If not then I don’t know what to say

Whether it's for a future trip, for business or just for the love of the language

You will definitely encounter some difficulties and today I've listed a few common ones

Let's check it out now!

Actually I only have one camera..so that took a while to set up..just for this shot

Japanese has so many different levels of politeness

It's like one million

Depending on the person you talk to, and their age, you will talk with a different level of politeness

Just like in any other language actually

Example sentence: « Call me later » -> Ato de denwa shite ne!

That’s for friends, family, your dog..

Could you call me later? Ato de denwa kuremasen ka?

Basic level Japanese

I wonder if you could call me later? Nochi hodo o denwa itadakemasen deshou ka

Now we are entering the realm of the Business level Japanese

I would really appreciate it if you could call me later.

Nochi hodo o denwa itadakemasu to saiwai desu.

Politeness Overload

All these different levels with their unique vocabulary can be kinda difficult to learn, but if you are working in a Japanese company you’ll get it pretty quickly!

The second one, and the one that almost made me want to stop learning Japanese is the passive and active voice.

Just imagine the situation, it's been like 3 months you just started learning the language, you know how to say "this is a pen"

And then suddenly out of nowhere

You start being attacked by all these phrases like

"The pies would always be made by my mother"

And you're like:

Oh my gooooooooooood

Because in Japanese when you conjugate a verb in the passive form the verb it's starts to get really long and difficult to pronounce

For example with the sentence:

I eat bread - Watashi wa pan o taberu

The bread is eaten by me - Pan wa watashi ni taberareru

Taberareru, taberareru, taberareru

And let's not talk about all the forms that come after that.... tabesaseru, tabesaserareru

The third and most common problem people encounter when learning Japanese is of course the Kanji

There's like 3 million of them and you need to learn how to read and write them

I'm gonna be honest though there's not like one simple method that..you do it and you become perfect in kanji

Personally for me, kanji...the biggest tip I could give you is to read a lot!

I would pick up like children books like Totoro or even like, Harry Potter

and basically every time I encounter a Kanji that I'd never seen before or that I couldn't read

I would stop and check out in the dictionary what the meaning was

This was very very painful technique because it took me like 30 minutes to read two pages

Although thanks to that, I picked up a lot of speed

and now I can read more mature books like this one

That's it for today guys!

Tell me in the comments below, what's the most difficult thing you've encountered when learning Japanese?

For my Japanese viewers what is the most difficult thing about learning English or any other language?

I'm gonna list a few apps and websites that I used to learn Japanese

And if you're Japanese and looking to study English then check out the website VoiceTube where you can actually practice Business Level English

See you guys in the next video! Bye bye!!