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Originally Posted by falcon  I'd also love to learn Japanese (I watch far too much anime  ) but have been rather intimidated by stories from friends who have tried to learn it and given up because it was so difficult!  |
I strongly encourage you to give it a shot! If you've already been exposed to the language then you'll have a head start, and a great motivational tool. It's fun to be able to pick up on when anime subbers get things wrong, or leave interesting things out, or tone down the insults characters throw at each other
Japanese can be hard, but I think the difficultly can easily be overcome with enough motivation (to state the obvious). And I'm sure you'd find it encouraging to be able to grasp the basics fairly quickly. Japanese, at the basic levels, follows grammatical rules that are straight-forward and easy to remember.
However yes, it does get hard. It always amused me when my teacher would tell the class that when she told us about a certain rule in an earlier class, and that there were no exceptions to the rule, she lied. Thankfully she could teach the altered rule in a way that fit with the previous without confusing us. Domo arigatou gozaimasu Sato-sensei!
Also, if you decide to do it, and also want to visit Japan, an ideal way to learn Japanese is by living with a Japanese hostfamily and going to a Japanese language school. I did a two week course last year (organised via STA Travel), had an amazing time, and learnt more in those two weeks than I did in the 8 months before!