Which language should I take, Chinese or Japanese?

Guest   Thu Dec 06, 2007 7:17 am GMT
I am considering learning a non-alphabetic language. My choices have been narrowed down to Chinese and Japanese. But which one should I start to learn first?
Guest   Thu Dec 06, 2007 7:59 am GMT
Japanese. You can learn to pronounce it much much easier than Chinese, and there is also syllabilic alphabet which is very useful. Also, it uses less characters. Also, the grammar is quite simple (though more difficult to European languages, but far less dificult to Kiswahili). I suggest Japanese.
Manuel   Thu Dec 06, 2007 8:35 am GMT
Japanese is way more simple than any Chinese language. Plus you can enjoy the sushi culture.
Xie   Thu Dec 06, 2007 9:13 am GMT
People would tend to compare their linguistic differences to you, but... hey, there isn't such thing as absolute overall difficulty. While I could claim Chinese could be insanely difficult, Japanese would not be in any way less difficult.

Try both and see which you like.
furrykef   Thu Dec 06, 2007 11:32 am GMT
I think Chinese and Japanese are roughly similar in difficulty in the writing system. Chinese phonology is certainly much tougher, with its tonal system. However, the basics of Chinese grammar are more intuitive to an English speaker than those of Japanese grammar. In the end, I wouldn't be surprised if the difficulty between them is roughly equal.

I say, choose the one you'd rather learn first. If you have no preference at all, you could try out both and then stick with the one that gives you a greater impression.

- Kef
Guest   Fri Dec 07, 2007 2:04 am GMT
I guess I would try both.
L'italofilo   Fri Dec 07, 2007 4:56 am GMT
I'm a native Chinese speaker, I recommend you go for Japanese, at least, chosse it at the beginning, because Chinese is more difficult than Japanese.
d'arras   Fri Dec 07, 2007 6:24 am GMT
I have studied both Chinese and Japanese cursorily.

In terms of grammar and spoken language, I think Chinese is easier, provided you get a good handle on the tones from the start. Chinese is based on monosyllabic words, each with its own written character. The writing is the real test for Chinese. Even native Chinese have to constant stretch their writing skills and memory. It is a constant discipline and accepted as the price of being literate.

Japanese is both inflected and agglutinative (I think thoses are the correct terms) which the words are multisyllabic and the endings changes with usage and context. In addition, Japanese culture is highly layered (socially) and the language usage reflects this in that the vocabulary shifts significantly based on who is talking and to whom they address themselves.

The Japanese writing system is quite complicated, much more than Chinese. As some have noted there are some benefits to the fact the Japanese has a phonetic alphabet, two to be precise; but one is not considered literate if they only know these Japanese systems. The earliest writing system Japan had was adopted from Chinese and it is still the preferred form, kanji or Chinese characters. The difficulty is that Chinese is monosyllabic (one character has one syllable of sound), while Japanese words are multisyllabic (two or more syllables per character) in nature.

When the Japanese started writing with Chinese characters, they would just substitute their word for the Chinese word. For example, the Chinese word for moon is 'yue'. When the Japanese read the character for moon they would use their own word 'tsuki'. This worked fine with words in isolation, but the Chinese would sometimes combine syllables to form more specific words, sort of like compound words. This made the Japanese use of such combinations difficult. They had basically three choices. 1. They could use their own words for each character and end up with combinations that sounded silly in Japanese. 2. They could substitute their own more specific words that would represent the same idea, but would have no relation to the Japanese sound of the characters when read separately. Or 3. They could keep the Chinese sound of the characters and use them as newly coined words, adding Japanese endings. As it turns out they have used all three. This means that when reading a sentence in Japanese the reader is constantly having to judge whether a Chinese character is being used to represent an aboriginal Japanese word, as part of a Japanese specifying word, or as a Japanified Chinese word. If they discover that they made a misjudgment, they have to go back to the beginning as start over.

I am told that this makes reading movie subtitles quite frustrating, since one has to make split second decisions about how to read something and you rarely have time to second guess yourself.

Either language is an adventure, and both are challenging, but if you want to be literate, Japanese is going to be much tougher going.
mac   Fri Dec 07, 2007 8:52 am GMT
Good points d'arras.
K. T.   Sat Dec 08, 2007 9:13 pm GMT
D'arras,

After awhile (okay, a long while) you get used to the various readings. It's just tough at first.

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I think you can go with either language. If you are serious, these languages are big time investments (if you are starting out from an Indo-European language), so choose wisely.

How musical are you? You need a bit of an ear to learn Chinese well or your tones will sound funny. Japanese is not really tough at all-soundwise. Japanese writing is the bear, but it's not impossible.

