Which language should I learn next: Korean or Chinese?

Question

I'm an advanced student of Japanese and I would like to start learning either Korean or Chinese next.

Korean has the advantage in that its alphabet is use the way the English alphabet is used and Korean sentence structure is similar to Japanese. The disadvantage is in pronunciation: it's seems very difficult.

Chinese looks appealing because I've already studied the characters used (although I do understand they have a different meaning and pronunciation from Japanese), and Chinese sentence structure is similiar to English (Subject-verb-object). But once again, the disadvantage is in the pronunciation. Very hard.

Which one should I start next? If it's Korean, why? If it's Chinese, why and which dialect (Cantonese or Mandarin) is best? Your opinion would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

You should learn Korean, trust me its way easier than Chinese. I'm learning it myself now. Korean because it isn't that much far-fetched from Japanese (which I am also a student of). You'll notice words, such as the word for "love" in both languages is similar to a point such as the words "manga" and "manhwa" are--but then again Chinese is too. The Korean language has simple rules to follow and the alphabet is especially easy to learn. I'd be better if you worked up from that to Chinese.

Answer 2

I learned to speak Chinese, and I tried learning Korean. Korean was much harder for me to pronounce, and to my ear many of the sounds were indistinguishable. I learned Chinese pronunciation pretty quickly, but I'm also a musician and it seems that the people from my class who played music learned to use tones more quickly. Korean has one thing going for it: the writing system. Other than that, its grammar is far more complicated than Chinese, and it uses varying levels or formality that are hard to get a hang of. There's also the numbers game: there are about 75 million Korean speakers, and half of them (the North) are completely cut off from the world.

BUT, one advantage: because Korean is a lesser-learned language, and because North Korea is insane, there's a lot of demand for Korean speakers in the intelligence industry (if that floats your boat).

Answer 3

If you know your kanji well, Chinese will be very easy to pick up (writing wise). However unlike Japanese, Chinese is a very much a tonal language. Many words like hao have 4 tones and 4 different meanings. This creates a much greater level of difficulty in learning to speak compared to the more straightforward pronunciation in Japanese. However, unlike Japanese, sentences tend to be much simpler even in their polite form. There are also fewer grammatical rules. Korean is (in my opinion) very different from Japanese and could be difficult to learn. I think Chinese is a much more practical language to learn since it is the most spoken in the world.

Answer 4

No actually chinese are harder to pronounce, at least that's true for me (maybe because i am korean-.-;;)

Although i am korean, i suggest you to learn chinese first. i think there would be much greater advantage for this, because china is one of the biggest and the populated country in the world. do you know that many businesses (such as starbucks) even now asks if you can speak mandrin (chinese), so they can transfer you.

and after learning japanese and chinese, korean would be much easier to learn (because japanese, chinese and korean share some words)

HAHA (im taking japanese too >-

Answer 5

You may get confused from the similarities between Chinese and Japanese. I would suggest Korean for just that reason alone

Answer 6

many koreans speak chinese and although there are many dialects of chinese most chinese speak sometimes several of them!!so if you want to learn a language that covers a goodly percentage of the world's people you couldn't do better than chinese!!

Answer 7

I would suggest you to study Chinese for your further self development. There are no conjugation and tense in Chinese ,and the grammar is very easy. If you are an English speaker, you are easy to pronounce it well. As to Chinese character, at the beginning of the study, you can just study Pinyin rather than characters.

Answer 8

If Chinese is appealing to you,then I think you should learn it.Plus,Chinese is becoming more and more useful and poplular

Answer 9

Maybe you should learn a non asian language, like say...french or spanish or german. Why do you want to learn only asian languages when most asians dont learn any other asian languages but their own. I know more asians that speak french than any of the languages you just mentioned. Seriously I dont even understand why you bother. In about 5 years, there will be voice recognized translators that will translate your exact voice into whatever language you want even the tone will be mimicked.

Answer 10

cantonese^^


but granted, korean is easier and increasingly popular