying it's perfectly okay for Trenton to call Japanese easy just for clickbait, we both agree that's at the very least a weird choice. As for everything else, I absolutely agree. I'd argue Japanese is one of the hardest "mainstream" languages to learn, even harder than Mandarin. But it's a challenge I'm willing to tackle. Nice video, hope your channel flourishes into another good resource for learning.

[@yorozuyaDavid]

I actually even asked Trenton if I could use his thumbnail for that purpose lol. There are definitely some things that Trenton and I disagree on though, but it's beyond the scope of this video. And me calling his title/thumbnail clickbait was more to set the focus on him actually agreeing with me.

[@msmith155]

Harder than Mandarin? If you have the time, please elaborate!

[@yorozuyaDavid]

For English speakers, I think Mandarin and Japanese are in the same "difficulty" category.

[@sandsyr]

I feel like stuff like tones, just being 漢字, etc. definitely make Mandarin equally challenging as Japanese in almost the same aspects - if not more so.

[@冬馬-l1p]

Japanese also requires you to learn thousands of 漢字, plus all of them have multiple readings that you have to learn, while in Mandarin, the majority of them have only one reading. Also, Japanese grammar is harder. As far as I know, the only thing that makes Mandarin harder are the tones.

[@Sarubadooru]

Thank you for making this video. I didn't watch the videos personally but they appeared on my feed and it was a bit demoralizing tbh I've tried to learn Japanese before, unsuccesfully. I know that part of my failure has to do with lack of discipline and constancy, but still it's not something I would call easy by any stretch of the imagination. I spent a year or so in an online course, but after that I stopped my practice after failing the JLPT N5 (also because of increasing responsibilities related to university and personal issues). I realize the heavy lifting for learning is personal study and that's the hardest thing to me, to impose myself self-discipline. That's why I think learning anything is hard actually, and not easy. Maybe some people have more aptitude for learning languages, as you mention, but even a person like me who is currently studying something related to language (I study English Literature and Linguistics as an L2) has difficulties with aspects of learning, all the more so when comparing English to Japanese as a speaker of a Romance language. I'm constantly exposed to English and use it on a daily basis, I have spent over 2/3 of my life learning the language in formal education, and still I struggle with things like pronunciation and some grammatical aspects (for the C1 level I intend to achieve). Meanwhile, I've been consuming Japanese media for about the same time, but there's no comparison to how close the languages are, let alone the learning of kanji and the fact that Japanese is not as used as lingua franca like English is. You have to actively seek for instances to practice it, and to have the self-discipline to force yourself to things that are not necesarily comfortable or easy is a tough thing to do. I still would like to continue trying to learn Japanese, and even though currently I'm not making active efforts on that, this video gave me more reassurance that it's alright to feel a bit frustrated, and that I might be able to reach my goal if I really put effort into it.

[@yorozuyaDavid]

Honestly Trenton's is a pretty good video to get some good resources to study from. So if you're wanting to give Japanese another chance, there's a bunch of stuff in his video's description. In the future, I would like to put out a video talking about all the ways that people can study Japanese while enjoying it. I think that being interested and enjoying something is super important for growth.

[@GrizikYugno-ku2zs]

I get triggered when I hear "Japanese is easy." I'm usually great at not being easily emotionally swung, but that one hits me. I thought it would be easy. I've mastered more things in my short time than most do by the end of their life, and language was something I thought I was particularly fast at learning. The only other time in my entire life I didn't make an absolute mockery out of those "it takes this long to master x" guidelines was learning Rust (programming language). I took exactly - to the DAY - the amount of time the book said it would take someone learning it with my experience. My ego will never recover - it was the first time I questioned if it was true that I could just learn literally anything faster than most. Then... Then I started studying Japanese. It's been 2 years, recently, and I swear to God every 3 months I become convinced I'm even less capable in Japanese than I previously thought. I'll get there, but oh boy is this difficult. Every time I hear "Japanese is so easy!" I cringe a year off my lifespan because it reminds me of how I'd say that to anybody about anything they were struggling to learn that I'd already learned (besides Rust, of course). I think the people saying it (besides the ones selling products) are telling the truth as they see it. It seems stupid writing it, but when it's really easy to learn something people make a big deal out of, you really feel like you're doing a good thing telling them it's easy, because it's hard to imagine someone struggling with it, particularly if you don't think of yourself as particularly intelligent. I've come to realize that I'm intelligent, and because I'm very nonjudgement, that means that I can make assumptions that everyone is as smart as me and make a value statement regarding the difficulty of learning something which ends up being extremely insulting. On the one hand, it's wrong and cringe to tell anyone at any time, "I'm smarter than you in this specific domain," but it's much worse to say, "I'm of average intelligence, and what you are struggling with is very easy, so just do what I did and it'll be a breeze." It's an extremely pompous, yet forgiveably self-unaware statement. I got the feeling Trenton is pretty young like 23 or something. We all get wrecked by our undeniable stupidity one day. It's the only way to humbleness for the gifted. I enjoyed watching his video. After I stopped being the snowflake millennial that I am, I enjoyed listening to his pride and confidence over his incredible triumph. Good for him, truly. I'm really glad some people get the easy version. I really have struggled with thinking about how I'd definitely be C2 in Spanish and at least B2 in Russian if I'd just decided against Japanese in the first place. There's a lot of languages and cultures out there, and is any single one more important than the 3 or more I could've gotten in the time it'll take to nail Japanese? I mean it when I say this is going *so slowly.* Feeling his excitement through his content reawoke the part of me that feels like a little kid when I hear "Japanese." That culture used to make me think about things in my personal life, like karate and anime and my 200 different crappy, fake Japanese weapons that a child was somehow allowed to by off the internet by himself. It used to make me think about all the insane, embellished stories about emperors, samurai, civil wars, Yakuza. It used to make me think about all the unique beauty that can only exist in an environment that is the most violent, yet barely habitable land on all of planet Earth.

[@GrizikYugno-ku2zs]

To answer my own question, yeah it's definitely worth it. There's a lot of "coolest cultures" and dedicating yourself toward being able to partake in any of them is a decision to not partake in the others (or at least not as much as you could otherwise). I (hopefully) have at least another half century, so an investment of 10 years now is something I don't think I'll regret when I'm dying, considering what it unlocks. Besides, most Europeans speak great English, and are notorious for taking the fun out of the situation, so I don't think it's worth learning one of those unless you truly love the culture and want the original source material for a ton of stuff, anyways.

