would it be to much to take japanese 101 and chinese 101 at the same time?

Question

i want to take both. however would it be to hard to take both at once? which i signed up for. i all ready know a lot of japanese. so i figured it would be easy to do but now im having second thoughts. chinese is very useful where i live though. very close to china town

Answer 1

Way too much. Both are supposed to be very very hard for an english speaker to learn. They are completely different languages from English. So both are super hard and getting them mixed would be easy.

Answer 2

No, especially since you know some Japanese already. A lot of Japanese characters, especially the Kanji, are derived from the Chinese. Other Japanese letters, called Hiragana and Katakana, are mere shortenings of existing Chinese characters too. The only hard thing that you will probably encounter is the difference in grammar and words. Chinese is a thousand year old language, and virtually as no similariwty with English, while Japanese has lots of words common with English, such as kerisumasu (Christmas), aisukurimu (ice cream), and hundreds more. Virtually all borrowings from English to Japanese end up having an "u" at the end, because Japanese, like the Koreans, tend to have vowel sounds at the end of the words.
In Chinese, there are only two words I know that are borrowed: Mamahuhu (from Sanskrit) - I dunno the meaning, and Chukulet (from English), which obviously means Chocolate - even this is actually borrowed not from English but probably from Portuguese traders. Even the word "atom" has an indigenous word in Chinese, meaning "ultra-tiny particle".

Answer 3

No, not really. Well, I didn't do it in class, but I did learn both at the same time while growing up. And my little sister (who is worse-off at languages than me) did take both 101 Japanese and 101 Chinese at the same semester. A lot of it is overlapping especially in terms of writing, so it could actually help each other out.

Besides, it used to be that all very educated Japanese learned/knew Chinese well. =]

Answer 4

It might not be a problem. English is stored in the front of your brain and other languages in another part so English blocks the a second language. You almost have to ditch English therefore. I would ask every language teacher I could talk to, because one of them might have some insight. Also several students who have done it. I think it might actually help, personally. You may be thinking in Japanese with Chinese as you second language. See what I mean. You'll be away from English, but don't quote me. It just sounds like a fun experiment. Don't worry about the honor role, actual knowledge is what is required on a job. Of course if your afraid of failing and you're in your first year at a new school, that might give you pause. Then too, if my intuition gives me doubts I always go with my intuition.

Answer 5

I don't think so. The languages are sufficiently different that you shouldn't get too confused (provided you make sure that you study them at separate times of the day), and when it comes to writing systems, the study may complement each other.

I guess the question is whether studying two languages at once takes twice the effort of studying one language.

I would suspect it is *less* than twice the effort. Because the general language skills and habits you're learning will be applicable to both languages.

It seems the other answers in here are suggesting it comes to *more* than twice the effort. This seems, to me, unlikely. I don't think the human brain gets so muddled that learning two related skills at the same time is more difficult than learning them one after the other.

If you put in the hours, and make a real effort then I wouldn't see a problem.

Answer 6

It depends really.

If you are a quick enough study with languages it would only be frustrating at times. Also since it is just 101 classes, the difficulty would not be high enough to cause any worries. You should be able to differ Japanese from Chinese, as there are noticable differences in the sound of the language.

However it is likely to be overwhelming if you continue to progress to higher levels with both classes.

Answer 7

it usually depends on where you want to take the classes?If you want to take them in the school of languages it will cost a couple hundred dollars for each i don't very many places but you can check on the web to see how much other places cost

Answer 8

Why is everyone freaking out about December 21st, 2012?
I had someone telling me how he thinks the world will end in 2012 because the Mayans predicted it. I told him the Mayans said nothing about the world ending in their calenders and they simply just stopped making calenders because their civlization ended. It's not like they said "On December 21st, 2012, the world will end." Their descriptions are very vague and could fit virtually any event. It reminds me of Nostradamus. And how many times have we had these "end of the world" theories? Too many. December 21st is nothing more than the end to a period of time on the Mayan calender. I have even heard experts on the Mayan calender saying they don't believe anything will happen, either.

Answer 9

you'll get confused because those two have different words and languages