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The U.S Department of State rates Japanese as a Category IV (scale of I to IV) language of difficulty for English natives to study, recommending that a student needs 2,200+ hours of study to become proficient. If one were to study at least 1 hour per day, that is approximately 6 years of study. 

The vast differences in grammar, pronunciation, and writing are reasons for why it takes so much time. Another factor for why it is so difficult is because English and Japanese are not in the same language family.

■What Language Family is Japanese in? 日本語って何語族に分類されるの？

English is an Indo-European language family, the family which comprises most languages in Europe, the Middle East, and India. When a speaker of English tries learning any of these other Indo-European languages, they will generally spend far less time to become fluent than with Japanese. 

Japanese is in its own language family called "Japonic," which is comprised of Japanese and other minority languages spoken in the Japanese archipelago. In principle, any native speaker of these other languages will find Japanese or another Japonic language to be far easier to learn than English. In fact, all speakers of these minority Japonic languages happen to be fluent in Japanese. These languages are not thought to be related to other languages in the region, but they have been heavily influenced by Chinese in vocabulary. 

For English speakers, there is no shared culture to make learning any easier as is the case for Chinese and Korean learners. Even with the saving grace of there being loanwords from English, these words only account for about 10% of the most commonly used words.

■The Diversity of Dialects　方言の多様性

There are dozens of dialects in Japanese due to centuries of isolation, but the form that almost all speakers share is known as Standard Japanese (Hyōjungo 標準語). This is the language of instruction and it is mostly based on the speech of Tokyo. Japanese speakers are familiar with a pretty decent amount of dialect diversity as particular dialects are heavily used in media (Ex. Kansai Dialect in comedy). 

This famous map of Japanese dialects shows where all the different Japanese dialects and closely related languages are spoken. 

Of course, you can make sentences without having every piece of information. For example, the following sentence is perfectly grammatical with just a time phrase, subject, and a verb.

今朝地震が起きました。
Kesa jishin-ga okimashita.
Literally: This.morning earthquake-subject.marker occurred.
Translation: An earthquake occurred this morning.

In any language, there are several kinds of phrases. Each one has a "head" and the possibility of a "modifier." The "head" of a phrase is the element that determines the syntactic function of the whole phrase. In "the smart cat," the head is "cat" because "cat" is the word that determines what the phrase means. The "modifier" of a phrase, then, is a word that gives information about the head. In this case, "the" and "smart" are both modifying "cat." 

The head of a phrase in Japanese is said to always follow its modifier(s), meaning that the modifier(s) are to the left of the head. The same is not true in English (ex. "the Japanese book" vs. "the book in Japanese"). In Japanese, this is, "Nihongo-no hon 日本語の本." Nihongo-no means "Japanese" and hon means "book." 

When a language places the head of a phrase in the final position and places complexity before it, it is said to be left-branching. A good example of this in English would be "my husband's friend's adorable puppy." When translating this into Japanese, the word order will stay the same.

私の主人の友達の可愛い仔犬
Watashi-no shujin-no tomodachi-no kawaii koinu
Gloss: I-possessive.marker husband-possessive.marker friend-possessive.marker cute puppy
Translation: My husband's friend's adorable puppy

Japanese takes left-branching to the extreme when creating complex sentences. When modifying nouns with other sentences (participle phrases), Japanese still places them to the left of the head constituent of the sentence, and the word order within the modifying constituent too must follow the same left-branching principle. 

学校から帰った子供たちが外で遊んでいる。
Gakkō-kara kaetta kodomo-ga soto-de asonde-iru.
Literally: School-from returned kid-subject marker outside-at play-ing.
Translation: (The) children who came back from school are playing outside.

Japanese speakers anticipate names being constructed differently in other cultures as their goal is to respect you. So, whatever your name is, that is what it is in Japanese, albeit with a Japanese-friendly pronunciation. For those with Chinese or Korean names, the Chinese character spelling of one's name will carry over and it is common to honor the original pronunciation over a Japanese-like pronunciation.

Japanese grammar is rather certain about the predicate (verb/adjective) coming at the end of a sentence. However, there are times when a speaker may wish to state the predicate first and leave the rest of the sentence as an after-statement. This known as inversion.  You may see this occasionally in music, poetry, etc.