[@Projolo]

They say Japanese is easy because Japanese isn't as complex as german for example. The grammar is really simple the pronunciation is the most common amongst all languages and it has very few exceptions. Japanese is harder if you are native english and if you are native spanish it is very easy.

[@Aarazar]

Obviously creators like them make those videos for a reason… gotta pay them bills somehow.

[@iusearchbtw69]

Yeah i just stop caring those clickbaity videos I just go to Japanese language school every day and watch anime and dramas at the end of the day And next year i'll be started working in Japan and i think i'm making a leap progress

[@me_apa]

"The majority of the videos are in english, and for a native english speaker, japanese will be more difficult." Me, native brazilian, learning polish and not japanese, nodding along: so true. Good video, nonetheless. It's important to be critical of your methods of learning, and jumping along the bandwagon of what other people are saying might be a bit too hasty. Mixing up methods, looking at what works and what doesn't for you, and finding "academic" and non-academic methods to help you along in the journey might be a bit slow, but it's the way to find what the right path is for us.

[@k0v4n0v4]

nothing clicked until i did trenton's suggestions. the problem is assuming that only one method works or even better the idea that methods are steppingstones that you grow out of while some follow you along your path. one approach might work for some however the importance of finding your way to your goal is more important than any strict regiment. just as language is complex in its intricacies so is learning them.

[@MasalaYLegoStopMotion]

日本語でコメントしても伝わると思うので日本語で書きます 言語学習はめっちゃ難しいです。ほんとに。僕は3年間タイ語を学んでいますがまだcefrではA1くらいのレベルです。だけど英語はB2くらいまで来ました。英語は幼稚園にいた頃からずっとやってきて、インターネットの存在を知ってからは英語のコンテンツばかり見てきました。 言語学習において一番大事なことは続けることだと思います。そして続けるために必要なことはその言語が話されてる場所の文化とかに興味を持って好きになることだと思います。

[@MasalaYLegoStopMotion]

今まで自分がどう英語を学んだか少し考えてみました。 最初のスタートは幼稚園での英語の授業だったと思います。簡単な名詞と簡単な基本的な文法を学びました。sky is blueとかi am happyみたいな感じ。その後小学生になってから、毎年夏休みに海外に旅行に行って英語を話すサマースクールに行っていました。日本語（僕の言語）が全く伝わらない環境です。そこで多分基本的な英語をマスターしました。そして中学生になってからは学校で英語の授業があって、その授業はものすごく簡単でした。新しいことをたくさん学びましたが、基本をわかっていたので簡単に理解できたんだと思います。中学生の時も他の国のサマースクールに行くことは続けていました。そして今高校生です。学校の授業はそんなに役に立っていません。簡単すぎます。おそらく他の生徒に合わせているのだと思いますが、それでも簡単すぎます。学校の授業で先生は500 wordsくらいの長さの英語の文章を読んで解説するのに2時間くらいかけるんです。狂っています。学校の授業はもう頼りにしていません。今はほとんどインターネットで英語を学んでいます。僕がyoutubeで見る殆どの動画は英語ですし、ゲームも英語でやることが多いです。discordでは色んな国の人と英語で会話しています。 btw this is how tipical junior high school english class in my country(japan) starts: teacher: "GOOD MORNING CLAAAASSS!!!" students: "GOOODD MORRRNINNNGGG MS/MR 〇〇(teacher's name)!!!!" T: "HOW ARREEE YOUUUU???" S: "I'M FINE THANK YOU AND YOU???" T: "I'M FINE THANK YOU!!!!!!" then teacher asks date and month and that kind of thing and then class starts yea that was crazy

[@awizcl6472]

@@MasalaYLegoStopMotion偏差値の高い高校に行けばいい。たとえば、関東なら開成、関西なら灘、九州ならラ・サール、など。

[@MasalaYLegoStopMotion]

@@awizcl6472 なるほどそういうことですね

[@momon1413]

I have spent probably 6 amount of years doing japanese. I initially learned through grammar vids. Trying my hand at flashcards and my brain just never wanted to remember, so my flashcard deck just grew bigger. Growing desperate I eventually completed through remembering the kanji vol 1 and I managed to learn how to write kanji and how they work. I was still extremely crap at the language and I had the vocabulary of a toddler. Ever since I started reading a lot it has helped my vocab a lot. I would just read some manga and I would use a dictionary for every single unknown word and grammar I could find. At the start it was pretty heavy and I would always have headaches as I was doing this. Anyway its almost been 2 years since doing that and I have managed to read through probably close to 1000 manga chapters, first volume of konosuba light novel and ningen shikkaku. Not that I read the light novel and novels perfectly I still had to look through a bunch of words. I have gotten to the point where I'm needing to look up way less, but my vocab still is weak. Reading has helped me a lot with listening since I know much more words now. I wouldn't say I'm fluent yet, my writing probably has a few grammar flaws and my listening isn't flawless either, but still this feels like is getting me to fluency. Since it makes Japanese more natural to me in reading, speaking, listening and writing. The ironic thing is i'm half filipino and I grew up speaking the language(not very well since i spoke mainly Norwegian), my mom still speaks to me in the language. However i have come to notice my japanese is actually way better than filipino now. I have noticed I understand way more from japanese music than I do filipino ones. I can also express myself more in japanese than I can filipino despite not really talking japanese much It's definitely a huge grind, but the more words and experience you have, the easier it is to acquire more words, intuitive understanding in my experience.

[@yorozuyaDavid]

Getting through Ningen Shikkaku is definitely a feat. It's definitely important to find a way of study that you enjoy or are interested in, and I'm glad that reading light novels and such was one of those ways. If you are actively looking up words that you're constantly encountering while reading, that can definitely be a nice way to not only be exposed to new words, but also be able to cement them into your mind because they're part of something you enjoy.

