Is Japanese a difficult language to learn? That is definitely one of those million dollar, thought-provoking questions. The answer to this question is quite elusive because “difficult” is a relative term.

For me, Japanese does have its challenges, the first of which is getting used to a writing system that is totally unfamiliar to me. I remember when I first started learning hiragana, I would confuse some of the characters; I just wasn’t used to seeing or writing them. For example, the symbols for “a” (あ) and “o” (お) were very similar to my untrained eyes, and I would often confuse the two.

But Japanese also has very different grammar from English, and native speech differs a lot from the textbook form. In what ways? Find out at The Japan Guy below!