Japanese easier for native spanish speaking people?
Hola!
I lived in Japan for three years and did my best to learn Japanese, but it was HARD and I still struggle. However, I had several friends from Chile, Cuba, Mexico and a few other Spanish speaking countries who learned Japanese much quicker than any of the other expats, even those who come from places where learning new languages is normal, like Europe, India, and parts of Africa.
My Spanish speaking colleagues told me it has to do with the structure of Japanese and the sounds that are possible. At first I doubted it because the languages seem so different, but they actually do have a lot in common ... well, from a spoken language point of view. (Adjectives following nouns, all syllables spoken (not silent like in French or English), even the way questions are formed is similar, etc.)
Has anyone else noticed this? Do you speak both languages? I am fascinated by this linguistic connection.
Regards, Roberto
5 Answers
Yes, I have noticed several similarities between Spanish and Russian, though very subtle. Both don't need pronouns to express like English does. And I haven't found (yet) where a letter of the alphabet is silent like it is in English ("gh" in though or thought).
One of the hurdles in learning other languages is accepting it "as is." A child doesn't question whether or not it makes sense; they just accept it as it is.
If you can get a hold of the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 1969, it has an illustration of languages and their origins inside the back cover. (The copy I had was a hardcover brown book.) It is very interesting to see how the languages connect.
Another thing that I have heard down the years is that English is backwards as opposed to all the other languages, plus it has a bit of everything in it. It ranks as one of the top 3 most difficult languages to learn (the other 2 are Russian and Chinese) because of all the rules and exceptions involved.
I can't offer very much to this discussion because I've studied Spanish relatively little and Japanese even less, but during my tentative forays into Japanese it did definitely strike me that the pronunciation at least is reminiscent of Spanish. I've often heard it said that it's easier to learn Japanese pronunciation if you speak Spanish and I can see why. In particular, the vowel sounds seem almost identical, and the Japanese 'r' has more in common with the Spanish 'r' than with the English 'r'.
Along a similar thought, I have often wondered if your ancestors (3 or 4 generations removed) came from a particular country, whether or not the ability to learn and speak the language from that country remained in your genes? I have noticed that it is much easier for some people to master the pronunciation of a given language than it is for someone else who is good with an entirely different set of language phonetics. I so wish I had the ability to translate what I just said into Spanish; perhaps in another 5 years! 
As a Mexican, it's more easy for us at least in the pronunciation part, as for the structure maybe I can really say it's easy, but for me I do think the japanese grammar is easy but not quite sure if it is because i'm Spanish talker or because the japanese grammar is really easy. In my personal opinion I think is really easy because unlike English or spanish the verbs follow a really simple structure and the use verb auxiliaries to make new grammar points.
expat?