[@m8onethousand]

assuming 10 chapters per volume, that's 100 volumes. not bad at all. btw, chapters vary in length heavily between stories, while volumes are more consistent for the most part, so they're a better metric when telling someone how much you've read. I've read over 600 manga volumes, 40+ novels/light novels, watched thousands of anime and TV series episodes, hundred of hours watching live streams, etc., and I'm not anywhere close to where I'd consider myself being "fluent", so yeah, the journey is really long.

[@Licherous]

it takes a hundred+ of instances of repetition for something to really stick to memory, there's no easy way around it. you have to learn the word audio/writing, then listen/read something that uses said word or grammar point to recognize it being said or written, then rinse and repeat that until you recall the meaning easily, and do that until you don't even think about it when you see/hear it and its just part of your mind. for thousands of words and such it takes years of consistent deliberate practice, i wouldn't say it's hard, but it's just time-consuming and the progress is granular so just try to enjoy the process of learning

[@tv-xk1ic]

Awesome video,! Can't believe you aren't a bigger channel!

[@Sourrags7]

When ever a see a video come up with Japanese is easy it brings my motivation down. Its hard i struggle with it, i live here for almost two yesrs and my studying goes up and down like crazy

[@SystemsTechEngineering]

I spend more time scouring the internet for "the best way to study japanese" instead of studying. I also change the sources I'm using to study to try something different which probably isn't so great either.

[@yorozuyaDavid]

If you check the description on my newest video (don't have to watch the video itself if you don't want to), there's a bunch of stuff in there that can at least potentially make studying Japanese more entertaining for you!

[@ジル-t9i]

Saying something is easy could be one way to motivate others. That’s how I see these kind of videos. I dont think theyre lying, because honestly everything can be difficult or hard, its also depends on the person itself.

[@ixywas]

thank you so much for making a fact check video, some of the people here motivated me to learn japanse, and you told me to not blindly believe eveything they say, if not for your video, i could have been stuck on some mistake.

[@animeninja2749]

i think the ling otter's R's or To's sounds come from his Spanish speaking, possibly affecting how he pronounces words

[@retropulse03]

I'm like 35 days into learning japanese, and these videos are EVERYWHERE on youtube. I think it's a strange rhetoric, but depending on how I look at it I can kind of see aspects that are easy. Hiragana and Katakana were childsplay to pickup. I can read them quite well already. Of course, without Kanji and vocabulary though, it's useless really. Grammar I have been shocked at how easy I've taken to though. I thought this would be the hardest part. Not to say that's easy, but not as hard as KANJI.

[@mapl3mage]

the basic grammar is arguably the easier part because it's fairly consistent and there aren't that many things to remember compared to say, English, or god forbid German/Spanish/Portuguese. the vocabulary, on the other hand...

[@Projolo]

The pronunciation is easy if your native language is spanish because it is the same rules

[@gomito5000]

When i see those "Japanese is easy!" Videos i know exactly what they gonna say without clicking on them because, when i was a teenager after learning German and English i was super relieved - a language without genders, very simple conjugations, almost no irregular verbs, that sounds just like you write it! Woohoo, I'll be fluent in no time! ....30 years later....

[@TheKirinlover]

愛してる:aishiteru 愛してます:aishitemasu 愛してるよ:aishiteruyo 愛してるぜ:aishiteruze 愛してるんだ:aishiterunda あなたを愛しています:anata wo aishite imasu 君を愛してる:kimi wo aishiteru 俺はお前を愛してるんだ:ore wa omae wo aishiterunda 僕は君を愛してる:boku wa kimi wo aishiteru 私はあなたを愛しています:watashi wa anata wo aishite imasu これらの文章は英語に翻訳すると'I love you'になりますが、全てニュアンスが異なります。 日本語の話し言葉は、性別、性格、相手との関係性によって大きく変わります。 日本の漫画やアニメにとってこのニュアンスはとても大きな意味を持っていますが、翻訳された字幕ではこれらのニュアンスはほぼ伝わりません。 文法や単語を教科書で学び、その後はとにかく日本人と話してこれらのニュアンスを身につける事が上達への近道ではないでしょうか。 間違った日本語を使ったとしても、それを馬鹿にするような日本人はいないです。 人によって求めるレベルが違うので、簡単だと思う人もいれば難しいと思う人がいるのは仕方のない事だと思います。

[@au8730]

文法と単語？なんでそんな19世紀みたいなことしないといけないワケ??

[@TheKirinlover]

@@au8730 文法と単語を勉強しなくても大丈夫だという根拠を教えてくれますか？ 文法も単語も知らなくて、あなたは他言語話者と会話できますか？

[@au8730]

@@TheKirinlover 教科書なんか使わないで英語字幕付きで動画を見ましょう

[@TheKirinlover]

@@au8730 それは学校で基礎的な英語の知識を学んでいるからできる事。 日本人に馴染みのないアラビア語やヒンズー語等の言語でも映画字幕を見るだけで学べる自信がありますか？ 動画が言語習得に有用であることは否定しませんよ。

[@au8730]

@@TheKirinlover 馴染みがなくてわからないからこそやる価値があるんでしょ 全てわかるのならその動画から得られるものはない

[@MakingJVM]

It seemed like all the Japanese teachers I encountered online were saying you can learn all the kana in one or two weeks. It took me TWO MONTHS to be able to recall all of them from memory.

[@skywalkerwifive2595]

I personally learned them within two days, i know people learn at their own pace but two months is kinda crazy

[@yorozuyaDavid]

Some people have crazy memorization skills and some people definitely don't. If I learned Japanese all over again, I legitimately don't know how fast I'd be able to learn them. I guess it's also not really a good metric to say "days" or "weeks", because what does that even mean? Does that mean 1 hour a day for a week? Does that mean you blasted through them for 4 hours for 2 days?

[@skywalkerwifive2595]

@@yorozuyaDavid i remember learning them while on an airplane, i probably did 4 hours using duolingo, and like 2 hours total the next day. I do have a fairly good memory so i definitely dont think the standard should be near that time, but i also dont think 2 months is a reasonable ammount of time to be considered normal especially if you wanna learn a language as hard as japanese. You gotta memorize thousands of letters and words, so if you can only dish out 40 new letters after 2 months i think there’s a tad problem. Ive got no expertise in helping others learn languages so i could be dead wrong, and i dont intend at all to discourage anyone, just idk

[@SnuubScadoob]

I’ll be honest here… I kinda learned the hiragana and katana in a week. But that’s my personal experience, it’ll likely take people more or less time, depending. Kanji, on the other hand… that’s gonna take me 87 million years.

