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CJK(V): Best order?

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ChristopherB
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 Message 1 of 14
27 October 2009 at 2:20pm | IP Logged 
I presume there are a few people around here who are contemplating or actively working towards "mastering" Chinese, Japanese, Korean and possibly also Vietnamese. My question for this thread is: what would you personally consider the best order to learn at least the first three languages? I'm studying Chinese myself, but am also contemplating the possibility of learning Korean or Vietnamese next and probably Japanese last, assuming I get around to them all!

What order would you want to learn them in?
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Sprachprofi
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 Message 2 of 14
27 October 2009 at 2:25pm | IP Logged 
Chinese is probably the best way to start, as the grammar is relatively simple and the knowledge of Chinese characters will make it easier to learn them in Japanese, including the Chinese-derived pronunciations.

It is not advisable to start on something similar while you don't know the first thing well. This obviously applies to Romance languages - don't start on Italian if your Spanish is yet weak. I believe it would also apply to learning characters. Linguistically the CJK languages are different enough that I believe there would be little interference, but if you're learning Japanese Kanji before your Chinese characters are firmly entrenched in your mind, you will probably experience bad side effects. So depending on how soon you want to start on your next language, I'd probably go for Korean or Vietnamese next, to give your Chinese extra time to sink in.

Edited by Sprachprofi on 27 October 2009 at 4:11pm

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ChristopherB
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 Message 3 of 14
27 October 2009 at 2:46pm | IP Logged 
That's some good advice, and I might personally put Vietnamese last or one language after Mandarin, since I'd probably find the tones harder to come to grips with than the characters, and I imagine taking on two tonal languages at the same time would be asking for disaster! I would almost certainly go for Korean before Japanese, both in terms of interest and the slight advantage I would apparently gain in learning Korean first.
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Captain Haddock
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 Message 4 of 14
27 October 2009 at 3:10pm | IP Logged 
One other factor to consider is whether you want to use language B to study language C, and so on. There are
terrific learning materials for Mandarin and Korean in Japanese. You might want to find out if the reverse is true.
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Paskwc
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 Message 5 of 14
27 October 2009 at 7:21pm | IP Logged 
I think one of the senior members here, Prof. Arguelles, once said that he considers
Korean to be an excellent gateway into East Asian languages. I could be wrong though.
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parasitius
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 Message 6 of 14
27 October 2009 at 7:46pm | IP Logged 
I've only tackled Japanese and Mandarin so far -- so my advice is just this principle:

Learn whatever language makes the most phonetic distinctions for characters first. If you do so--you will have it easy later when you can map many Hanzi/Kanji to a "new sound" in the new language you are working on with a one to one rule. If you go with a language that makes LESS distinctions -- you'll have to map sounds with a one to many rule which will be much less useful in helping you "guess" the reading of characters you haven't yet learned properly to read in your 2nd, 3rd, or 4th EA language.

Thus, I wish that I had had the chance to learn Cantonese as my very first language. To learn Mandarin after I would only need to memorize some rules like (invented example) character pronounced SAP SAT and SAK all change into SHI while SAM SAN change to SHE. (Of course it is not 100% perfect -- but I'm just talking about how to maximize the advantage gained.)

In this regard -- given that Japanese is a lot more phonetically impoverished than Mandarin, I am glad that I learned it first. There are a great many Kanji compounds that I have never explicitly "learned" to read but can guess how to read based strictly on past experience such as: Mandarin "SHI"->"SEI", "JIE"->"KAI", "FEN"->"BUN","XI"->"SEKI".

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Qinshi
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 Message 8 of 14
28 October 2009 at 2:30am | IP Logged 
I'd say either:
1. Chinese > Japanese > Korean > Vietnamese
2. Chinese > Vietnamese > Japanese > Korean

1. If you choose to learn Chinese then you will be forced to learn characters which will help you learn Japanese. After learning Chinese and Japanese, Korean shouldn't be anymore difficult since its Hangeul writing system is easy to use and Korean and Japanese apparently are quite similar in a way. Vietnamese would be last since it uses the easiest (if you are used to the Latin script) writing system and the tones problem you will have already encountered in Chinese.

2. Learning Chinese firt makes it a bit easier to learn Vietnamese second as they both are tonal languages. Afterwards, you can apply your characters to learning Japanese followed by Korean.

Personally I think it's sillier to learn Japanese before Chinese since the characters are mostly of Chinese origin!

Edited by Qinshi on 28 October 2009 at 2:36am



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