[GuiA]

I've been learning Japanese for a bit over a year now, and while I am still very far away from being happy with my level in the language, I definitely noticed a distinct shift for the better in my understanding of the language and how fast I picked up new grammatical constructs etc when I stopped trying to contrast it to the western languages I already knew.

You have to accept that Japanese grammar might have some basic concepts in common with the grammar of western languages (verbs, objects, adjectives, etc) but that really doesn't get you far.

(for japanese learners reading this comment, the article that pushed the first domino for me was this one: http://www.guidetojapanese.org/blog/2007/09/03/repeat-after-... )

Regarding your question about programming, I'd encourage you to read both The Little Schemer and Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs.

[gizmo686]

Speaking as someone who is studying both linguistics and Japanese, this this type of comment is just cringy to read. In the grand scheme of potential "languages" Japanese and English (as well as all natural human languages; including signed languages) have incredibly similar grammars. It is only when you restrict your view to the range of human languages that Japanese and English start to look incredibly different.

With regards to your link. Japanese absolutely has subjects.

The question of presisly what -ga marks is a bit more controversial, but calling it a subject marker is a perfectly defensible position. Indeed, having studied linguistics before studying Japanese, I found that thinking of -ga as a subject marker and -wa as a topic marker made the distinction easy for me.

The point of this comment is not to say that we should be teaching English-native Japanese students that Japanese does have subjects and -ga marks them. I am not qualified to make that judgement, and my benefit likely came as a result of leveraging my linguistic studies.

As others have pointed out, thinking of Japanese as analogous to English is counter-productive for most students. This is despite the fact that Japanese is analogous to English in most cases, including (potentially) cases where seeing the analogy could be counter productive.

Returning to the original article; this is a good indication that just because something is wrong does not mean that it is not useful. Anthropomorphizing might not be technically correct, but it could still be a useful tool to help our human brains make sense of the world or subject matter. In the same way that saying "Japanese does not have subjects" might not be technically correct, but it might still be useful.

[PhasmaFelis]

> Speaking as someone who is studying both linguistics and Japanese, this this type of comment is just cringy to read. In the grand scheme of potential "languages" Japanese and English (as well as all natural human languages; including signed languages) have incredibly similar grammars. It is only when you restrict your view to the range of human languages that Japanese and English start to look incredibly different.

That seems like a total non sequitur. Do you also find the expression "like comparing apples to oranges" cringey, since apples and oranges are quite similar when compared to black holes?

[gizmo686]

That might not have been the best way for me to make my point, which is just that, qualitatively, all human languages appear to be incredibly similar. I am not aware of any way to quantify this observation. I do know, however, that children who do not acquire any language during the critical period find it much more difficult to acquire a language as an adult relative to a typical adult acquiring a second language [0]. This means that a native English speaker would be realying heavily of his knowledge of English when learning Japanese (although not necessarily at a conscious level).

I tried to avoid the "apple to oranges" objection you are raising by restricting the domain to that of "potential languages", which seems like the "fair" point of reference to take. Since Japanese and English are both natural human languages, I would consider comparing them more akin to comparing red apples and green apples.

The main point I was trying to make (which admittadly got berried at the end of my post) was that "wrong" and "not useful" are two very different concepts.

[0] This is best observed in deaf children who are not exposed to sign language at a young age.

[fenomas]

So what? You understood, and to all appearances agreed with, the point being made ("thinking of Japanese as analogous to English is counter-productive for most students"), right?

The poster clearly wasn't making any broader claim about the "qualitative similarity of all human languages" (whatever that might be).

[opportune]

What a needlessly pedantic and condescending reply