What language will be more useful to learn: Japanese or Chinese?

Question

I'm interested in new technology, in studying engineering, and I Want to learn Japanese or Chinese, which one will be more useful? Is it either one or the other or can you learn both?

Answer 1

They are both completely different languages, with different grammar and phonetics
Japanese language uses three systems of writing, Kanji, hiragana and katakana
Chinese uses just kanji (but obviously they have another word for it)
So, it is to a degree, possible for Chinese people who don't speak any Japanese to be able to read a Japanese news paper and have a fairly good understanding of it, since the kanji is the same and the meaning of each character is the same. the only difference is the pronunciation.
Japanese have a much harder time understanding what they are reading in China because it's 100 kanji, but again, it's not completely impossible for them.
Anyway, Chinese is a much harder language to learn than Japanese, I'm told.
Japanese has a very simple sound system based on the 5 vowel sounds, A as in bar, I as in bee, U as in too, E as in met and O as in more. These five sounds combined with consonant sounds make up the full sound range of Japanese (plus a few extra" M" sounds)
This is why Japanese have such a hard time learning to speak other languages like English, because we have many variations on the vowel sounds, and Japanese is just not able to cover them all. this makes it easy for us to learn their languages pronunciation etc.
Chinese on the other hand, is like English (maybe even more so) in that it has a large variety of sounds, and they are quite hard to even hear, let alone master.

Answer 2

I would say Japanese as Japanese are world leaders in technology. Besides, they aren't communist. Chinese has more characters to learn, but Japanese uses about 2000-3000 Chinese characters. Japanese is definitely hard to learn as the grammar structure is completely different from English.

Answer 3

Chinese

Answer 4

Definitely Chinese. The world economy is so tilted toward China these days. Some say America is not in a decline and the East in the assent. If you spoke Chinese you would position yourself into a prime market that is developing for people with knowledge of the two languages.

Of course you can learn both but devote yourself to one first.

Answer 5

Chinese.
China is fast growing. Its not difficult to find out the reasons when you know the number of foreign enterprise set up their offices plus factories in the mainland.
There was a survey recently mentioning about the languages spoken in China. It said now 1 out of 4 person speaks Chinese, Putonghua....in the world....!!!! Amazing,,,!!!
I live in Singapore. In my kid's primary school, there are Malay, Indian and Filipinos study Chinese too, and doing quite well.
For foreigner, Chinese Putonghua is not that difficult as compare to Japanese. I learned Japanese when I was younger. Its just too difficult that I had go give up.

Good luck.

Answer 6

It depends. If you want easy to learn languages, then I would suggest Korean and/or Japanese. Korean is the easiest to learn to read for me. I can already ready them. I can't understand anything though. xD The grammar and honorific stuff is a bit harder (grammar = Subject Object Verb, so instead of I go to the store it's I the store go.. [or something like that]) and the honorific stuff is important. Japanese is a lot similar to this. :] Chinese/Mandarin is a lot harder because it's a tonal language, while Americans use tones to express emotion, Mandarin (as well as Cantonese) use tones to express actual words.

Answer 7

You can definitely learn both. If you're interested in a tech development career, then Japanese is the tried and true -- very possible to get a job in a firm in Japan.

But China is up and coming. In theory, they'll be needing outside help. In practice, China doesn't always agree with these western 'theories.'

Ask in the Asian language department at a your university (or one where you think you'd like to study) for their suggestions. The more languages you know, the easier it gets to aquire new ones. And having both increases your options.

Answer 8

Mandarin Chinese.
China is the future they are undergoing a industrial revolution almost and have 1/3 or the world's population

And yes they are "communist" but when you have a capitalist based economy you can't truly have "communism" They kinda conflict in ideology...

There are many dialects but that is the most commonly used one

Japanese is a good mid point Asian language

It has Chinese characters and it has a lot of the grammar concepts of other asian languages

Answer 9

Chinese.

Answer 10

Chinese - the Chinese economy is that fastest growing with the greatest potential for growth in the World. They are rapidly assimilating new technologies and will soon be a dominant force in many branches of engineering and technology.