THE CHALLENGE OF LEARNING JAPANESE FOR INDONESIANS

        Learning Japanese for most Indonesians is often very difficult because the Japanese and Indonesia have different characteristics. Several differences such as elements of the sounds that form words, the writing system, the structure of clauses, and the culture of the society that reflected in Japanese make Japanese tend to be difficult to be learned by Indonesian people. 

        Universally, all languages ​​in the world have the same elements. Each language can be used to indicate activity, feeling, time, place, and so forth. Nevertheless, each language also has its uniqueness. The uniqueness of a language is the characteristic of the language.

        Greenberg (1963) proposed a typology of languages ​​based on word order typology which groups languages ​​based on the word order of subjects, objects, and verbs (S, O, V). according to its word order, it is very clear that Japanese and Indonesian have a very big difference. Japanese is a language with SOV word order, while Indonesian is a language that has an SVO sequence pattern. We can see this from the clause Saya menonton film ‘I watched a movie’. In Japanese, the position of the verb 'watch' is in the final position of the clause. The clause in Indonesian can be translated into Japanese: Watashi wa eiga o mimasu. The word menonton ‘watch’ in Indonesia is indicated by the verb mimasu in Japanese.

        The Japanese learners of Indonesian, especially those who do not have any background in linguistics, the Japanese word order, certainly something strange and unusual. They tend to think that Japanese is a language that has a structure that is rarely possessed by other languages, when in fact, most of the world's languages ​​have word order typology with the position of the verb at the end of a clause. The difference between the word order in Japanese in Indonesian is one of the difficulties for Indonesians to learn Japanese. If it was compared with Korean people who learn Japanese, of course, the Japanese language is not as difficult as Indonesian people think because the structure of Korean is almost similar to Japanese. The position of a Korean verb is at the end of a clause.

        The implication of the difference in word order is not only in a clause, in a phrase. In Japanese, we say akai shatsu for baju merah ‘the red shirt’ phrase in Indonesian. The word that shows the meaning of ‘red’ in Japanese is akai and the word shatsu is the head of the phrase which means ‘clothes’. This shows that the core positions of Japanese and Indonesian phrases are the opposite.

        The next challenge for the Japanese learner of Indonesian is the Japanese pronunciations. Most of the sounds in Japanese and Indonesian are the same. But, unfortunately, it does not mean that Indonesians can pronounce Japanese properly and correctly. Why? In the Indonesian language, several sounds do not receive special attention, for example when we say the sound /z/ in word izin ‘permit’ and zaman ‘age, period’, Indonesian people tend to pronounce it to be /ijin/ and /jaman/. In Japanese, there are sounds /z/, /sh/, /ts/, and /s/ which are often incorrectly spoken by Indonesians. Sounds /z/ in Japanese, often mistakenly pronounced /j/ or /s/, sounds /ts/ pronounced /s/ or /ch/, and sounds /sh/ pronounced /s/. Of course, this makes a difference in the meaning of the word. For example, for the word kaizen ‘continuous improvement’, maybe we can do a little test on ourselves. Say the word while we touch our neck. Is there a vibration when we say the word? If there is, it means we have pronounced it correctly, if not, it means we are pronouncing it wrong.

        In addition to these two things, other issues must be considered. The writing system in Indonesian is a writing system of sound symbols. In Japanese, there are two writing systems, namely the writing system of sound symbols using kana letters (hiragana and katakana) and the system of writing symbols of meaning using kanji letters. To master Japanese well and be able to read Japanese writing proficiently, Japanese language learners must master these three letters because all writing in Japanese tends to use these three letters simultaneously. All Japanese can be written using kana, but not all Japanese can be written using kanji. However, the use of kana only in a writing is very difficult for the reader, so that inevitably, like it or not, kanji must also be used.

        Moreover, to be able to use Japanese naturally, of course, we must understand the culture of Japanese society. The most obvious example for me is the reason that is often used when someone arrives late. In Indonesia, we often use ‘rain’ and ‘traffic’ as an excuse to arrive late. But, when the reason is spoken in Japanese, it seems to be a strange reason. In the Japanese mindset, rain and traffic are two things that must be taken into account when someone makes a promise. Thus, there is no reason for you to come late if the rain is falling or if there is a traffic jam. So, if you want to learn Japanese, don’t forget to learn about the culture as well.