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Mandarin vs Japanese- Is Mand. harder? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Silvestris Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 1162 days ago 131 posts - 4 votes Speaks: English*, Polish*, German | Message 1 of 21 17 May 2007 at 4:16am | IP Logged |
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So far diligent wading through the archives has turned up nothing, but I'm noticing a strange pattern among the students of Mandarin Chinese and Japanese.
I've seen many people who can converse and write comfortably and people like Khatzumoto who took a nonchalant 'you can do it' attitude towards Japanese. However, I have yet to see one person who says the same about Mandarin. I know, there are tones but is Mandarin really so much harder? Most students complain about memorizing the characters, but if Japanese has the same sort of writing system, why aren't we finding more frustrated (and serious) students who are ready to thrown kanji against the wall? Sure, there are some but the majority of the blame seems to go to Mandarin despite having a smaller precentage of students. So I suppose the Hauptfrage here is "Is Mandarin all that much harder/different than Japanese?" | |
 Sprachprofi Hexaglot Pro Member Germany learnlangs.com Joined 1068 days ago 1175 posts - 155 votes  Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Italian, Latin Studies: Mandarin, Swahili, Spanish, Arabic (Written), Greek Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 21 17 May 2007 at 4:36am | IP Logged |
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I believe Japanese just has the advantage of having been popular for a longer time. I. e. there are many more people who have studied it for long enough to have a chance to be fluent now and also there are more Western study materials for Japanese, such as the Kanji methods. Of course there are also study materials for Chinese, but typically made in China, meaning they go the traditional way of teaching characters and the language by rote, which doesn't work as well for many Westerners.
I would still say that Chinese is easier than Japanese, because: 1. you only need to learn the characters (and 2000 may be enough), no syllaberies in addition. Characters can be learned through imaginative stories, the Kana can't. 2. most Chinese characters only have one way of pronouncing them or at most two, whereas in Japanese they have various readings depending on the context 3. Chinese grammar is much easier than Japanese grammar 4. Chinese word order is more intuitive for Westerners than Japanese word order 5. Even advanced students of Japanese have reported still being very unsure in choosing the correct form of politeness (which also may involve a new subset of common words like "eat", not just verb endings). In Chinese, politeness language-wise comes down to choosing "ni" or "nin" as personal pronoun, like German "du" or "Sie". | |
 Keith Diglot Moderator JapanRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 1375 days ago 503 posts - 6 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, Japanese Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 21 17 May 2007 at 5:23am | IP Logged |
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I too am under the impression that Japanese is less easy than Chinese. Although I'm sure there will be some people here saying that you have to learn 4,000 or 5,000 characters in Chinese and not 2,000. Japanese use Chinese characters less often than Chinese, so I think if you study Chinese, then the characters would be reinforced more often than in Japanese.
In Japanese, the subject is left out, which can really be confusing to beginners since, at that stage, it is hard to tell if the person is talking about themself or about you. But I think this word order problem can be overcome rather quickly. Surely no learner could claim to be intermediate and still have problems with this. And the kana syllaberries are no problem to learn. They just take some practice. Like Sprachprofi said, it seems Japanese has been popular a lot longer than Chinese, so it's easier to find an advanced student. Whichever language you choose, it's a big task trying to acquire all that vocabulary. | |
| lady_skywalker Triglot Senior Member Netherlands aspiringpolyglotblog Joined 1488 days ago 909 posts - 5 votes Speaks: Spanish, English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, French, Dutch, Italian | Message 4 of 21 17 May 2007 at 6:20am | IP Logged |
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The Japanese kana are extremely easy to learn (in my opinion) and there are fewer kanji to learn in comparison to Mandarin. However, most Japanese kanji have several readings and its grammar is more complex than Chinese grammar.
Then there's the politeness levels. These aren't necessarily tough in their own right but you'd need to develop a feel for knowing which is the right level of politeness to use! Having said that, while Chinese grammar is arguably easier to learn than Japanese grammar, the tones may present problems at first (and, for some people, will always be problematic). A lot of work needs to go into memorising the right tone. Some people may tell you that getting the tones perfect isn't essential but I believe it is very important, especially if you ever want to take your Mandarin beyond beginners level. Learning the Chinese characters is just as tricky as in Japanese, although most characters have only one reading (and usually a maximum of two or three different readings). The tricky part for me was memorising the right tone of each new character (this is something not really needed when learning Japanese kanji). The only other factor that really sets Mandarin and Japanese apart, in my opinion, is the number of characters you would have to learn to reach a high level of reading fluency in Mandarin. 2000 characters is enough for everyday use but if you want to tackle Chinese literature or non-fiction, you will definately need a lot more characters under your belt (and usually the more obscure ones at that). | |
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan ideogramme.ca/japan/ Joined 1366 days ago 1985 posts - 138 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Ancient Greek | Message 5 of 21 17 May 2007 at 6:23am | IP Logged |
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If you can master the pronunciation and tones early on, you can be chatting in conversational Mandarin inside of 6 months. Japanese takes longer.
I haven't taken Mandarin far, so in the long run, who knows. But the basic grammar is simpler and more familiar to an English speaker. It is also spoken somewhat more slowly than Japanese. | |
| Sprachprofi Hexaglot Pro Member Germany learnlangs.com Joined 1068 days ago 1175 posts - 155 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Italian, Latin Studies: Mandarin, Swahili, Spanish, Arabic (Written), Greek Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 21 17 May 2007 at 6:50am | IP Logged |
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I find understanding spoken Mandarin quite easy. People speak it very slowly and clearly, I could usually perfectly transcribe the Pinyin of what is said even if I don't understand a word.
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| Raincrowlee Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 1300 days ago 456 posts - 20 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, French Studies: Indonesian | Message 7 of 21 17 May 2007 at 7:00am | IP Logged |
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Here is one of the threads where we discussed the relative difficulty of learning Japanese and Mandarin. I believe Korean is also discussed in this one.
I believe most people come down on the side of Japanese being harder. But it does seem like Chinese characters are a real sore point for people studying Chinese. It never seems like you learn them all. I mean, I know that I've passed the 2000 mark a while back, but I still encounter new *characters* (as opposed to words) on each page of each text I read. It's a very rare ocassion when I actually know all of the characters in an entire page of text. And of course, at this point there's a good likelyhood that the characters are going to be more complex rather than an unknown simple shape. I think that's the thing -- with Japanese, learners always kind of feel that the end is in sight. The road may be difficult and steep, but you can see your destination. With Chinese, it always feels like it's at night with a heavy fog. Sometimes you catch a momentary glimpse of what you think is your goal, but when you arrive there you realize it's just another abandoned post along the road, littered with the trash of people who have come this way before and chosen this point to give up. | |
| daristani Pro Member United States Joined 1742 days ago 413 posts - 70 votes Studies: Uzbek Personal Language Map | Message 8 of 21 17 May 2007 at 8:19am | IP Logged |
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Raincrowlee, I can't comment on the Japanese versus Chinese question, but I certainly appreciated your imagery. Awesome!
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