[@bobboberson8297]

there's less than 100 symbols so one week is 14-15 a day. shouldn't take much more than 30 minutes per day

[@Ant_Diplodicus]

Hello there this is a thank you letter! I haven't even started watching the video yet but THANK YOU FOR MAKING THIS! I have seen all of the videos in your thumbnail and I have been going on this study pace for four years, the worst thing you can do learning is listening to "it's easy, actually". it is just not true for multiple reasons, and very discouraging. The reason I have gotten this far is because I don't waste my time watching tutorials on how to learn, and how systems work, sure I can watch a grammar guide in the very beginning but it really is as simple as grabbing a book or a site (of which due to the language's popularity exist multiple) and get studying, that's it!

[@KoutetsuSteel]

I'm Commander Shepard and this is my favorite video on the KZbin. (Definitely no bias what-so-ever)

[@aether_vi]

this video really motivates me, as someone who studied japanese for a year but had to stop (and still wants to learn but can't attend classes and also forgot the majority of things T-T). great video :3

[@yorozuyaDavid]

You definitely can learn Japanese and I'm sure things will come back to you as you begin to study it again. Thanks for stopping by :)

[@WestonMurdock]

As someone who's been learning Japanese for coming up on 3 years now, I 100% agree with what you're saying in this video. I myself have watched several of these videos and seen the others floating around in my recommended videos lately, and have had many of the same problems with the way they present the language learning process. I think it's also important to note that the goals someone has when learning a language also can heavily impact the "ease" of learning, in ways that are extremely difficult to predict until you've reached a relatively high level. For instance, if someone wants to primarily engage in written content, they need to learn kanji, and the target audience of that written content will impact the level of kanji they'll need to know, as well as which specific more difficult kanji they'll actually get the most use out of. On the other hand, if someone wants to primarily learn the language to be able to speak with people in VR Chat or something where they may not need to read much, where there isn't as much of a use for the ability to read, they'll need to train their listening and speaking ability in ways that the previous example may not, and may not have as much of a reason to learn a large amount of kanji. Both of these examples will also have varying experiences based on things like the type of people they want to talk to or the subjects they are interested in, that may impact how difficult the learning process is even further for them (e.g. how important is it to someone to learn the geography and history of Japan? What about pop cultural references? Do they need to learn slang to understand things? If so, what type/era of slang? etc). It's so reductionist to narrow all of the immense possibilities for how people may choose to measure their progress in the language down to just one area, and to then describe that as being "easy" for whatever reason, while also too often not providing any amount of evidence to show a proficiency with the language that is high enough to reasonably be judged to have actually encountered all of the difficulties that come with transitioning towards more advanced (but still often necessary) aspects of acquiring fluency (however someone decides to measure it)

[@WestonMurdock]

As an aside, while I don't know exactly how to rate my exact time spent or proficiency, I have done Anki reviews daily for most of the time I've been learning Japanese, for roughly 30 minutes per day, have about 10,000 vocab cards I've learned, have fully read several grammar textbooks (like the Dictionary of Japanese Grammar series), and while I haven't taken the JLPT, I find that I'm usually fairly comfortable with most of the content on the N1 exam. While I wouldn't necessarily say any of these metrics are great measures of actual comprehension and fluency in Japanese, I'd at least say that my comprehension is at a fairly advanced level for someone learning the language, even if I often struggle to speak the language (and thus would not call myself fluent by any means). I feel the need to say this simply because, as you also mentioned, it's important to take into account the level of experience someone has when hearing their opinion on something such as this, where less experienced learners may minimize certain aspects of the language simply because they haven't been exposed to enough of the intricacies of it in context to develop fully informed opinions on certain topics

[@カタリン-q9p]

I totally agree with you. Even though my mother tongue is more similar to Japanese (specially the sentence structures) than English , some of my students actually believe that they could reach N1 level in a year (even in a few months 😅) just because of these misinformations that you mentioned in this video. And many of them eventually give up learning it when they rich the difference forms of verbs. I’m glad that someone finally mentioned it And the other issue is “leaning Japanese fluently just by watching Anime and stuff in a few months” that’s only because some people actually believe that saying a few sentences in a language makes you fluent in it. I hope you mention this too in an upcoming video!❤

[@sorasenpai4892]

The only video i watched was trentons one and i actually started learning japanese thanks to him and even before i watched the video i assumed it was just clickbait for the algorythm

[@CodeBlue981]

Could you explain what you mean by "diminishing returns" when it comes to language learning? Does this have to do with burning yourself out?

[@yorozuyaDavid]

Essentially, the longer you study something (usually without rest), the less information you actually retain. For example, the first hour of study you might retain 100% of the information you come across. The next hour you might only retain 80%. The next hour you might only retain 60% etc etc. In general this is due to physical or mental fatigue, burnout, or loss of motivation/focus.

[@Badaboombadaboombaby]

omg thank u for this vid not only cause those videos you had in ur thumbnail are SO annoying, but also cause that japanese learning video with the penguin in the thumbnail kept popping up in my feed and i'm like "lmaoooo get out of here i am not even learning japanese im learning chinese" 😭

[@yorozuyaDavid]

Oh no, and the algorithm tossed you over my way instead. You can't get away from the Japanese language community. You're cursed.

[@Badaboombadaboombaby]

@@yorozuyaDavid 😭how will i learn japanese when i cant pronounce chinese tones. haha! great vid.

[@Maymaysmaymays]

Taking a break from Japanese for two years to study Dutch and German was definitely an eye opener. In those communities, there is no grand standing, no need to prove this or that method, nor how easy or hard something is, no All German/Dutch All The Time and no unnecessary drama. Just people learning a language like normal.

[@yorozuyaDavid]

I actually kind of want to do a video talking about this. Japanese learning community definitely has some issues and such.

