[karaokeyoga]

I think this is why there are so many "Learn Hiragana and Katakana" apps and websites. As developers we gravitate towards the known quantity (e.g. web/app development) rather than the amorphous "learn to write Japanese" goal. I am part of this cohort.

[ehnto]

Agreed, but I also think people just underestimate the breadth of language. I think a common exit point is after feeling like you've learned grammar well through your materials, you hit real world content or native speakers and realise you didn't know a single word or phrase. It is really disheartening, but on the flipside the first time you start to understand it will be an electric feeling. Quite addictive.

[johnnyanmac]

Japanese isn't that hard to write though. Especially kana. yoou can learn to prounouce those in a week with flashcards (I did so in high school) and honesly, making your own flashcards are good writing practice. Even Kanji is surprisingly structured in how you write the strokes after you do a few hundred.

Now, reading kanji... that's where the pain begins.

[mauvia]

Kanji's a lot less daunting when you realize they're words not letters.They convey ideas instead of sounds (heck they don't even really convey a single sound considering the number of readings)

[imtringued]

There are like 220 hiragana/katakana. You can't learn those in a week.

Reading kanji is easy, the problem is looking them up. Jisho has a terrible kanji recognition engine. The one from sljfaq.org works amazingly well, but it is not a dictionary so you have to ugh, copy every kanji by hand, making the process take forever for each word.

[gwervc]

> There are like 220 hiragana/katakana. You can't learn those in a week.

They're less than 50 each, plus a few diacritics. I did learn hiragana in 3 days, it's that easy. One just need motivation, and practice. People failing at it just don't put the work. Heck, I can read more thai letters than a relative who lives there for years and is "learning" the language because I sat and took a few hours to practice.

[HKH2]

You seem to have intrinsic motivation to learn languages, whereas your relative probably has extrinsic motivation - looking for a punishment or a reward (E.g. I have to learn it because people here use it. If I don't...)