Is Japanese that primitive?


I've been learning japanese for a while as well as other languages and I keep
thinking that it's primitive because everything is dropped out and the number
of words is less than in other languages such as English and especially
Russian. I think it's made for transmitting information in a very simple way
rather than feelings, emotions and something beyond this. It's similar to
making notes in your book -- very short and very simple messages.

What's your opinion?




I'm wondering how long you've been studying Japanese.

Japanese is hardly primitive. It is highly expressive: in fact, in many
regards it is more expressive than English (or Russian). For example, the use
of honorifics and keigo make clear relationships between people that is not
possible in Indo-European languages in the clean straight-forward manner of
Japanese.

Japanese is more explicit than Indo-European languages in expressing how you
come by the information:

[code]

    雨が降るそうです。
    雨が降りそうです。
    雨が降ります。
    
[/code]

All three sentences could be simply (primitively) translated into English as
"It's going to rain." But the first sentence conveys that you got this
information from someone else; the second sentence conveys your impression
(perhaps you see storm clouds gathering); as for the third sentence it might
be technically correct to translate as above, but it's really only appropriate
for expressing the fact that it's raining right now. Because of these
differences the above three sentences could be translated as

[code]

    I hear it's going to rain.
    It looks like it's going to rain.
    It's going to rain.
    
[/code]

But in English we aren't that particular. We might just say "it's going to
rain" whether it's our impression from what we observe or whether we learned
it from the weatherman on the radio. And, so from the perspective of Japanese,
there's a degree of ambiguity in the English which would lead to the question,
"how do you know?" In Japanese, those three sentences are very clear about how
you know what you know.

Sentence ending particles, and such, convey a great deal of information, again
in a manner that is not easily expressed in English.

[code]

    いいです。
    いいですよ。
    いいんです。
    いいんですよ。
    
[/code]

While without any further context, these would all be translated as "it's
fine." In Japanese, there are subtle differences, particularly in the use of
ん, that are just not translatable.

The following two sentences most likely are not being said by the same person:

[code]

    きれいね。
    きれいだな。
    
[/code]

The first is probably a woman, and the second is probably a man. ("Probably"
because if you're in the LGBT community, you might be speaking in a different
register.) And then if you change the particles:

[code]

    きれいだ。
    きれいだわ。
    きれいよ。
    
[/code]

I wouldn't begin to know how to translate the differences in English without
the English getting clunky, ackward, and unnatural. But they're all natural in
Japanese; each with a slightly different feel or color to it. The best we can
do in English---avoiding clunkiness---is to say, "It's beautiful" and let the
context convey the rest.

English is very good at conveying information in a straight-forward and
objective feeling manner. Take again, "it's going to rain". In English, and
other Indo-European languages, we don't really care how you came upon the
information. Looking up at the sky and seeing storm clouds or hearing the
weather report, either way it's going to rain. So, in English, our attitude is
not to get bogged down in the details of how you got to know what you know,
just "shoot it to me straight". But these are cultural and linguistic
differences. They point to different perspectives about what the various
languages deem is important to communicate to others. These are not short-
comings in the expressibility of the languages.

And as for vocabulary, Japanese is highly expressive. Find a good Japanese
dictionary (written in Japanese for Japanese) and you'll discover the rich
variety and subtly of the language. Try reading Yukio Mishima in Japanese, and
look up those uncommon or strange looking kanji; often he chose those
characters not just to look literary but to go after subtle nuance in feeling
or meaning. "Sound of waves" in English, while an entertaining story, comes
out rather flat compared to the language Mishima used. Comparing the two side
by side, a Japanese person might remark, "English lacks the depth of
expression we're capable of in Japanese."