[@glasslicker2829]

I am one who agrees that learning Japanese is not easy, but it is important to know that conversationally, you are not going to be super at conversing in a foreign language when you are also not great at conversing in your native language. That is me😂

[@jackaghdam]

these videos critiquing other japanese learning videos come up so much lol

[@UnimportantAcc]

Just learn the romanjis and you can be fluent in *24 HOURS*

[@yorozuyaDavid]

oh no

[@Oceanwaves-d8l]

I need to actually learn the grammar to be able to learn a language, especially when it comes to verbs. The sorts of videos which are like "just immerse bro" do a lot of harm for learning languages for beginners with my sort of learning style.

[@tteo_bokki]

I’d say you need some obsessive love with the language itself. For me, I love reading Japanese. I love kanji. That was the first thing I studied when I was learning. Now looking up words is easier than ever. Every time I remember a new word it takes me back to day one when I couldn’t read the kana and I remember how far I’ve come.

[@flaviospadavecchia5126]

The fact that Japanese grammar is relatively simple to conjugate, compared to many other European languages, actually makes it harder in the long run to parse sentences (like when the subject is implied) and to express yourself naturally rather than just translating word for word.

[@cookingrabbitty]

Understanable, i learn esperanto while word would similar to remember like english. Most time i don't understand grammar and wind it up.

[@Ermonacodimontagna]

+ you have A LOT of verb suffixes, i've been studying HARD for a year yet i'm still encountering new ones 😭😭😭

[@Sourrags7]

That words meanings are also insane. Good morning is actually it's too early for this. When I leave work I say I am exhausted, but the start of that phrase is an informal way to say hello. I do find it hard to know when you should and should not put in the subject you are talking about

[@tommytowner792]

It's not really difficult. Some European languages have many impersonal verbs like Finnish for example which doesn't tell you what the subject is, but it's clear from the context. It's kinda like that but in Japanese it's used for all verbs. Example: "väsyttää" means "I'm tired" and "väsyttääkö" (just adding the question particle ko) would mean "are you tired". As a Finnish speaker it doesn't feel that weird to me when Japanese drops subjects.

[@flaviospadavecchia5126]

@tommytowner792 don't Finnish verbs change ending depending on what the subject is? -.-

[@ケイリakaケモイ]

much appreciation

[@noobyoshi]

Your thoughts on Pimsleur for listening/speaking? I used a teaser course 20 years ago for a vacation. I vaguely remember being able to order a beer and ask where the restroom was. The important things. BTW almost 250 subs 頑張ってよ!

[@yorozuyaDavid]

I actually remember trying the Pimsleur courses on CD! I... don't think I made any progress or retained any of the information that they gave me. I think it might've been mainly due to it being incredibly boring for me, though.

[@HershLundy]

1:20 I think your chalkboard artist doesn't make N's right. Like the N in "incorrect." 😢

[@flutterin4595]

It's cyrillic letter И :O!!

[@yorozuyaDavid]

Dang, I'ma have to dock my artist's pay. My friend told me that the chalkboard font tilted him so hard xD

[@bobboberson8297]

at 7:53 I don't think it's right to say です is irregular considering verbs that end in す like 倒す also end in した in the past (like でした). from the japanese perspective on japanese grammar the polite verb ending is an auxillary verb ます that becomes ました in the past, and です works the same way.

[@yorozuyaDavid]

Yeah, but the verbs that end with す and become した also have other forms that です doesn't have. 倒す ー＞ 倒した ー＞ 倒しました です ー＞ でした ー＞ N/A 倒す can also become 倒された or 倒せる, but です cannot become でされた or でせる.

[@bobboberson8297]

​@@yorozuyaDavid it wouldn't make sense for です to have those forms, what would they even mean? It follows the rules by not having conjugations that would be contradictory to the rest of the language. I don't see how it's irregular. it also doesn't make sense to use a word with limited and consistent conjugations as an example of a reason a language is difficult to learn. I doubt any learners are wishing です had more conjugations, even if it would make the verb more "regular" under your definition. btw you could easily have picked a word like 問う as an example instead.

[@yorozuyaDavid]

I'm not saying that it should have more conjugations, I'm just saying that it doesn't have those conjugations and thus is irregular. I would argue that a verb that has its own usage and rules would be irregular, but I'm guessing you don't agree?

[@bobboberson8297]

@@yorozuyaDavid it doesn't have it's own usage and rules. it abides by the same rules. that's why it can't have those conjugations or else a rule would be broken

[@yorozuyaDavid]

@@bobboberson8297 What rules is it following? You suggested that it's like 倒す because it ends with す. If it's like 倒す and follows the same rules, you should be able to conjugate it to be せる or される. It doesn't do that though. です isn't like 99% of the other verbs, so I'd argue that it's irregular... at least defined by what the word irregular means.

[@tyrieadams1152]

Good to see the final product. Reminds me of our Japanese Studies Seminar when we did the teaching 😂 Nice dissection of how some KZbinrs may unintentionally mislead and discourage new language learners. I didn’t realize there were people out there learning a language based off of someone else’s perception of how easy it is instead of having their own “why.”

[@yorozuyaDavid]

Oh man, you mean the capstone class? The one where the teacher would give us a chapter and we had to teach it to the rest of the class? The one where we paid the teacher to make us do the teaching? xD

[@tyrieadams1152]

@@yorozuyaDavidOh, when you put it that way it makes me want my tuition back haha

[@matt92hun]

I think TheLingOtter speaks Spanish natively, where D is voiced unaspirated and T is voiceless unaspirated, while in English, your native language, D is voiceless unaspirated and T is voiceless aspirated. Isn't Japanese a true voice language, like Spanish, therefore his pronunciation is fine? People understand language in context anyway, it can just cause misunderstandings with the odd minimal pair, where the other word could be used in the same context as well. These don't come up very often.

[@waffu311]

yeah, the note about lingotter pronouncing things differently felt like he was grasping at straws to boost his credibility. like, of course he's going to accidentally roll r's, spanish is his native language. expecting perfection is unrealistic, even for educators, especially when the mistakes are trivial

[@rimenahi]

A: I can't believe there are dozens of videos related to learning Japanese. (There are now more videos about learning Japanese.)

[@benji8000-c4j]

Next video suggestion: show us how you are learning Japanese, and what one should do at different levels in your opinion.

