Why learn Japanese Language

Why learn Japanese language?

If you have landed on this page due from google search results, then you must be already thinking of learning Japanese or learning any foreign language. 

Which means that thought of learning foreign language just came in your mind, or you have already done enough research on this topic and still doing more of it, or you have already decided to learn foreign language and want know, reconfirm benefits, advantages, disadvantages.

Why learn foreign language?

Learning foreign language has many benefits. Different people can see it in different way. It depends on what is your interest? What you want to achieve by learning foreign language? If you are learning for career development then what profession you are in?

Let’s look at it from various angles.

Culture:

When you learn any language, you do not learn language alone. You learn culture of that country. You learn various aspects of that land. You learn values, beliefs of people of that land. To understand the language you learn, you learn kind festivals country celebrates. You learn about weather, seasons in that particular country. You also learn history of the country.

While learning language you learn various things about that country knowingly or unknowingly. Then you slowly you start comparing it with your own country, your own language. Many times it gives you opportunity to reflect on your understanding of your own culture and language. You discover things newly in your own culture. You find differences and similarities with your own culture and language.

If you are enthusiast who want to learn about different cultures then starting point can be learning language. 

Career:

Learning any foreign language opens doors to many career options. It can open many opportunities for you to travel, immigrate and have rich experience of working in different parts of globe. For further explanation we would like divide “career options” in two parts. One is “Linguistic careers” and second is career options where language acts as supporting but essential skill.

“Linguistic careers”

One can decide to major in language and make linguistic skills itself a career. For this category of careers generally people do full-time courses, university graduate or post graduate degree. This requires level of your skills to be at least at medium to high level. Basic level of expertise may not be sufficient for these career options. On basis of your foreign language skills you can take career as:

• Translator

• Interpreter

• Language Teacher

“Language as supporting skill”

There are multiple careers where language skills act as supporting but very essential skill. This really takes various forms. Such as one can work in his/her own country and use language skills to do business with foreign country of which the person have language expertise. Or one can find job opportunity in foreign country where person uses primary skills like engineering, designing etc. but uses language skills only for communication required in job and to live in that particular country. Many countries welcome talent from all around the world where niche skill is not sufficiently available locally. If you possess such niche skill, having knowledge of language spoken in that country will surely increase your chances to grab the opportunity. It will also help you to ease your living in that country, if the common language like English is not widely spoken there. Sometimes not only niche skills but also lack of human resource availability in host country can open doors for immigrants and there also people knowing language can get high priority.

Though there are unlimited fields where people with foreign language knowledge get high priority, few are listed below:

• IT/ITES, Software development services

• Tourism

• Hotel industry

• Journalism

• Content writing

Why Japanese:

Having discussed all above, the benefits of learning foreign language and career options, next question comes in mind “which language?” 

There are many languages which are widely taught in schools, colleges and private language institutes. One might decide to choose language which is being taught in school/college. Or maybe based on person’s own interest. Or maybe language of the country where one wants go in future for living for seeking his own professional or other interests. Or one may choose language just because he/she just liked it when he/she heard someone speaking that language.

In spite of few similarities with other languages, when you learn in details, every language is unique. Every language has its own peculiarity. Japanese language is also unique. If you have interest in Japan’s history, culture and art you should learn Japanese language. Japan is famous for Japanese cuisine, Origami art, it’s tea ceremony and even for sports like martial arts and Sumo. If you have interest in any of these or want to know more about it you should have some knowledge about Japanese language.

Japanese language has three different scripts. Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji. Hiragana and Katakana are syllabic alphabets and has single phonetic readings. Kanji is logographic script. They are pictorial characters derived from Chinese script. There are approximately 8000 Kanjis in Japanese. Japanese writing system is combination of all three, Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji. One should learn Japanese if has interest in understanding totally different script.

Japan is one of the biggest economies of world. Japanese organizations have their presence in entire world. Japan is one of the top trading nation in the world. It is developed nation with high standard of living and state of the art infrastructure. Due to all this there are ample career opportunities throughout the world and Japan itself if you learn Japanese language along with your primary skills. As mentioned above you can make career in Japanese language itself or use Japanese language as additional skill with your primary skills. Japanese language skill gives you additional advantage over and above your primary skills. For example there is high demand in IT engineers in Japan who also has knowledge of Japanese language.

Many international students go to Japanese universities for higher studies. Japanese government and universities also assist foreign students with various scholarships.

Challenges:

While taking any decisions it is important to understand the possible challenges. If you are aware of the challenges beforehand you can plan something to tackle those. Everyone may have different way to tackle those. Let’s discuss few here.

Efforts: Studying Japanese language when you are not in Japan requires more efforts. One need to engage in language learning activity in various ways. Along with regular language classes one need to put extra efforts. Activities such as watching movies, TV dramas, making friends with you can talk in Japanese language will help. Just attending 2/3 classes and not being in touch with language rest of the time may not work. 

Staying focused: You may find learning experience interesting in initial few days. But after initial few weeks/months keeping it interesting and staying focused may be difficult. This might be true for any new learning but particularly true for learning Japanese language. 

Before starting learning you must be aware of these challenges and tell yourself that you cannot be expert in language in month or two. To attain even basic level of expertise it may take up to six months. And to be expert it may take somewhere around three years. Of course it differs person to person depending on various aspects.

Conclusion:

Hope we have tried to cover various aspects about learning foreign language, particularly Japanese language. Hope it will help you in taking your decision about language learning. We would surely like to know your feedback.

All the best and happy learning!!

Disclaimer: This information is only for purpose of sharing our knowledge and experience. Please do enough research before taking your career or any other decision.