叶え、私の願いよ。
Kanae, watashi-no negai-yo.
Gloss: Come.true I-genitive.marker wish-exclamation.marker
Translation: Come true, oh my wishes.

Japanese allows for contextually obvious things to be omitted from a sentence. The most famous instance of this is the tendency to drop pronouns such as "I" and "you." Choosing to omit something or not may cause a change in nuance, but failing to omit things when appropriate may cause your speech to sound unnatural.

お名前は何ですか。
O-namae-wa nan desu-ka?
Gloss: Honorific.prefix-name-as.for, what is-question.marker. 
Translation: What is your name?

New learners will constantly insert words such as watashi (I) and anata (you) into their sentences even though no actual speaker does this because they are usually deemed contextually obvious.

There are 12 unique parts of speech in Japanese that are either independent words (jiritsugo 自立語) or ancillary words (fuzokugo 付属語). Independent words are those that can stand alone. Ancillary words, however, are those that cannot stand alone. Parts of speech can be categorized as either one or the other as well as by their ability or lack thereof to conjugate. 

• Independent Words (Jiritsugo 自立語)
  
  ーConjugatable
  
  　・Verbs (Dōshi 動詞): A word that describes an action, state, or occurrence.
  　・Adjectives (Keiyōshi 形容詞): A word that describes an attribute. 
  　・Adjectival Nouns (Keiyōdōshi 形容動詞): A word that describes an attribute while also being noun-like.
  
  ーNot Conjugatable
  
  　・Nouns (Meishi 名詞): A word that describes a person, place, state, quality, event, or thing.
  　・Pronouns (Daimeishi 代名詞): A word that indirectly describes a person, direction, or thing.
  　・Numbers (Sūshi 数詞): A word that counts or measures entities. 
  　・Adnominal Adjectives (Rentaishi 連体詞): A word that describes an attribute by directly modifying a noun.
  　・Adverbs (Fukushi 副詞): A word that qualifies an adjective, adjectival noun, or a verb. 
  　・Conjunctions (Setsuzokushi 接続詞): A word that connects sentence together.
   　・Interjections (Kandōshi 感動詞): A word that represents an abrupt remark. 
  
  
• Ancillary Words (Fuzokugo 付属語)
  
  ーConjugatable
  
  　・Auxiliary Verbs (Jodōshi 助動詞): An ending that attaches to a conjugatable part of speech. 
  
  ーNot Conjugatable
  
  　・Particles (Joshi 助詞): A word that marks some grammatical function. 

The one part of speech that is completely foreign to English learners is "particles." Though they denote some grammatical function, some functions marked in Japanese don't match up well with English function words.

There are six main types of particles: case, parallel, conjunctive, final, adverbial, and bound. Particles may be categorized differently depending on how they're used, so if you see the same particle in a different part of a sentence, it will certainly have a different function. 

• Case Particle (Kaku joshi 格助詞): Indicates the grammatical function of a noun in a sentence. 
  

• Parallel Particle (Heiritsu joshi 並立助詞): Juxtaposes two or more things together. 
  
• Conjunctive Particle (Setsuzoku joshi 接続助詞): Connects clauses together. 

• Final Particle (Shū-joshi 終助詞): Placed at the end of a phrase to provide emotional context.

• Adverbial Particle (Fuku-joshi 副助詞): Indicates degree/condition/circumstance.  
• Bound Particle (Kakari joshi 係助詞): An emphasis marker while stimulating conjugation.

Hiragana ひらがな and Katakana カタカナ are both known as Kana syllabaries. The purpose of these systems is to write out sounds phonetically. They express the same sounds, but their histories and semantic roles are different (See Lesson 3 and Lesson 4). Each syllabary has a set of 48 basic characters, and from there a small number of add-ons to represent all other morae. 

Chart Note: The table to the left illustrates the origins of Hiragana ひらがな characters and he table on the right illustrates the origins of Katakana カタカナ characters. 

Curriculum Note: To learn more about what Kanji 漢字 have been altered in Japanese, see Lesson 362. 

■Japanese-Made Kanji　国字

Japanese speakers have also created their own Kanji 漢字 over the centuries. Some have even made their way back into Chinese like the character for "to work": 働. 

Curriculum Note: To learn more about these Japanese-made Kanji 漢字, see Lesson 360．

Japanese was once void of any punctuation. However, due to contact with Western languages, Japanese has borrowed and adapted many punctuation marks.