Helpful Tips From A Native Speaker On Learning The Japanese Language (Nihongo)

My good friend Seiichi graciously gave me most valuable feedback onetime on what he thought has to be included in my article on Tips for Learning Japanese. I really appreciated it such that I'm blogging on it here. Below is his verbatim input (taken as a whole):
click on the title for more...

"A great article, but a few points should be made.
1. Japanese is close to Korean as an Altaic language. It has no similarity to Chinese other than the borrowed characters.
2. The article is correct when it mentions that the grammar is harder to learn than Chinese, but that is making an assumption that the languages are related, they are not. The grammar is completely different.
3. Katakana was used mainly for words of foreign origin, but is also used for Japanese words increasingly for exclamatory purposes. For example, DANGER can be written　危険、or キケン！。
4. Korean also uses Chinese characters but they are more ahead of Japanese in eradicating those characters from daily use. The recent decision to add another 200 characters to Japanese daily use has been met by the public with a shrug. More people are using more KANA than characters. The decision to increase or decrease the number of characters in the education system does not mean total acceptance by the general public.

Again, thank you for a great article."

He also shared a wonderful link that's worth reading when one would like to pursue Nihongo lessons The Japanese Language

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