What is harder to learn, Mandarin Chinese or Japanese?

Question

I think that Chinese is harder because it has thousands more letters but my dad thinks it is Japanese. Who is right?

Answer 1

I am a chinese descendant, i speak both fluent mandarin and japanese. I also help with language and cultural needs of students at my school, since i speak and write chinese, japanese, russian, and english, and a little bit of spanish. your question is one asked by many people. Personally, chinese was easier for me to learn since it was my first language. However, most people i've adviced told me that they think Japanese is easier.
There are alot more difficult characters in chinese than there are in Japanese. And in my experience, I've found that native English speakers tend to find Japanese easier to pronounce. However, once you really get into the learning of chinese, especially mandarin, it becomes much much easier. but the process of "getting into" the language takes alot of patience and perseverance.
Another aspect to look at in selecting a language is the cultural side. Chinese and Japanese cultures differ dramatically. It depends on what interest you more... (personally, i enjoy my own chinese cultures more... but i find Japanese traditons intriquing).
Also. why are you taking Chinese or Japanese? I think learning chinese will be more useful due to the industrial expansion in china.
I hope i was helpful.

Answer 2

Wow! I love this question. I was in Japan long, long time ago and I started to learn it. So, knowing a little Japanese already makes me lean towards it as the easier. But, let us say that you don't any of either language. And, starting from nothing what is hard about Japanese? You can learn the syllables you need to write it in only a few weeks and with that the pronounciation if you work at it and have a good teacher or an opportunity to hear Japanese spoken a lot.
Chinese you can learn pinyin which is an intermediate English Chinese. Chinese has tones and what I think are difficult sounds. But, you could get started on Chinese without too much trouble.
At the next stage you have the Chinese writing (which you may know the Japanese also use). i would say it is safe to say that you could learn about 100 a year, if you worked at it. (start now! because there are about 5,000 of them you need to know in Japanese and I think about twice that in Chinese.)
The method to learn them involves writing them everyday. Chinese is wrtten all in ideographic characters. If you know the character somewhat you can guess at the meaning and the sound. Japanese uses a combination of kana and Chinese characters. The Japanese syllables are used for the flexion or conjugations of the verbs, etc. The Japanese sometimes have four or five different readings for the one Chinese character.
Grammar in Japanese is very difficult, I think. Chinese may be more like English but I have not studied Chinese as much and so I don't know how to compare on grammar.
Why not study both?

Answer 3

For beginners, japanese is much easier because of pronunciation

However, once you move beyond the basics japanese gets harder and harder, the grammar is very complicated.

For manderin learners, once you get past the tonal system the grammar is suprisingly similar to english, and not very difficult.

I have a few linguist friends that have learnt japanese and manderine in adulthood and they agree. They found fluency in manderin relativly easy, but absolute fluency in japanese is always an uphill struggle.

Chinese and Japanese use the same characters, about 2000 in regular daily use.

There are about 70,000 characters that can be used, but just as you or I do not know every word in the oxford english dictionary, chinese and japanese people get by without knowing a great many of the characters that exist.

Answer 4

You are right as Chinese is a lots harder to learn than Japanese as i am a Chinese person

Answer 5

There are a lot of things to consider. I've taken japanese and know people who have taken Chinese.Learning to write in Chinese seems like it would be a little harder. and there is the tonal aspect of Chinese languages that is foreign to English speakers. Structually, though, what friends tell me makes Chinese sound easier. It's constructed more like English. Japanese sentence structure is completely unlike English, which makes it difficult.

Answer 6

Yeah...yeah, you think Putonghua is harder just for those 2000 more characters (letters). Thank God, I'm self-taught both. So maybe, I'm not a so trusted source. From my point of view, Chinese is easier in Grammar (don't all of those Japanese conjunctions) and pronunciation (Don't you feel Japanese Kanji Pronunciations are driving me nuts?), especially if you can pronounse the 4 tones.

If you like challenge, Japanese comes to be better I think.

Answer 7

If you decided in finding out to communicate Chinese then you must now that the ideal selection is a Course for Mandarin.

Answer 8

japanese is easier to read. chinese is harder to write. japanese grammer is complicated. chinese is harder to pronouce.

i think chinese is harder to learn

Answer 9

it is not described in detail , in my opinion , japanese is harder than chinese , in fact , lots of japanese characters are origined from chinese .

Answer 10

Of course, it is harder for Chinese. Japanese and English are the two easiest languages. We find Japanese difficult to learn is only because we dont like Japanese.