I can speak Korean, English, and a bit of Japanese. Korean is my mother tongue and I've learned English long enough but I can't say I can really speak Japanese; I'm not really capable of having a conversation in  = with Japanese. Yet I know the grammar of Japanese and words in Japanese = and words in Japanese well enough to read some basic Japanese. I cheat a lot from Korean because most words in Korean and Japanese are composed of Chinese characters, a curious writing system shared by Northeast Asia. If the level of words remains easy, I can read and understand what is written in Japanese, e.g. comic books or notices in public places. Still, speaking is a completely different matter to me since Japanese read = reads as Chinese characters in a different way to Korean and since a Chinese character is pronounced in a multiple way in Japanese, making me impossible to read out Japanese without yomigana, which refers to a small superscript next to a Chinese character telling its pronunciation in some comic books or books for children for even some Japanese apparently don't know how to read it.