How Francis Xavier described Japan in 1552:>Japan is a very large empire entirely composed of islands. One language is spoken throughout, not very difficult to learn. This country was discovered by the Portuguese eight or nine years ago. The Japanese are very ambitious of honors and distinctions, and think themselves superior to all nations in military glory and valor. They prize and honor all that has to do with war, and all such things, and there is nothing of which they are so proud as of weapons adorned with gold and silver. They always wear swords and daggers both in and out of the house, and when they go to sleep they hang them at the bed's head. In short, they value arms more than any people I have ever seen. They are excellent archers, and usually fight on foot, though there is no lack of horses in the country. They are very polite to each other, but not to foreigners, whom they utterly despise. They spend their means on arms, bodily adornment, and on a number of attendants, and do not in the least care to save money. They are, in short, a very warlike people, and engaged in continual wars among themselves; the most powerful in arms bearing the most extensive sway. They have all one sovereign, although for one hundred and fifty years past the princes have ceased to obey him, and this is the cause of their perpetual feuds.[11][12]
>The Japanese people were not easily converted; many of the people were already Buddhist or Shinto. Francis tried to combat the disposition of some of the Japanese that a God who had created everything, including evil, could not be good. The concept of Hell was also a struggle; the Japanese were bothered by the idea of their ancestors living in Hell. Despite Francis' different religion, he felt that they were good people, and could be converted.[13][14]
good thread
>>18545137>One language is spoken throughout, not very difficult to learn.Oh no no no Xavierxistas, what is this???https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Xavier>There was a huge language barrier as Japanese was unlike other languages the missionaries had previously encountered. For a long time, Francis struggled to learn the language.[48]
>>18545234>Jesuits lieGreat revelation fren
>>18545143Yeah except I visited a Buddhist temple there depicting their 16(?) hells.
>>18545137>One language is spoken throughout, not very difficult to learn.“Studied anime for 20 years and still can’t understand shit because Japanese is the hardest language ever” weebs in shambles>>18545616Buddhist hell is temporary. The only question is how long you spend there before rebirth
>>18546822>believes Xavier's liesDidn't read the thread award >>18545234
>>18547304It's actually true and both are correct. Japanese is a hard language to read/write but not to speak, people who make their learning of japanese as some grand acheivment and part of their identity fool themselves because they fell for the kanji deck first meme rather than learning through audio and grammar alone, which is how language is naturally acquired. In doing so they artificially constrained their rate of acquistion by how many squiggles they can memorize in a day without eroding the ones they memorized yesterday, and thus tying their learning rate to their visual memory. Similarly, Francis and other missionaries struggled with writing because logographs are bad at conveying meaning without knowing it through association, you can't parse them as you can alphabetic languages, especially Japanese whose symbols being borrowed from China makes them even more phonetosemantically detached from their meaning (radicals are a meme). Similarly literacy was even more low in the countries that used them then those that didn't, and so it likely wasn't a simple matter to convince some shinto priest who saw calligraphy as art to put that same effort to write about some foreigners gods who view their's as demons, and learning how to draw those kanji was even more tiresome. Also, Japan is one of the furthest places possible to reach during that era which in addition to the insular nature of it, made it hard to convert regardless of language.
>>18545137
>>18545137>weapons adornedAdornments were a warlike thing before it became a woman thing to be adorned.Now warlike people are expected to be as sterile looking as possible.Takes away from the spirit, gives it to the other gender.
>>18546822>“Studied anime for 20 years and still can’t understand shit because Japanese is the hardest language ever” weebs in shamblesI wonder if he's talking about spoken only though. Japanese as an actual language is actually one of the simpler big languages in the world. It's the written form (which is what most weeds are trying to learn so they can read Manga/Vidya) that is the worst writing system ever devised. I've hear it said that "Japanese is the easiest language to become illiterate in".
>>18546822Buddhist hell also isn't based on an "unfair" metric of whether you were lucky enough to be born in a place that had heard of Jesus by the time you were born. There's no "sweet ole' grandma is burning in hell because she died before the missionaries showed up" problem in buddhism. You can avoid hell by simply acting "morally", though of course buddhist cultures will have their own bullshit about random things that send you to hell like "having the temerity to die before your parents".
In one year I read 30 Japanese books and mountains of other media and got good enough to use a jp only dictionary while reading. Being able to watch anime with subs is actually an extremely low bar normes overestimate. I never got good enough to speak so I retired as a weeb
>>18550594it's not hard to compile a list of the most common verbs and useful names and just spit them out without any conjugation or particles or grammar at all. the language is phonetically very simple, which is perhaps the greatest concern when trying to communicate in this basic manneractually learning the language, and especially reading and writing, is obviously much different
>>18552166Learning grammar should be done first before making an effort to increase vocabulary.
Literacy being considered part of "knowing" a language is a mistake in general. The vast majority of Japanese people throughout history were illiterate, acquiring their fucked writing system would have absolutely been difficult for them as well. The writing system isn't part of the language, it's another thing tacked on and you can be fluent while illiterate.
>>18552222Unfortunately most of the world has thoroughly embraced the written word in the past 200 years. It used to be that the world was very easily navigable just by listening and speaking - modern society teaches children to read and write and then drives them away from interacting with other humans. Why ask somebody for help with finding the right floor for a restaurant when they have a sign in front of you? Mass literacy has done more damage to human society and the planet at large than any other invention
>>18552193sure, if you're a weeaboo living with your parents dreaming of moving to japan to finally touch a womanif you're a portuguese merchant in sixteenth century japan, you're gonna get by just fine with a less structured approach
>>18552267That is the dumbest thing I've ever read.
>Francis Xavier was the early modern period equivalent of a weeb who says Japanese is easy to learn because he figured out like 15 words from osmosis after watching 100 hours of subbed animekek
>>18552267That is the smartest thing I've ever read.
>>18546822>“Studied anime for 20 years and still can’t understand shit because Japanese is the hardest language ever” weebs in shamblesAny idiot can become fluent in spoken Japanese if they're enough of a weeb and commit for 30 minutes a day, as long as they skip the formal upper-class register that nobody who will go their entire life without meeting the Emperor really has to use.Written Japanese is a nightmare though
>>18545234Basques are famous for exaggerating. Besides, he was a native speaker of Basque, which has a complex verb conjugation.
>>18553098I can imagine those Spaniards simping on Japanese women.
