re: #222 Nyet

If only the rest of Mandarin Chinese weren’t infinitely more complex than English. /

Much of the perceived difficulty is due to it being different. Japanese grammar is usually considered very hard, but it is extremely regular and has much fewer complications than Indo-European languages. The order of things is generally reversed and they conjugate for things that most IE languages don’t so at first glance it may seem hard to grasp. Even the Chinese tone system is not a big deal provided you are gently introduced to it. Sure, the writing system takes a lot of memorization, but those 8000+ characters have their plus sides too (inherent meaning, useful combinations, and single pronunciation). 2+ billion people get by fine with them.

As for the Japanese writing system, you’re shit out of luck.