chinese or japanese?

Question

Hey, I'm a student at high school and I've decided to study an unusual language such as chinese or japanese. Is there anyone who can tell me something about learning these languages because I still can't make up my mind...I've listened to foreign radios and I guess japanese is much easier to repeat than chinese but I seem to like challenges...;)

Answer 1

Japanese and Chinese are both interesting languages. But before you choose you should know about some of the differences between the two.
First, Chinese is thought to be an extremely hard language to learn for native English speakers because of the large number of sounds that exist in the language not found in our own. On top of this Chinese is a tonal language, which is to say that the pitch of your voice affects the meaning of the word you are saying. This might seem very hard at first because this feature does not exist in English. Japanese in comparison is actually much easier to pronounce because aside from a view specific sounds they all exist in the English language in some shape or form. The difficulty in Japanese is that many words sound very similar to non-native speakers which can cause confusion at first.

The writing systems also have their unique features. Chinese script is not based on an alphabet in the sense of the English or French alphabet. Therefore it becomes necessary to learn each of characters, their meaning, and their pronunciation at the same time; and believe me the number of characters in the language isn't small. I've heard that in order to be considered fluent in the languae a person should know upward of 3000-4000 different characters. On the other hand Japanese is based on an alphabet, however... there are three different alphabets systems which must be memorized. Other things that I should mention are that in Japanese the sentence structure is different, following the patter S.O.V. (Subject, object, verb). Chinese is the same as English in the sense that the structure is S.V.O.
My purpose of writing all of this is not to sound bias. I just think that you should know some of the differences before you start learning. Many people might tell you that Chinese is the best language to learn as it is more widely spoken and because the economy is growing rapidly. Ultimately the choice is yours. I myself decided that I want to learn Japanese despite this, simply because the culture and language interest me more. So I think you should find out which you are more interested in and then make your decision.
Which ever you choose, good luck!

Answer 2

I might say that it relatively depends upon the eating place. Keep in brain that a Japanese Restaurant is NOT a Chinese eating place. If it is respectable and run by means of Japanese humans they in general don't use the identical train of hiring each relative within the Universe to paintings there. Japan is the moment such a lot economically affluent nation on the earth so the inducement for them to escape to the U.S. isn't just about so satisfactory because it perhaps in different asian nations. Because of this it's honestly alternatively infrequent to uncover genuine Japanese humans running in Japanese eating places. Sometimes they'll insist on hiring simplest asians for the wait employees (within the curiosity of keeping the environment), however in general even those are Philipino, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese or every other asian nation that's NOT Japan. Having stated all of that nevertheless, the one truly means you're going to uncover out if they'll rent you is to use.

Answer 3

If you want challenges then I'd suggest chinese...I've been studying it for years and still have trouble with the tones. If you do elect chinese..I'd suggest you opt for mandarin/putonghua...common speech-the official language of all of china...Saying you speak chinese is like saying you speak european...It is an exciting language to learn and will give you a completely new way of looking at the world..Also it is the most commonly spoken language in the world..and now that China is becoming a superpower---???? and in any case then you'll know what my avatar name is :)

Answer 4

Do you know that Chinese(1 fifth of the whole wide world population) is the most speaked language by people in the world. It would be very useful in the future, and I'm learning it!!

It's hard tough, and Japanese is very similar to Chinese.
It's like English sepaking people learn Spanish.

Answer 5

http://www.cucas.edu.cn/
I will suggest you to apply through CUCAS, CUCAS is a professional online platform for international students to apply for Chinese universities, it has a strong relationship with over 300 universities in China. They do not ask for any fee, the application fee is collect by them but only on behalf of the university, CUCAS also hold social activities for international students so they will not get bored, they always try to think as a foreigner and help international students to solve their problems. Very nice.

Answer 6

Forget abt chinese. Japanese is a lot easier.
In the japanese language, u read the word exactly the way its been spelled(there's a term 4 this but i couldn't remember). say 4 example- "arigato" (ar-ree-gah-tow) , c simple!
example for a chinese word "dan" is pronounce as "tonne"

Answer 7

They are both hieroglyphic languages so both are a challenge.
Forget easier , does your community have either culture so that you may get some 1st hand experience ?
Or which one would you plan on visiting later ?
Make the choice based on application rather than ease .

Answer 8

if you'd like the challenge then go for chinese. japanese would be challenging too, though,

Answer 9

i suggest you study japanese,its more easier to learn than chinese