I'd say one of the hardest parts is the multiple ways to say every kanji with almost no rules, just memorization. Example: 行, 実行, 行う, 膝行, 売れ行き or 先生, 一生, 芝生, 往生, 千生り, 埴生, 平生, 弥生, 蓬生, 生り, 相生, 下生え, 生える
If you look back far enough (but as recent as the beginning of the Showa era), you'll even find entire sentences written in katakana+kanji.
Sarcasm.
>Also, katakana can be used to emphasize Japanese words (like WE DO in English) (e.g. キミ).
Cool, didn't know that.
>...they agree that the writing system makes sense and delivers a lot of meaning in a small space.
I've done translation work with Greek, Spanish, English and dealt with Japanese in college (helping translate/edit my Japanese room mate's papers), and why on paper, many things may look a certain way, on a computer screen it's an entirely different world.
All the Spanish and Greek stuff took up more space, Spanish especially. But with the Japanese, the keyboards took up more space and were slow to type with. So, the comparisons between space and efficiency and all kinds of other metrics are not universal.
>But some parts are harder, like distinguishing long consonants and vowels, politeness levels for verbs and nouns, dropping subjects and other information implied by context, and the postfix word order.
Sure, but this is all subjective to you. "Harder" by definition is subjective. So you can't claim your statement (is harder) is any more or less valid than mine (is easier).
>"...in fact if you don't do this, you sound noticeably non-native."
So? Not a single Japanese could pronounce "level" or "really" correctly that I ever met. The details that iron out an accent are irrelevant in the question "is this language hard to learn".
>"I think overall, Japanese is okay to learn at a casual/colloquial level."
I guess I should have put that in my post. But again, I have relatives and friends that speak fluently and they've never had an issue saying it was harder than other languages. And everyone polyglot I've met said English was very hard.
All subjective.
We did talk about it, but whenever we argue, it seems that she thinks I'm lying when I tell her that saying "Be careful!" in that context sounds like an admonishment.
They are syllabaries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syllabary
> distinguish between Japanese and foreign words
There are occasionally Japanese words written in katakana (e.g. ラーメン) and foreign words written in hiragana (e.g. たばこ). Also, katakana can be used to emphasize Japanese words (like WE DO in English) (e.g. キミ).
> Kanji script [...] is a travesty left over from cave paintings and Chinese
There is no evidence that Chinese characters come from cave paintings. You haven't explained what makes kanji a travesty, so I'll grant you the assumption that you think it's hard because there are thousands of characters to learn.
I assure you, from all the people I've met who can read kanji/hanzi (including Chinese, Korean, and American people), they agree that the writing system makes sense and delivers a lot of meaning in a small space.
> the spoken language is [...] easy to learn
Again, no justification given. I would say it's a mixed bag. Some aspects of spoken Japanese are easy to learn, such as most phones overlapping with other languages (i.e. not needing to learn many new sounds), no European grammatical stuff like {plurals, subject-verb agreement, noun genders, case}. But some parts are harder, like distinguishing long consonants and vowels, politeness levels for verbs and nouns, dropping subjects and other information implied by context, and the postfix word order.
> they don't have any exceptions in pronunciation
There are a couple I can think of. The consonant g can be pronounced [g] or [ŋ], for example in が. The consonant in ず/づ can be pronounced [z] or [dz]. And the major one is that many -u and some -i should be suppressed (e.g. です, ～ます, して); in fact if you don't do this, you sound noticeably non-native.
I think overall, Japanese is okay to learn at a casual/colloquial level. The pronunciation structure is transparent, the particles make it easy to prescribe some known-good sentence structures, and the vocabulary seems reasonable. But mastering Japanese, oh boy, that will take a lifetime. (e.g. Just to name some off the top of my head - politeness, nuances over vocabulary, onomatopoeia, different registers like manga vs. newspaper vs. legal, classical Japanese, classical Chinese, reformed spellings and grammars, multiple on'yomi and kun'yomi readings, how to read personal name kanji, reverse-engineering loanwords, studying kanji, puns, distinguishing homophones in speech, ...)