Feature of japanese

Japanese uses three different writing systems: Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji. The first two of them are syllable alphabets consisting of 46 characters each. Kanji are characters borrowed from China. About 2.000 of them are commonly used in everyday life but some dictionaries list over 50.000 different characters. Learning all these characters is probably one of the most difficult aspects for Japanese learners. As nowadays most Japanese is written with a computer or smartphone you are basically alright as long as you can recognize the characters. It is not necessarily required to remember how to write them.

On the other hand, Japanese grammar is quite easy. There are no cases or plural forms, there only is a present and a past tense and adjectives and nouns do not change. Nevertheless, as an e.g. German or English native speaker, you will have to learn a completely new grammar which is another aspect that makes it difficult to learn Japanese. An interesting aspect of Japanese Grammar is that the verb is usually the last word in a sentence. Also, Japanese is considered as a left-branching language, where modifiers generally precede heads (e.g. “who standing at the station, the man”). Languages like English or German are right-branching with the important information coming first and modifiers later. There are studies showing depending on whether your mother tongue is left- or right-branching the way your brain processes information is different. (More information here)