🇯🇵 → 🇬🇧

How easy is English for Japanese speakers?

Going from Japanese to English (English) has a composite linguistic distance of 87% (curated lexical data). Below is the dimension-by-dimension breakdown.

87% distance FSI Cat I (Easiest) — 600–750 hours

Lexical similarity

10%

Shared vocabulary, cognates, and loanwords.

Grammatical distance

37%

Morphology, syntax, word order, cases.

Phonological similarity

Shared sounds and phoneme inventory.

Writing-system match

Japanese → Latin

Genealogical kinship

Japonic ↔ Indo-European

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Sample sentences side-by-side

How everyday sentences look in both languages:

🇯🇵 Japanese

The computer and internet have transformed global communication and information.

🇬🇧 English

コンピュータとインターネットは世界のコミュニケーションと情報を変えました。

🇯🇵 Japanese

At the restaurant I had coffee, pizza, and chocolate cake for dessert.

🇬🇧 English

レストランで、デザートにコーヒー、ピザ、チョコレートケーキを食べました。

Other easy languages for Japanese speakers

The 5 languages with the lowest linguistic distance from Japanese:

Think you can tell them apart?

A quick 3-question check between Japanese and English. No signup.