Verbs do, however, change form for a whole slew of moods and so forth. And there is the nastiness of keigo, the polite forms. But otherwise it’s not really that hard, contrary to what Japanese people would seem to like to believe. I think French was a little harder, at least for me.

And then, yes, there is the reading and writing, and to my mind Japanese is the hardest language to learn to read and write in the world. If anyone wants to argue about that, I can explain why.

jdog: I am sure you can regale us with countless tales of weeping-inducing Japanese traps, not least a certain attitude thing. We’re lucky that Slovenes generally react encouragingly and respectfully if you at least attempt to use their language. You might be interested to know that the Michael above has mentioned a friend who’s learned both Japanese and Slovenian and claims the latter is more difficult. Not when it comes to reading and writing, though, I imagine.

Michael: I have been caught by exactly the subtle difference you cite; ironically at a time when it was entirely untrue. Now we know which diacritical mark to use when we say it, should it ever come to pass.

Actually I always thought Japanese was worse because they have sets of homophones with NO stress (Japanese having no stress) that they think, to the vexation of all nonnative speakers, are ever-so-slightly differentiated by some kind of accent or tone. It would be so much easier if they were differentiated by stress, rather than this “only Japanese can hear it” ephemera.

And, you know, were they just plain old homophones that they didn’t claim were differentiated in any way, I could live with that. We English speakers don’t go around saying to nonnative speakers that if only they had some secret listening skill they could hear the difference between “son” and “sun”, say.

Ooh, don’t get me started.

Even worse are words that change meaning depending on the pronunciation, like zadovóljen (satisfied) and zadovoljén (sexually satisfied).