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?
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words
Is Japanese that primitive?
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:

```

    雨が降るそうです。
    雨が降りそうです。
    雨が降ります。
    
```

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

```

    I hear it's going to rain.
    It looks like it's going to rain.
    It's going to rain.
    
```

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.

```

    いいです。
    いいですよ。
    いいんです。
    いいんですよ。
    
```

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:

```

    きれいね。
    きれいだな。
    
```

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:

```

    きれいだ。
    きれいだわ。
    きれいよ。
    
```

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."
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I like A Ellett's answer very much and voted it up. But it begs a larger
question: does a language's grammar define the limits of what syntax can be
expressed by said language, or has each language evolved a grammar
sufficiently rich to express all the syntax which is desired to be expressed
by said language's speakers?

I believe the answer is the latter. And I also believe that the body of
potential syntax which is desired to be expressed in both Japanese and English
is the same when with regards to practical issues such as weather prediction
and performing tasks. What Ellet's answer shows in the "rain" example above is
only that Japanese has a succinct and hence eloquent grammatical form for that
syntactic example compared to English - but not that English is lacking in the
ability to express the same syntactically. (Pure speculation on my part but
--- the overall relative jumble of English grammar is due its formation from
the collision of many different grammar systems, whereas Japanese has grown
like a crystal in relative isolation).

However there are differences in syntax; e.g. the degree to which polite
address is used and the way it formalizes relationships between people. For
this reason Japanese has developed the vocabulary and grammar of Keigo for
which there is no direct equivalent in English. Another syntactic difference
is the Japanese practice of saying "Gokurousama/Otukaresama". There is not
really an exact translation for that social interaction translation in English
that doesn't sound awkward.

Finally, there is scientific evidence that an inability to learn grammar,
while maintaining ability to learn vocabulary and many other language
functions, is passed on genetically in some rare families:
<http://minddevlab.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/Language%20capacities_%20Is%20grammar%20special.pdf>
So it would seem that every race of modern man carries this genetically
enabled grammar learning ability, which is why any normal baby from anywhere
and any race on the planet when raised in an English environment will
naturally pick up English grammar, such as the use of past tense.

In summary, we are on a level playing field in terms of potential for any
language to express all necessary syntax. But due to cultural differences, the
syntax being expressed will vary.
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I don't want to waste much words. But I can promise you've read only 0.000001%
or very likely less than that of the full extent of the Japanese vocabulary.

I happen to be reading right now 前田利鎌’s「臨済・荘子 - Introduction of two religious
figures」published by 岩波書店, which was first published in 1933. It's a thin book
at 255 pages.

I'm 83 years old and pretty familiar with old-style Japanese writings as
compared with today's youth. Still I can read and understand only 70 to 80 %
(at the most) of the words used in the book.

The stock of Japanese vocabulary is huge because it contains 大和言葉 - original
Japanese language, 漢文 - Chinese classic vocabulary, Sanskrit via Buddhist
jargon, Japanese translation of western words, and so forth.

We have the saying, "九牛の一毛” which means a piece of hair out of all hair of
nine oxen, and also ”群盲象を撫でる meaning a group of the blind say, and clamorously
argue individually what an elephant looks like by only touching a part of the
elephant's body, such as its skin, nose, ear, tail, hoof, foot, or only a
piece of hair, or a mustache, if it has one.

Please don't make a premature judgement until you go through millions of
volumes of Japanese classics including 古事記、日本書紀、源氏物語、宇治拾遺、土佐日記、群書類従、various
仏教説話 and so on, and tons of books covering classic and modern Japanese
literature.

As a starter I recommend you read "百代の過客" written by Mr. Donald Keen,
Professor emeritus of Columbia University, and a leading Japanologist, which
introduces and analyses the writing styles of historically famous
personalities' diaries, dating back to 土佐日記 written in 承平5年 - in 935.

  * By the way, do you know what "百代の過客" means? I guess almost 100 % of Japanese are familiar with this word, which appears in 芭蕉's famous travel piece, "奥の細道" we read in high school. 

You'll see how vocabulary of Japanese language is extensive and delicate.

I'm sure Mr. Donald Keen would faint if he heard someone like you saying that
Japanese language is primitive and the number of words is less than that of
English or Russian.

Have you ever counted all Japanese words? Don't follow the folly of the blind
exclaiming "Hey I got it! This is a whole body of an elephant" by showing a
piece of its hair to us. It will be blown away with a whiff of your own
breath, but the elephant won't.
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Having a little experience translating b/w pairs of Japanese-Russian and
Japanese-English, I can clearly see that within each pair of these languages
there are some "compatible" and "incompatible" parts of syntax. The most
obvious example is the concept of gender:

  * In Russian, all nouns have intrinsic gender, and other words, such as verbs, have gender as an "attached" attribute, e.g. "сказа _ть_ " ("to say", dictionary form) becomes "(он) сказа _л_ " (masculine) and "(она) сказа _ла_ " (feminine) in its' past tense. This is not compatible with Japanese, which (mostly) lacks the concept of gender.

  * However, in Japanese, gender of a speaker may be conveyed by using gender-specific pronouns and particles, which cannot be naturally translated into English, as well as Russian (to some extent).

Other examples include the lack of grammatical case, number, pronoun omission,
etc.

Such incompatibilities exists for every pair of aforementioned languages, but,
as far as I can tell, English and Russian have less of them. This may lead you
to a conclusion that Japanese lacks major parts of syntax which may seem
"common" if English and Russian are happen to be the languages you already
know sufficiently well. I believe these is just a case of some cognitive bias.

> and the number of words is less than in other languages

If you mean the number of dictionary entries, I should point out that this
metric is rather speculative:

  * If some dictionary would include the names of all known chemical substances, like [dihydrogen monoxide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dihydrogen_monoxide_hoax), it would be massive for any language
  * Loan words are typically just name same things differently. For example, "management" has an equivalent of "менеджмент" in Russian, but I'd say it sounds quite pretentious, since you can just say "управление"
  * Most older loan words are outdated and barely used anyway
  * Average educated person's native vocabulary is limited to tens of thousands of words anyway, so relying of some dictionary size is like saying "the sum of heights of all my family members is bigger than yours, thus I should be considered a taller person!"

From my personal experience, Japanese is rather rich in terms of verb
collocations, which for me, as a foreigner, sound like separate verbs (and
they are listed separately in dictionaries).

* * *

There is, however, a thing which I personally consider "archaic" (i.e.
"primitive" as in "not advanced enough") in Japanese - the lack of spacing b/w
words. I believe that [scriptio
continua](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scriptio_continua) is a typical
characteristic of older versions of many modern languages. My arguments are:

  * It is a type of change which can facilitate reading abilities of both natives and foreigners, so there is no good logical reason against introducing this change to the language. It is known that Japanese can read (to some extent) hiragana-only texts with proper spacing, which was demonstrated by early video games, where memory sizes prevented their creators to add kanji. (I'm _not_ implying that kanji is archaic or excessive.)
  * It is relatively easy to add to the language (compared to kanji simplification), so there is no practical reason against introducing this change.

However, I don't want to make a revolution here, and I'm fine with Japanese as
it is. I'm just a foreigner who is easily scared when shown more than 3 kanji
in a row. =)
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