[@harugisasama]

I was honestly relieved that Trenton video dedunk was only clickbait and contradicting himself because alot my Japanese before taking classes ive was from immersive listening. 😂

[@Mothy-chan]

Honestly, yeah. As a person who learns Japanese, just cuz anime, there's buncha clickbaits lol and if you actually start learning kanji and do kanji review, it stops being "easy", it's not even "easy" or "hard", it's tedious. You have to put your time to remember it and everyone's memory works different. I see nobody mention that language learning == memorization. The ONLY thing that matters in languages is remembering the right grammar, kanji, pronunciation or whatever, if you forgot how to write/read a word, you have to look it up and the only way to know 99% of the stuff that shows up in media is constantly engaging in said media. I personally just watched anime and remembered a lot of vocab over like 10 years before ever attempting to learn Japanese, while I knew all the words, a grammar up to like N4 probably or maybe N3 (Haven't tried that one yet). Going to read manga, VN or worse: light novel, is a nightmare if you only learn Japanese by anime, obviously. I'm not English native, and I was learning English by simply having a conversation with people online on SNS, reading manga in English, watching anime with English subs, playing games only in English. I may make mistakes and shit, but what matters the most is comprehension, if you can understand and be understood, can read and write without having to check DeepL and dictionary every 10 seconds, that works just fine. It took me 3 years with google translate/DeepL, but it was really low effort English learning, mostly just input. Which isn't going to be the case with Japanese because - Kanji. You can't just read them if you don't know them, which is funny as a language design lol, who tf came up with that 😭 Anyway. What has been working for me in my JP learning: 1) Memorize Kana 2) Memorize N5 Kanji (there's like 105, around that) 3) Memorize N5 grammar like は、が、の、に、と、です...etc in case you haven't yet. And that's for the basics, just to be able dive in the learning process, kana bruteforce method I used: write あいうえお (A i u e o), then try writing it by memory, if succeed go to next row, if not - repeat. when writing next row かきくけこ, and going to write from memory, you write あいうえお again then かきくけこ, repeat if you forgot how to write something, by the end of it, you should be able to write entire hiragana from memory. 1-2 days and you will prolly remember it, may take longer. Same for katakana. For me it took around 4-5 days for both. for particles, this one worked for me just fine: cheatsheets.nihonshock.com/basic-japanese-a4.pdf Aaaaaaaaaaand then don't focus on either kanji, grammar, vocabulary, let alone pitch accent lol and just proceed to mix everything together 1) try to read N5 manga, you can see what manga is suited for N5 here: learnnatively.com/ 2) watching anime works, but you can also look up Japanese podcasts, for more irl kind of speaking, but ofc anime works too, podcasts come with JP subs usually for them. for anime you will have to look them up yourself 3) daily anki swipe, my set is 40 new words a day and is taking me 30~ minutes with reviews a day, can choose a slower route for yourself. anki guide here gohoneko.neocities.org/learn/anki 4) may do quiz for kanji at kanjiquizzer.com/ (it also works for learning kana as well) its full free, only need to make account for n4+ iirc 5) continue consuming media and gradually move up to N4 manga/books, N3.. and higher, can prolly start reading VNs if you're into it. If you encounter some new word!!!(not kanji individually), just write down the word and its meaning and what kanji it has. 6) and don't forget the grammar, this one is a pretty good source too: guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar Gradually you will become better, you will hear difference in pitch accent with time, "learning" it or trying to remember even, is a huge time sink, learning kanji readings is a huge time sink, just try to remember vocabulary, watching Japanese usage from JP people is actually pretty neat too - www.youtube.com/@kanamenaito Learning Japanese is not about focusing on 1 thing, but getting as much resources as you can, and mixing them in your daily life. You *have* to constantly use the language to learn it faster, otherwise it will take forever, imo. Thanks if anyone read up to this point lmao, P.S.: Those methods may work for me, but not for you, since everyone are different, so don't take it as a fact lol. And remember the truth - don't stop at tutorials on "how to learn japanese", start learning it.

[@poppyalt7427]

I've seen a few of those videos before and some of these that counter them, I think the only (or at least biggest) problem here is whether someone interprets "easy" as "effortless" or "simple". A lot of these videos imply the creator is using easy to mean "simple" as a counter to the idea that Japanese is out of grasp for English native speakers (a long common misconception people throw aroundto demotivate others), but a lot of people will misread it as "not difficult" and get demotivated. So an issue with videos about whether Japanese is "difficult" or "not simple" is an English miscommunication, great. 😞 I'd like to point out you do say several times something along the lines of "they said they've been doing this for years, in my mind a long time means it's more difficult" which is some proof for what I'm claiming. Because my own first impressions (and later impressions during/after videos) was that they were saying it's more simple than people say, and you can do something simple for a long time. I haven't seen every video/creator here and I don't watch every one of their videos nor believe them to be perfect human beings, just my thoughts on seeing these videos before. I do like Trenton though. It's kinda sad though that regardless of all that, it seems the main focus was to motivate people that "hey it's not an impossible task after all" but because of this miscommunication it demotivates some people that believe it means "hey it's not difficult at all you just have to Do It" so they feel bad.

[@yorozuyaDavid]

You're definitely welcome to your own opinion, but I personally think that something taking a long time to learn suggests a level of difficulty. I'm 100% fine with people saying they found a way to make it easIER, more fun, etc... but to say that it's flat-out "easy" (especially when a lot of them only focus on one aspect of the language and don't mention the other part(s)), it just doesn't sit well with me. I'm sure you can see with some of the comments, but obviously some people felt like those videos were kinda demoralizing.

[@rik-keymusic160]

Its called “click bait” … but remember, as a child we didn’t though of hard or easy… a child learns from it’s surroundings. So no matter what languages are spoken, the child wil automatically learn it. It just doesn’t sit there pondering about how hard it is… thats what we adults do. It’s that little internal voice that makes it al way much harder than it should be. You just need to actively study passively 😅. That’s what works for me. Yes, it might be slower but as long as you’re in the game your stil winning. Some people like to study until they’re burned out and never feel satisfied unfortunately. Don’t be that person… it’s a marathon not a drag race !

[@josezubiate87]

I've grown to see learning Japanese as a journey through hell, but with a great end in sight. Kind of like Dante's "Divine Comedy". There is a great end in sight.

