Japanese
Three alphabets. Good luck.
125 million native speakers. They will smile politely while you struggle. The smile means nothing.
Speakers do not have a fancy name for themselves. No "Niponophone." Among themselves they call the language kokugo ("the national language"). When teaching outsiders they switch to nihongo. The rest of the world just says Japanese speakers.
Three writing systems. All three. Always.
Japanese uses three scripts in the same sentence. Hiragana (46 phonetic symbols, native grammar). Katakana (46 more, for foreign words and emphasis). Kanji (Chinese characters, around 2,000 to read a newspaper). They all appear together. There is no opting out.
Read this sentence: 「私はピアノを弾きます。」 (I play the piano.) Three scripts in one line: 私・弾 are kanji, は・を・きます are hiragana, ピアノ is katakana.
Politeness has its own grammar.
The same verb has at least four versions, depending on who you're speaking to and about. Use the wrong one with your boss and you don't get fired, you just become the topic of a careful conversation in a back room.
Same verb, four registers. To eat: 食べる (casual, with a friend), 食べます (polite, neutral default), 召し上がる (honorific, about your boss), いただく (humble, about yourself when speaking to your boss). One meaning. Four shapes.
Counters for everything. Especially for things you didn't think needed them.
You don't say "two cats." You say "two small-animal-shaped of cat." There are different counters for flat objects (枚), cylindrical objects (本), books (冊), animals (匹), people (人), days (日), and at least 500 more. Severo finds this beautifully precise.
Most learners memorize the top twenty counters and pretend the rest don't exist. Severo notices.
Severo's verdict.
Japanese is useful if you want to read Murakami in his actual cadence, follow a Studio Ghibli film without subtitles, understand why a colleague's email at 11 p.m. is actually polite, order ramen in Tokyo with the right level of confidence, sing along to a 1980s city pop track without breaking the atmosphere, or sit through more than a thousand episodes of an anime about a guy in a straw hat who stretches his legs and dreams of becoming King of the Pirates. (Yes, a thousand. Japanese helps.)
It's not hard. It's just unfamiliar. After 200 hours something clicks. Severo recommends consistency over speed.
Ready to accept the challenge of a language with three alphabets in the same sentence, two thousand kanji to read a newspaper, and at least four versions of every verb? Click download if you have the courage. Otherwise you will be one more tourist pointing at the ramen menu. Severo has seen too many.
ALL THREE ALPHABETS, PLEASE
