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Chinese or Japanese: which is easier? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5327 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes  Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 9 of 73 21 April 2012 at 10:56pm | IP Logged | |||||
Nway, there is some contradiction in your post. It's true that no person could learn both languages in exactly the same conditions, but then if that's the case, why be surprised that people are asking the question? I agree that the answer would have little impact on anything, but it's a valid question. And while no person could learn in identical settings, we can objectively agree on a number of points making either language easier or harder. The impact of the information will depend on the person, on the languages they already speak, but the facts are objectively straightforward and hardly debatable: Writing System In Chinese, all words are written with characters. These characters are straightforward, almost always have a single reading, and there are often clues in the characters that lead to the pronunciation. Japanese has 3 writing systems, but once katakana and hiragana are learned, only kanji pose a real problem. Because only part of the language is written with kanji, this simplifies reading. However, kanji typically have several readings, which means that they each need to be learned in context in order to be read correctly. This makes reading significantly more complex. Pronunciation Chinese contains more consonant and more vowel sounds than Japanese. Chinese has tones -- while it's among the simpler tonal systems, it's a significant hurdle at first. Japanese has a two-way height system whereby all syllables are either high or low, but its impact on comprehension is often quoted as minimal whereas tones are an essential part of Chinese. Grammar and Morphology Because Chinese is monosyllabic, words can simply be put together to get meaning and they do not change in form or in pronunciation. However, Japanese is an agglutinative language and many changes occur when words are placed together. There is also a significant amount of rules that you must follow in order to correctly build a sentence. 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| nway Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/Vic Joined 5361 days ago 574 posts - 1707 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean | Message 10 of 73 21 April 2012 at 11:31pm | IP Logged | |||||
We really can't. Different features of varying complexities don't affect overall language difficulty unless someone were to study only Chinese grammar, but not pronunciation, or only Japanese pronunciation, but not writing. If you're learning either language in its entirety, then the difficulty of some of its individual components relative to another language's respective individual components is without any significance.
The facts indeed are. But their implications aren't. Edited by nway on 21 April 2012 at 11:37pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4955 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 11 of 73 22 April 2012 at 12:00am | IP Logged | |||||
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While this thread and both discussed languages are very interesting, I have a more
serious question. Nway, what is chupacabra? 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6543 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 12 of 73 22 April 2012 at 12:02am | IP Logged | |||||
On the other hand, I love agglutinating languages so I think Japanese would be easier for me than for someone who doesn't even know the grammar of his/her native language (provided our visual memory is equally good/bad). Edited by Serpent on 22 April 2012 at 12:05am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| nway Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/Vic Joined 5361 days ago 574 posts - 1707 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean | Message 13 of 73 22 April 2012 at 12:23am | IP Logged | |||||
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@ Cavesa:
The English word for this:
Edited by nway on 22 April 2012 at 12:23am 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| LaughingChimp Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4645 days ago 346 posts - 594 votes Speaks: Czech* | Message 14 of 73 22 April 2012 at 1:53am | IP Logged | |||||
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Arekkusu: Most Mandarin words are disyllabic and many characters have multiple readings. Edited by LaughingChimp on 22 April 2012 at 1:54am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5327 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 15 of 73 22 April 2012 at 2:18am | IP Logged | |||||
Each syllable is pronounced the same whether on its own or in a compound. That's a major plus. You're right about characters with multiple readings, but these constitute, at most, 20% of characters and half of those simply exhibit a change in tone. In the vast majority of the other cases, they still sound similar. Japanese kanji's multiple readings often have nothing in common whatsoever. Edited by Arekkusu on 22 April 2012 at 2:18am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6889 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 16 of 73 22 April 2012 at 2:56am | IP Logged | |||||
The sort of rough estimate of the level of difficulty provided by the three FSI categories can help those with limited study time decide which languages to study and which to avoid. Another area, at least for me, is the difficulty of pronunciation. A forum member once claimed that native Russian speakers have a fair chance of attaining virtually native pronunciation in Japanese and Italian. I haven't confirmed this from any other source, but assuming this to be true, it's the sort of information I can see myself taking into account when choosing a language to learn. In fact, when picking my first foreign language, I settled on Spanish over French in no small part because of its easier pronunciation. So, no harm in ranking, although it's probably not that useful to split hairs. Edited by frenkeld on 22 April 2012 at 2:58am 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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