These are the qualities you need to be a decent foreign speaker of a language like Chinese or Japanese:

Good Memory
Good Ear
Endurance
furrykef   Sun Dec 09, 2007 12:24 am GMT
Endurance is the most important one. If your memory or ear isn't good, it'll just take you longer to get it right. But if you lack the endurance, you'll fail completely. Really, I think the key to success with these languages is self-deception. Never think about how far you *really* have to go and only concentrate on your short-term goal in the language. If you keep thinking "I'm almost done with this, I'm almost done with that," it's a heck of a lot more encouraging than "Holy crap, I still have 710 kanji to learn and after I learn them I'm only going to be one step closer to literacy!"

I bet most who have learned Chinese or Japanese would not have even started if they had a true understanding of how long the road would be. I'm fully aware that this applies to me, too. Perhaps the biggest thing that keeps me going right now is that feeling of, "But I've already invested so much time and effort... I can't stop now!" -- despite that my journey has but hardly begun. Still, I know that in the end it'll be worth it. (Once I have the kanji under my belt, I'm sure my attitude will improve a lot. Studying Japanese grammar and vocabulary fascinates me; the long, boring process of studying the kanji, not so much. Also, note that you don't have to take a "kanji first" approach like I do, and indeed most people don't. I do think it's the most efficient method in the long term, though.)

If you've found anything I've said discouraging, these languages are probably not for you. The people who succeed in learning these languages are the people who ignore all these warning signs, all this negativity, and press on regardless. Whether or not you will ignore the warning signs is a part of your personality. Even if you don't know it yet, you've already made the decision and I cannot influence it. Either you have what it takes or you don't, but only you can know for sure.

- Kef
Guest   Sun Dec 09, 2007 12:39 am GMT
You must constantly practise and revise kanji. I learned up to 500 kanji, took a few months break and forgot them.
Guest   Sun Dec 09, 2007 3:24 am GMT
"You must constantly practise and revise kanji. I learned up to 500 kanji, took a few months break and forgot them."


The sinograms are a kind of logogram, people learn and memorized them in the right brain, but people memorized the alphabeh always in the left brain. So, the Westerners feel very hard to learn the Chinese Writings and Japanese Writing. You may try to hold up a pen for writing down the sinograms on exercise papers constantly. Which may help your right brain for practice to memorize the sinograms.
Guesto   Sun Dec 09, 2007 4:18 am GMT
I don't like kanji. I mean, I respect it and all, but if these languages are ever going to be used more internationally, using the roman alphabet would help in that case. Of couse native speakers are used to kanji because they grew up with it, but to most others, it is simply less practical than just using an alphabet.

Another thing is that simle kanji is not very practical for computers and other tech things. For example all computers and cell phones have roman letter on the keyboard that they must first type to retreive the kanji they want. Also, English and roman letters are already all over Asia, especially Japan. Most of Japan's katakana words are simple English and other Euro words that they have borrowed. While retaining the classic use of these writing forms, the roman letter form of these languages shoud be promoted more for the tech field, international presence and learning.
Xie   Sun Dec 09, 2007 6:21 am GMT
>>These are the qualities you need to be a decent foreign speaker of a language like Chinese or Japanese:

Good Memory
Good Ear
Endurance

I've harboured feelings that people like me have got used to a tonal language for every day of their life so far, and their pitches might be somewhat higher, such that they can possibly learn other tonal languages with much ease and sound natural. Right now, I'm learning two non-tonal languages together (English and German), and when I shadow, I tend to speak with very high pitches, that sometimes I sound funny to myself. That's what I understand as intonation in non-tonal languages so far. Since I have got used to high pitches, I'd be sort of bored when listening to plain "tones" of speech in English, for example, but I like non-tonal languages as much as those of you who like Chinese, because I'd be free from having to express myself in fixed tones and can change "tones" more freely, given the right time to do so.

>>Never think about how far you *really* have to go and only concentrate on your short-term goal in the language.

Traditional education tends to deceive people like this. I guess it isn't exactly what only a Chinese like me would think.

>>Perhaps the biggest thing that keeps me going right now is that feeling of, "But I've already invested so much time and effort... I can't stop now!" -- despite that my journey has but hardly begun.

Indeed, I've been sort of forcing myself to learn, but not too hard, and made a lot of progress through doing a little every day. I'd still worry somewhat about my learning pace, but I'd at least make sure I know a bit more every day, even if I can only learn using two verbs or two words of anything in a day, when I am busy.

>>You must constantly practise and revise kanji. I learned up to 500 kanji, took a few months break and forgot them.

Everything comes down to how much you care about the fruits of learning and the very ones you are learning now. I read the Kanji, and except a couple of weird stroke combinations, I found that I knew almost every Kanji universally, without knowing any Japanese words. But since I wasn't motivated to learn Japanese, I could only remember that "ah, 95% of the Kanji is identical to what I've been reading every day, ok, the rest is quite easy... no fuss about that", and I wouldn't know a bit of Japanese at all any time soon until I learn it.