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Chinese or Japanese: which is easier? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes  4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 33 of 73 22 April 2012 at 5:50pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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He also spoke about school education in Russia and afaiu he attended at least "middle"/high school here.
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| Zireael Triglot Senior Member Poland Joined 4651 days ago 518 posts - 636 votes Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, Spanish Studies: German, Sign Language, Tok Pisin, Arabic (Yemeni), Old English | Message 34 of 73 23 April 2012 at 7:51pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Back on topic - I'm fascinated by both Japanese and Chinese and I'm wondering which one would be better to pick after I finish with my Spanish.
Is is possible to learn tones if one is hard-of-hearing? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5381 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 35 of 73 23 April 2012 at 8:04pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Yes. I have a roughly 40 dB hearing loss and I think I did pretty well with tones back in the day. Edited by Arekkusu on 23 April 2012 at 8:05pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Zireael Triglot Senior Member Poland Joined 4651 days ago 518 posts - 636 votes Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, Spanish Studies: German, Sign Language, Tok Pisin, Arabic (Yemeni), Old English | Message 36 of 73 25 April 2012 at 2:57pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Lucky you. My hearing loss is roughly at the 100 dB mark. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5381 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 37 of 73 25 April 2012 at 3:29pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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In that case, I suggest you handle the problem from the other end -- concentrate on your production and have someone guide you in the right direction by confirming whether your production is clearly identifiable as the 4 tones. Hang on to that and you'll be able to reproduce all the words you study. If you can't hear tones enough to distinguish them, then picking up new words from exposure alone might be more difficult.
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| elaineinchina Newbie China chineseathome.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4596 days ago 1 posts - 1 votes | Message 38 of 73 26 April 2012 at 4:41am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Well, as a Chinese teacher with more than 10 years experience and who know Japanese a
little bit, I think Chinese is more easier to learn than Japanese. Chinese is a language with basic sentence structure using n. and v. very much. You can even learn Chineseathome without any tutor or going to lanugage school. In short, if you master only a little words, it's possible for you to speak a sentence fluently. But Japanese is not. There are so many rules in grammer to be memoried. Edited by elaineinchina on 26 April 2012 at 4:43am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| OneEye Diglot Senior Member Japan Joined 6850 days ago 518 posts - 784 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, Taiwanese, German, French | Message 39 of 73 26 April 2012 at 7:43pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
You might want to visit chinese-forums.com and get in touch with a member there called Meng Lelan. He is deaf, and teaches Chinese to deaf high school kids in Texas. I'm sure he could point you in the right direction. Good luck! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| atama warui Triglot Senior Member Japan Joined 4701 days ago 594 posts - 985 votes Speaks: German*, English, Japanese | Message 40 of 73 27 April 2012 at 3:36am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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In my opinion, Chinese is easier.
Forget all the tonal things for the moment - these can be trained specifically. There was one user here on the forum describing his methods, and it seemed to work great. I also think that Wulfgar can provide tricks to get it down. I saw him explaining it to someone a while ago. I do not KNOW what I'm about to say about Chinese, I just read it here on HTLAL from learners, but.. Chinese people just plug existing words together to form compounds that articulate stuff. I can't give you a Chinese example, but what it boils down to is, you need to learn less base vocabulary to begin with and can then build on that. In Japanese (and I know how it works here because I'm learning it myself), this is not possible. There do exist words in various versions and written in various readings of some certain Kanji, other stuff had just been sledgehammered to fit the syllabic sound system, ending as "Katakana words", most of them being of English origin. Essentially.. to learn ONE language (Japanese), you acquire THREE sets of vocab (Japanese, Chinese, English and some rogue foreign loanwords from other languages). 会う、間に合う、似合う、大会、開会、会議 and ミーティング all have certain things in common, yet differ in various ways ;) This, and this alone, already makes for a whole different ball game, given all I've read about Chinese on here by my fellow members is true (and I understood them correctly). However - if you love a language, it doesn't matter if it's hard or easy. I love Japanese, despite it being pretty tough in some regards. Edited by atama warui on 27 April 2012 at 3:41am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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