Making Japanese Easy to Learn by Approaching It Like Math

Engineers and scientists pick up Japanese easily while language students struggle

For my foreign language classes in high school, I studied Spanish. I nearly failed. Although I was a whiz at math and science, I sucked at learning languages.

For English speakers, Spanish is supposed to be one of the easiest languages to learn. The Foreign Service Institute says it takes 24 weeks to reach basic fluency in Spanish. Japanese is listed among the very hardest, taking nearly 4x longer.

So when I moved to Japan, I had no expectation of being able to learn more than the basics. I was surprised I was able to pick up Japanese easily. For me, it was far easier than Spanish.

And I found I wasn’t alone. There were a handful of other foreigners at the company where I worked. All the engineers became fluent quickly. The non-engineers struggled. What was going on?

I realized the people who were good at math and science picked up Japanese easily. The people who already spoke 5 other languages just couldn’t get the hang of Japanese. It wasn’t until I realized that the two groups took a different approach to language learning that it made sense.

How to Not Learn Spanish

The way we were taught to learn Spanish in school was to memorize lists of vocabulary and verb conjugations. Each week the teacher handed out a new list to memorize. Aargh. For me, that was like trying to memorize the phone book.

The usual trick language learners use is to find words with similar roots to help with memorization. Por favor (please) is close to “for favor”. Bicicleta is similar to “bicycle”.

Try that with Japanese, and there’s nothing to work with. There’s no connection between onegaishimasu and “please”. Nor jitensha and “bicycle”. I’d guess this technique works for Chinese and Korean speakers, but not for native English speakers. Other than sushi and kimono, we’re starting from a blank slate.

(We’ll ignore for the moment that pretty much every English word has a katakana equivalent: i.e. pureezu プリーズ and baishikuru バイシクル that can be used in a pinch if you don’t know the traditional Japanese word.)

As bad as learning vocabulary was, Spanish verbs were a million times worse. There was no way around brute force memorization of conjugation tables for every verb depending on the tense, mood, and pronoun. What a mess.

I can’t memorize. I’m incapable of memorization. Which meant I was incapable of learning Spanish.

Japanese Math

What I’m good at is solving problems. Give me logic and rules and I can put the pieces together and find the solution. In other words, I have a mathematician’s brain. An engineer’s mind. And that is perfect for learning Japanese.

Japanese is a very organized, regular language, starting with the sounds. Instead of 26 letters in English which can be put together in semi-random combinations which you then have to guess how to pronounce, Japanese has 46 phonetic characters in a neat matrix. a, i, u, e, o ka, ki, ku, ke, ko sa, shi, su, se, so… How nice. I know how to work with matrices.

Japanese has only 7 verb conjugations, 5 of which follow the sound matrix column, plus a -tte and -tta form. (yoma-nai, yomi-masu, yomu, yome-ru, yomo-u, yo-nde, yo-nda)

That’s it. If you know the verb, you know the conjugation, with only 3 irregular verbs that don’t quite follow the rules.

How can I learn 10,000 words without memorization?

While verb conjugation is easy, there’s still that tricky issue of memorizing the 10,000 or so words needed to reach basic fluency. Especially without similar words in English to use as a memory aid.

The answer is — don’t memorize lists of words beyond the most basic ones. Instead, learn the kanji characters.

Most Japanese language learners start by studying vocabulary, then try to pick up the kanji afterwards as a painful step to learning to read and write. To me, that’s backwards.

Kanji is the key to Japanese. Once you know the kanji, learning vocabulary is as simple as solving algebra problems.

Each kanji character itself has a meaning: 火 = fire, 山 = mountain, 日 = sun. But the kanji are also building blocks for vocabulary, with most words a combination of 2 or more kanji.

Put together fire and mountain and you get kazan 火山 — volcano. That’s easy to understand. And so are other words made with fire. fire + day = Tuesday 火曜日 fire + planet = mars 火星 fire + pot = hibachi grill 火鉢

The days of the week aren’t random words to memorize but are the words for [sun 日, moon 月, fire 火, water 水, wood 木, gold 金, earth 土] + [day 曜日].

Memorizing the seemingly random word for automobile — jidousha — would be difficult. But understanding that an automobile is a self-moving vehicle ji-dou-sha 自動車 is easy. That a bicycle is a self-turning vehicle — jitensha 自転車 — makes sense.

If I hear or see a word I don’t know, I can usually figure out the meaning by parsing the word into its component kanji. See a sign for hijouguchi 非常口? That’s easy — hi = not, jou = usual, kuchi = exit. Combine them and you have an emergency exit. As simple as 1+1+1=3.

Instead of memorizing 10,000 words, I only have to learn around 1,000 kanji to get a long way towards fluency. (The JLPT N2 test required for college admission requires the knowledge of only the most common 1000 kanji.)

Kanji as easy as pi

Yes, memorizing 1000 sets of random lines and squiggles would be a challenge. But the kanji themselves aren’t random. The easy ones are easy to understand. The complex ones are easy once we break them down into components that are pieced together like a jigsaw puzzle.

Unlike phonetic words, the kanji are visual. They look like symbols. We’re used to working with symbols from beta to pi.

one = 一 two = 二 three = 三

That was easy. Now you know 3 kanji. Only 997 more to go!

Yama 山 looks like a mountain, doesn’t it? Kawa 川 resembles a flowing river. And hito 人 looks like a stickman. Those were easy, too. (Up to 6 now!)

Nama 生 is the symbol on every Japanese beer can Ookii 大 looks like a person with outstretched arms Add a leash in the person’s hand 犬 and you’ve got a dog Chiisai 小 looks like a person with their arms at their side to look small Kuchi 口 is clearly a box, door, or mouth Put a line through the box 中 and you have the middle. Put a person in the box 囚 and you have a prisoner. That’s 7 more. Only 987 kanji left to master. We’ll be done by tomorrow!

The more complex characters are composed of components called radicals. If we know the kanji for field — 田 and the kanji for strength — 力, put them together and you have man = 男 = power in the field. If we know the character for woman — 女, and the radical for roof 宀, we have safety 安= a woman under a roof. Sexist, yes, but easy to remember.

One tree 木 looks like a tree. Two trees 林 and you’re in the woods. Three trees 森 and you have a forest. Cut the tree at the base and you have a book本.

Look at the kanji for the various fish: 鮭 salmon 鮪 tuna 魬 yellowtail 鰻 eel 鯖 mackerel

Each word for a type of fish has a fish radical 魚 on the left. The right is the onyomi pronunciation. Just as easy as pi.

But, but, but…

I don’t want to imply that learning Japanese is as easy as calculus; it still takes a huge amount of time and effort.

There’s some memorization of kanji and vocabulary that can’t be avoided. And 2 (or more!) pronunciations for every kanji add a dose of frustrating complexity, as do all the annoying exceptions to kanji pronunciation. And then there’s keigo to master. And counters. And particles.

But take it from this engineer who sucks at learning languages. Japanese is actually the easiest language to learn if you approach it logically instead of as an exercise in rote memorization. Start by learning the kanji and using them as building blocks to a large vocabulary.

Gambatte kudasai!

Want to pick up some basic Japanese in a novel? Read my mystery, To Kill a Unicorn, about a Japanese hacker in Silicon Valley.