[@fly1ngf0x]

just a random critic of the japanese learning community i have. before learning japanese, you NEED to learn the structure of japanese alot of americans go into it thinking japanese works kinda like english.. it doesnt japanese is SOV, english is SVO japanese is an indirect language (ex:barely any uses of "i" the same way english does), english isnt a completey indirect language japanese uses 3 alphabets that work together (aka: DONT SKIP KANJI! KANJI IS IMPORTANT) i keep seeing people who quit japanese after 2 weeks because they didnt understand beforehand this beforehand i dont like learning japanese alone, i need personal friends who will study with me. but everyone i try to meet is like this

[@SimpleTravler]

I don’t think Jozen was saying Japanese is easy as a whole. It’s been awhile since I saw it. The point for the video was that he just wanted to anime without English subtitles. Trenton’s title was absolutely hyperbole. They both talked about their frustrations and false starts and multiple attempts to learn. Unless the YTuber is speaking Japanese in front of a native Japanese speaker who is honestly ranking it, viewers have no way to measure how well the vlogger has taken to it. I’ve only seen 2 or 3 videos where there’s some kind of means test that’s not the JPLT.

[@dnnri]

Amazing Video

[@belstar1128]

i have been learning a lot of languages the big problem i have with Japanese and Chinese is reading. i like to learn languages by reading most languages have simple phonetic writing systems. even other Asian languages like Korean Thai Burmese but with Japanese kanji is a real roadblock there are always more characters that i don't know .if it wasn't for that it would be a medium difficulty language that would be quite easy compared to most non European languages . i also like to play video games in Japanese but its a real bummer because of the characters but also just because the gaming scene in most countries is lacklustre. a lot of games only got English or Japanese i need to stick to movies and books in other languages but i wish i could play them in another language since i don't like to waste my time. if i am going to game i want to learn something from it that is why i love learning languages so much. you can take things that are normally pointless and learn from it .

[@piiinkcupid]

First of all, I cant believe you only have less than 100 subs!!! I've been learning japanese for 2 years now and although I consider myself to have had an easy time learning it, I couldn't agree more that the language is in fact not easy at all (but it's too fun for me to stop lol). In the video you mentioned that japanese is not close enough to english to have any kind of similarity, therefore the difficulty is on another level, and lemme tell you something. I'm brazilian and here we speak in portuguese, and although portuguese may have just a few similarities with japanese, such as the way we pronounce the vowels and the rhythms of the syllables, or some words that were also borrowed from portuguese such as ビードロ, ボタン, アルコール and so on, it's still required to put a hell of an effort to learn japanese 🥲. But hey, if you were interest in the language at some point it has to be for a reason, right? Leaning japanese is way more than learning any language, for me, it's a llanguage that helped me to discover a lot of things about myself and I enjoy every minute of it! I believe that people should give themselves some credit even if they're putting 10 minutes of their free time to learn it, yk. But yeah, you've gained 1+ sub! And it would be nice to watch a video where you talk about your journey and you relationship with japanese, if you will 😊Keep it up, デビッドさん!

[@sushkabaranka]

this "different types of learners" thing does not actually have any scientific proof and there is a research saying that it's not true. and it's just better to have different types of input/practice to all students

[@yorozuyaDavid]

(This is actually just a copy and paste to another similar comment, so please forgive me lol) I actually didn't know this before posting this video, so I'm glad that some people mentioned it in the comments. Since then, I've been trying to find studies on the matter though and look at the method(s) that they used. In the studies, I wonder what the learners were told to learn? Like, if it was math or something similar, would it be okay to say that learning styles don't exist for learners of languages? There's definitely both an audible and visual aspect to languages. I also wonder if it takes into account that people might just enjoy one style vs another, and that by using the style they prefer/enjoy, they don't get mentally fatigued as fast or get burned out as fast.

[@kebien6020]

So I clicked on this video to watch the part about Trenton's video. But you basically only said that his title is clickbait and that you actually agree with the content? Thus I can conclude that I got clickbaited by your thumbnail saying "These are wrong and harmful" with his video thumbnail as the biggest one Well played

[@yorozuyaDavid]

There's a reason why there's a green border around his video in the thumbnail while the other ones are red lol. But also I used what he said in his video to further the point I'm making, because Trenton also believes that "Japanese is easy" stuff is B.S.

[@アベティ]

@@yorozuyaDavidThe Trenton vid being green is a little subtle. Alot of people are mad over it id say you should maybe change the thumbnail to make it a little more obvious you agree trenton, and not against him. Nonetheless, great video thanks for it🙏

[@yorozuyaDavid]

@@アベティ Nah. I even asked Trenton if I could use it in that way and he said it was okay so 🤷‍♂

[@narsplace]

Yes you can have a subject after the object, yet only if you know how to use the topic in Japanese. One can't just simply have the subject after the object if there is no clear topic.

[@foxmccloud9609]

Yeah, I try reading Japanese sentences, and think ''Yeah, I barely understand any of this...I will get it eventually, because I am stubborn...'' Learned about fake Polygosts from Days of French and Swedish...Looking at the ''Oh, learning is easy'' Trying to read Spanish ''This is impossible'' I do agreed with it being bad to set these standards, ''Why, am I stupid for not understanding anything?'' Look, it took me awhile to learn how to know my language...Like a lifetime...Seriously, I sucked at learning my own language...But I think we should think we are always learning instead of thinking about the real end goal, it might take you 1 year to 20 years...Me being stubborned helped me with learning though. Learning can be extremely painful too, like absorbing information, ''THIS IS TOO MUCH, AHHHH'' People think learning should be fun, but we shouldn't do it just for fun. Unless you really like hurting yourself...It gets uncomfortable at first, but you need to take the bandage off and endure the pain. Get uncomfortable, get extremely uncomfortable, do you know what evolution is? Creatures were made to adapt to their surroundings, but now we just sit down on our phones and just hope for easiness...No sense of adaptation is happening if you are not willing to do the adapteness...Do you think people just done nothing in order to survive? No. Unless you are a parasite, maybe? You can just feed off of others, I guess..,

[@Gr4cchus]

Great topic, and for the most part i agree. but the tangent of "why does everyone seemed to pronounce it HEY-sig" comes off very pretentious

[@yorozuyaDavid]

Thanks for the comment. My bad on the Heisig thing... it wasn't meant to come across that way. It was more like a "Why does everyone pronounce it this way? Isn't it high-sig?" kind of vibe, but that obviously didn't come across the right way apparently.

