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Easy for Japanese people to learn Chinese

  Tags: Mandarin | Japanese
 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages Post Reply
MichaelBland
Newbie
United States
Joined 2554 days ago

2 posts - 2 votes

 
 Message 1 of 4
01 April 2017 at 10:23am | IP Logged 
Is it easy for Japanese people to learn Chinese because they already know the characters and the meaning of the
characters?
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mrwarper
Diglot
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Spain
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Joined 4985 days ago

1493 posts - 2500 votes 
Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2
Studies: German, Russian, Japanese

 
 Message 2 of 4
02 April 2017 at 12:17am | IP Logged 
AFAIK the meanings associated with the Kanji characters have drifted a bit, and I think it is safe to assume language use has diverged too, so I don't know for certain, but I would guess it might be equivalent to the following situation: an English speaker with a deep knowledge of etymologies learns French. [S]he recognizes a lot of words, but also stumbles upon quite a bit of them, to say nothing of false friends.

It is sure better than knowing nothing, but I would dare say it's still quite a challenge. Does that fit your definition of easy? :)
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Speakeasy
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Canada
Joined 3811 days ago

507 posts - 1097 votes 
Studies: German

 
 Message 3 of 4
03 April 2017 at 2:23am | IP Logged 
Hello and welcome to this forum! You might wish to know that, although the “How-To-Learn-Any-Language” (HTLAL) Forum remains operational, owing to changes in technology and the difficulties associated with the maintenance of this website, circa July, 2015, a REPLACEMENT language forum was launched. While some members of the HTLAL continue to visit this forum and post comments, the MOST of the ACTIVE MEMBERS have registered on the new forum: A LANGUAGE LEARNERS' FORUM. I suggest that you register on the new forum and repost your discussion threads; I suspect that doing so will generate more replies.

Kind regards,
Speakeasy (see y’all over there!)

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shk00design
Triglot
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Canada
Joined 4203 days ago

747 posts - 1123 votes 
Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin
Studies: French

 
 Message 4 of 4
03 April 2017 at 3:04am | IP Logged 
Think the word "easy" is a bit of an exaggeration. The grammar & vocabulary is different although throughout history the Japanese did a lot of borrowing from the Chinese. Languages such as Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai are tonal languages. You have to learn to pronounce different tones correctly to get the proper context. For instance: if you say shuǐ​jiǎo you are referring to 水饺 which is a dumpling cooked in water. But if you say shuì​jiào with a different intonation you are referring to 睡觉 to go to bed. The Japanese language is non-tonal which means you can raise the tone of a word for emphasis or to pose a question like English.

There are different uses for the characters such as: 郵便 in Japanese = 郵政 in Chinese for post as in post office, 切手 in Japanese = 郵票 in Chinese for a postage stamp.

And in Chinese every character represent 1 syllable. In Japanese there are many characters used to represent 2 or even 3 syllables such as: yama for 山 = Chinese 山 shān for hill / mountain. And you find some characters in Japanese that sound similar to the Chinese equivalent while others sound totally different.


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