Is Japanese can understand Chinese language and read it. It looks same? Am right?

Answer 1

I am Japanese. I once went to Shanghai though I did not understand Chinese at all.

It was a funny experience. When I wanted to say something, I spoke English and at the same time I wrote it down in Kanji, which we Japanese usually used. And the Chinese listener read what I wrote and he guessed what I meant. Next, he was saying something in Chinese and wrote it down in real Chinese. When I looked at his writing, I could guess what he meant only through the kanji I knew.

Japanese and Chinese share a lot of kanji in common. So, writing-coversation works out in many cases.

At at hotel, I watched Chinese dramas, which had Chinese subtitles on the monitor, and I could manage to understand the rough story picking up kanji I knew and recomposing the meaning in my mind.

How to read kanji differs a lot from Chinese to Japanese, and even meanings are different in many cases. Despite that, it is still possible for us to guess the meaning of each other's language.

Answer 2

Yes actually, if you know how to read Japanese perfectly then you can also understand a little bit of Chinese and also the other way around, since the Japanese writing system came from the Chinese characters, although some a little bit different from the original Chinese characters.
I know this because i'm studying Japanese and most of the people in the class are Chinese and the only thing the teacher has to do to explain a new word to them is just to write that word down.

Answer 3

Long ago, Japanese adopted Chinese character (traditional one) for Kanji. So some shares the same meanings.

Recently Chinese has two type of Chinese characters. One is traditional character and the other is simplified character that requires fewer strokes.

In Japan, Kanji has also changed to new letter shape that requires fewer strokes. Newly shaped Kanji is not so similar to simplified Chinese character. Simplified Chinese character is simpler than Kanji.

As only_for_princess_9876's mentioned, Japanese can communicate with Chinese only at very basic level by writing Kanji or Chinese character.

But the pronunciation and the grammar are totally different from each other.

Answer 4

Nope, even the Chinese don't all understand the same language, the country knows numerous dialects which vary enormously, not just in pronounciation but also in spelling. They are, in essence, all totally different languages of which Mandarin is the most widely used.

Answer 5

It may look the same, but it's not. As a matter of a fact, in China they speak several main languages; Chinese, Guoyu is now the official language of mainland China, Mandarin or Guanhua is a family of related languages spoken across most of northern and southwestern Mainland China. The Mandarin dialect spoken in Beijing (Peking) functions as the official spoken language of the People's Republic of China (Standard Chinese or Putonghua), the official language of the Republic of China (Taiwan) (Guoyu), and one of the official languages of Singapore.

The Cantonese language is one of the major languages of the Chinese language group. It is the speech of the Cantonese people in the south-eastern part of Mainland China (especially in the Guangdong province), Hong Kong, Macau, and overseas Chinese of Cantonese origin. The accent as spoken in Guangzhou is considered the standard. Cantonese includes other (sub)dialects such as Taishan dialect or Waitau.

Answer 6

no, japanese and chinese look differents. a chinese can't read or understand japonese and vice versa.
they are totally different languages

Answer 7

No. Even though some of the hanko characters look similar they are way different so they cannot read each others writings, nor can they understand each other when they speak.

Answer 8

Kanji is Chinese characters but pronounced differently

Japanese also use hiragana and katagana for writing

Answer 9

i know japanese use some chinese characters on their writing. that's why sometimes you see familiar characters on subtitles when you watch japanese shows.

Answer 10

Spanish and french look the same as english when you write it out but I can't read those.