catharsis Bilingual Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5434 days ago 12 posts - 12 votes Speaks: English*, Korean*
| Message 1 of 33 10 February 2010 at 2:08am | IP Logged |
I have quite a few friends who want to learn the three big Asian languages: Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.
Most of them have pretty much the same level of interest in these languages and can easily find natives in these languages.
Thanks.
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genini1 Senior Member United States Joined 5470 days ago 114 posts - 161 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Mandarin, Japanese
| Message 2 of 33 10 February 2010 at 3:34am | IP Logged |
It's really going to depend almost entirely on which one they want to learn first. Each one has pro's and con's but none that would point them out as either better or worse to learn before another. I find Japanese the best one to learn first but again this is personal preference in that I have a lot of materials I want to use (anime, manga, video games etc.)
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Saif Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5614 days ago 122 posts - 208 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Levantine)*, French
| Message 3 of 33 10 February 2010 at 4:09am | IP Logged |
I'm not an expert, but I think you have it right in the title. C-->J-->K unless
priorities require you to learn one of the others first.
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lichtrausch Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5962 days ago 525 posts - 1072 votes Speaks: English*, German, Japanese Studies: Korean, Mandarin
| Message 4 of 33 10 February 2010 at 4:31am | IP Logged |
I would say that it depends 90% on their personal preferences which order they choose. I chose Japanese first because I find the writing system fascinating and because I could pronounce it fairly well from the get go as opposed to Chinese. Also it's definitely got the cool factor going for it and lots of entertaining media. I plan to learn Korean next because I'd like to learn a comparatively easy language next (that is to say, comparatively easy coming from a Japanese background). Then finally I will learn Chinese.
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YoshiYoshi Senior Member China Joined 5533 days ago 143 posts - 205 votes Speaks: Mandarin*
| Message 5 of 33 10 February 2010 at 4:35am | IP Logged |
In my experience, Japanese & Korean can even be regarded as a combination, because they're rather similar in terms of syntactic structure, while Chinese is somewhat another matter. I mean first you may learn the combination (J + K), then Chinese, or the other way around. It's up to you.
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Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6770 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek
| Message 6 of 33 10 February 2010 at 6:58am | IP Logged |
I suggest J - K - C because of all the good materials in Japanese for learning Korean and Chinese, and by the time
you've learned both Japanese and Korean you'll have a good grounding in kanji and Chinese vocabulary.
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ericspinelli Diglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5785 days ago 249 posts - 493 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Korean, Italian
| Message 7 of 33 10 February 2010 at 8:58am | IP Logged |
I agree with Captain Haddock. I don't know much about Chinese, but I would definitely recommend learning Japanese before Korean. There seem to be more and better resources in English for learning Japanese and once you learn Japanese you gain access to a number of great resources for Korean. The phonetics of Japanese are simpler and its morphology is much more regular than Korean. Anybody planning to learn Chinese will have to learn characters eventually, so this downside of Japanese in comparison to Korean is negligible.
I also think one is best off going from Japanese straight to Korean so I would suggest either J - K - C or C - J - K.
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The Real CZ Senior Member United States Joined 5651 days ago 1069 posts - 1495 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean
| Message 8 of 33 10 February 2010 at 6:26pm | IP Logged |
If you start with Korean and also learn hanja, then the other two will be easier, since Korean is regarded as the toughest of the three.
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