[@alphamellll]

I've been learning Japanese on and off for about 10 years now. I'd give myself burnout over how fast I wanted to learn kanji and grammer. Seeing videos calling Japanese "easy" is very discouraging because someone, like me, can't process language as fast or doesn't have as much time to learn due to things in life. Great video 👍

[@yorozuyaDavid]

I hate how those videos are just inadvertently calling people stupid :((

[@VeroraOra]

Agreed. It's to an extent clickbait, romanticising the learning process and not considering the genuine commitment needed to learn this language. I'm about 600 hours in and based on my level I'd have to agree with needing more than 2.2K hours total to reach my desired level.

[@ColemakDH]

While I agree with you on many points, I feel like a lot of your video was nitpicky and unnecessary, like ok, they got a grammar point wrong, I guess that's important to know that they themselves aren't fully fluent or whatever, but pointing out that someone said onyomi incorrectly? Really? How does that prove any point? I agree that this topic shouldn't be sensationalized but at the same time I feel like you also missed some of the points that the less sensationalist ones make. Easy does NOT mean quick. To be honest, while I haven't watched all of those videos, the ones I have, have never claimed that it is an expectation to be able to learn japanese within a year etc etc, they may present the possibility as it technically has been done but they never say that like it's the expectation. When they say easy, it's easy in the sense that as long as you put in some time each day and just keep that up for a while, you will get results (assuming you aren't doing something useless like not actually studying obviously). Also if you have the counter point that something taking a long time means it's inherently difficult, that debate becomes more subjective, but what I would say is that language is something you are guaranteed success at, meanwhile plenty of people put way more time and dedication into sports for example, day in, day out, and they simply don't get anywhere near the top level, and that's how I would define something being difficult. Same thing with a short task not meaning it's easy. Overall I like where your head's at and I agree with you on most points, but at some points it feels like you've become what you hate just for the "it's not easy" party

[@yorozuyaDavid]

Correcting things wasn't necessarily for the "point" of showing that "Japanese isn't easy", but rather that I just think it's important to correct incorrect information, especially in cases where they were presented in an educational manner (like in TheLingOtter's video) and especially when the topic is something like "You can put the subject and object in any order you want". That being said, I don't think it inspires confidence that "Japanese is easy" if there are a lot of provably incorrect pieces of information and also incorrect Japanese in the video. No one is perfect and I'm sure I made mistakes in my video, but I'm not arguing that Japanese is easy. (I'm also not saying it's impossibly hard... because it's not)

[@techtutorvideos]

I think the distinction between simple and easy is useful here. Learning japanese might be simple but not easy, but 100% possible

[@scorit-zq4yx]

You can speed run Kanji, RTK + WaniKani, even at a slow pace you can learn 2100 Kanji in a year. Watch CureDolly for grammar, Yuta's natural Japanese. You can learn Japanese to a good level in 3 years, while yes this is a lot of time, you could probably do 2 European languages in this time, it isn't hard compared to learning other things in life.

[@valcs18]

I think it's a bit unfair to judge them on not explicitly bringing up as 'ignoring' that people have different types of learning styles and capabilities. If you take their videos in good faith, they're simply presenting what they've worked from their own language learning journey. Not as a way of minimizing other's struggles.

[@Schollay_Benjamin]

I don't really find it very unfair because he did mention that the videos are not malicious. I have taken around 3 years to get up to an intermediate level studying 1 hour per day. I truly think that it is important to make it clear that japanese, korean and mandarin are not easy languages to learn for native english speakers (hell, even a native spanish speaker like myself even if japanese pronunciation is not that different from spanish was still pretty hardcore lol). This to say, these youtubers are definitely not malicious but yeah I do kinda wish these types of videos weren't made lololol

[@caprisiafernandez]

I guess is a difference of difficulty being short vs being long , but most wanna be weebs are more frustrated on long term difficulty more than short term one , like the difference beyween minning a difficult metal that could break easily and you being a random but safe 9 to five minner.

[@japanese2811]

To be fair, in Vaughn Gene's videos he literally speaks Japanese ad hoc... So you couldn't say he provides no proof

[@yorozuyaDavid]

His Japanese is very incorrect though. Everything from pronunciation, intonation, word choice, pitch accent, end of sentences, etc. It's actually quite surprising considering he said that he lived in Japan for 10 years.

[@japanese2811]

@@yorozuyaDavid Fair enough, but many people learn English to a similar level and are ok with that. In South Africa it's almost impossible to find a consistent accent, pronunciation, word choice etc even though we are technically all speaking English (and I daresay reasonably decent English at that). Moral of the story though is that you can't determine someone's fluency by critiquing their grammar and accent alone, because fluency really should be more about actually being able to communicate. How many Japanese learners truly reach that level? I doubt the percentage is very high. No offense at all intended here, but as much as your Japanese was pitch perfect in this video, it wasn't a freely flowing unscripted speech, and was very brief. So relatively speaking, I'd say he's validated his fluency perhaps more so than you have. Just an opinion, no offense once again.

[@yorozuyaDavid]

​@@japanese2811 I just thought that speaking Japanese for an elongated period wasn't very useful for the purposes of this video. Also, I'm pretty sure his videos are scripted. It may look like he's talking off the cuff, but you know that teleprompters hook right onto your camera, and make it look like you're looking directly at the camera, right?Do a quick search for teleprompters for youtube and you can see what I mean. I've been wanting to get one so that I can have more shots of me talking to the camera (because I only had 3 shots in this video). If he was just a dude speaking Japanese on the internet, I'd have no issue with his Japanese being wrong. It's because he's out here preaching ways to "become fluent fast" that I have an issue with it. For what it's worth, I had previously sent his video to a native Japanese friend of mine and she thought his way of speaking was incredibly rude and she also felt like he doesn't respect the language.

[@andrewprahst]

I pronounce it high'-zig

[@shirobuta_]

The n being backwards in your font is driving me crazy 😅