A study of Japanese would free us from the fetters of any such family infatuation.

The inviolable rules and regulations of our mother-tongue would be found to be of relative application only.

For we should discover that speech is a much less categorical matter than we had been led to suppose.

We should actually come to doubt the fundamental necessity of some of our most sacred grammatical constructions; and even our reverenced Latin grammars would lose that air of awful absoluteness which so impressed us in boyhood.
An encouraging estimate of a certain missionary puts the amount of study needed by the Western student for the learning of Japanese as sufficient, if expended nearer home, to equip him with any three modern European languages.

It is certainly true that a completely strange vocabulary, an utter inversion of grammar, and an elaborate system of honorifics combine to render its acquisition anything but easy.