Chinese or Japanese ?

Question

Which is easier to learn

Answer 1

Japanese without a doubt because the Chinese if you're miss a word by a syllable that will cost you a night in jail or get in a fight with a resident of China.

Besides the language rocks!!!

Answer 2

Japanese

Answer 3

japanese

im japanese and i studied japanese and chinese literature.
i tryed to master chinese conv. before but veeeeeeery difficult .
because each kanji characters has 4 different pronunciation. i can read chinese but i cant speak so much.

the japanese language is thought to be related to korean, manchurian, and mongolian, and more distantly to finnish and hungarian. but these connections lie in the remote past. until the 5th century, when chinese characters were introduced, the japanese had no writing system. thereafter, a system was developed for writing japanese using chinese characters(=kanji). using kanji as a base, the japanese devised two syllabic alphabets - hiragana and katakana. each represents the same 47 syllables, and the alphabets are used together with kanji in writing modern japanese. children first learn hiragana and katakana and are gradually introduced to kanji. there are more than 60,000 kanji, but most people have a general knowledge of from 3,000 to 4,000 kanji. to simplify matters, most books and newspapers use only 1,850 kanji - the same number high school graduates are expected to master. there is also a method of writing japanese - called romaji - using the roman alphabet.

*to garret b
you said 'each one can be pronounced 2 different ways and maybe 3.'
but not correct.
some japanese kanji has more than 6 different ways to pronounce.

Answer 4

Japanese is probably easier.

Chinese, as a tonal language, might be difficult to master if your first language is English or another western language. A classic example is the word "Ma" - pronounced differently in Chinese it can mean everything from Horse to Mother.

Both use characters, however Chinese uses them more so. Again, if English is your first language Chinese might be more difficult.

Japanese uses a syllabary called Hiragana (an "alphabet") which you can use to write all Japanese words. The advantage to this is that you can communicate through writing quickly. Chinese has no such alphabet, but you can write with Pinyin, though they are less understood in China compared to Hiragana in Japan.

Both languages have very different grammatical structures when compared to English.

Answer 5

Japanese. Each syllable can be said 4 different ways in Chinese. I gave up trying to learn Chinese because of it. Very hard. You don't have that in Japanese.

Answer 6

My bet would be Japanese. But remember that Japanese use chinese characters in writing as well. Also keep in mind, there are so many characters used in writing chinese, and the accents used when speaking can differentiate an insult from a compliment.

Answer 7

Chinese.

Answer 8

I have studied both, and I say it is about even. Chinese has tones that one must get right, or he may say something silly or obscene. I joke my gals in this manner. The Japanese Kanji is copied from Chinese symbols, but each one can be pronounced 2 different ways and maybe 3. My gal's name is Komatsu. The Ko means small or young, and matsu is pine. In other names it can be O, e.g. Oyama is small mountain, Ogawa is small river, etc. In religion, it is Sho, i.e. Shorin is Japanese Shaolin meaning small forest. If it is a name, it is Kobayashi.

Answer 9

Whichever you decide on, concentrate on writing. Some Chinese and Japanese characters mean the same things, though they're pronounced differently.

Answer 10

By very nature, Chinese is difficult and stupid language. Most of times, when Chinese talk, they seem to be yelling at each other. I wouldn't recommend learning Chinese. Better to learn Spanish or German or even better English.