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Another "Chinese or Japanese" thread | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| rippletoad Newbie United States Joined 4862 days ago 5 posts - 8 votes | Message 1 of 4 17 August 2011 at 5:39pm | IP Logged |
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I've taught myself some Chinese characters and classical Chinese to be able to read ancient Korean documents. I haven't been studying classical Chinese for a while, but I still remember how to write most of the characters. I've taught myself the characters in both Korean and Mandarin pronunciations, so I know how to pronounce them with tones (how well, that's a different story). I want to study either Mandarin or Japanese due to my love of learning the characters, so I need some help on which one I should choose.
I'm about equally interested in both languages. Mandarin - Rising world power? - I don't know the grammar, but I know the character pronunciations - Biggest population, and the Chinese are also the Asians that I encounter most frequently in America. I also never meet Japanese people around here. - I don't like simplified characters, so I could learn traditional characters like I have been doing (but that would be only useful in Taiwan unless the mainland decides to switch) - Chinese history is pretty interesting Japanese - Anime (duh), but a lot of anime is being translated into English or Spanish which I know fairly well - I also know some character pronunciations in both onyomi and kunyomi, but not as much as I do in Chinese - Less simplified characters, and the changed ones seem somewhat closer to the traditional characters than the mainland China's characters - Not really interested in J-pop, but older music around 70s or 80s - Japanese history is also pretty interesting - I'm a native Korean speaker, so its grammar shouldn't be hard. I have already picked up very basic stuff just by watching anime. I want to work in the field of chemistry after college. Please help me decide by presenting more factors. Thank you! Edited by rippletoad on 17 August 2011 at 5:54pm 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 2 of 4 17 August 2011 at 6:02pm | IP Logged |
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Deciding which language to learn should stem from a deep interest and passion for a language, a country, a people, a culture, etc., not a calculation. Even the idea that you should learn a language in foresight of future work is somewhat misguided.
People give up learning because they lack motivation. Even if learning it makes sense on paper or if you should be learning it for professional reasons, people give up because they lose interest. That's why the decision needs to come from a passion or fascination with the language. It would be nice if you could pick the language of the two that would be easier based on what you already know, but the truth is likely that what you know is minuscule compared to what you will have to learn. What is your heart telling you you should do? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Tupiniquim Senior Member Brazil Joined 6083 days ago 184 posts - 217 votes Speaks: Portuguese* Studies: English, Russian | Message 3 of 4 17 August 2011 at 6:30pm | IP Logged |
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Learn Japanese because it's more kawaii ^__^
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| Ligador Diglot Groupie United States Joined 4963 days ago 81 posts - 101 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish | Message 4 of 4 19 August 2011 at 3:06pm | IP Logged |
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A thought on your point about China being a rising world power. There are multinationals in every major country and opportunities to get a job in many different companies. China may become a bigger slice of the market in the coming years, but knowledge of Chinese really only matters if your company deals with China. If the company that hired you were from Milan, Italian would be important. So don't think that knowing Chinese will get you a job anywhere, at certain places it might close the deal but in others it could just be a useless skill. If your motivation is purely for business purposes, you may want to reconsider.
Concerning population size. Mandarin has some 800 million speakers or so. Japanese has 127 million. If you learned Japanese, it's not like you'd run out of people with whom to speak. Chinese and Japanese both have small diasporas, but are mainly concentrated within their respective countries. So I wouldn't use number of speakers as a deciding factor. Whatever culture interests you more, go for it. If they truly both interest you the same, just flip a coin. Either way you'd be happy. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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