Learning Different Languages

[Ryokou]

My friend and I both want to learn Chinese and Japanese. Which one would be the best to learn first, so that it will be easier to learn the other language. Can you help us?

[PhunkYMunkY]

Hari Kiri Kimono Alfonso !

That means "Learn Japanese first! It's the cool decision!"

[SilverKitsune]

japanese > Chinese

But when it comes to difficulty; Chinese > Japanese.
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[b]xAmiDarkfieldx wrote:
"Your a bird, I'm a cat of the jungle. Birds can't get pregnant last I checked. They lay eggs."[/b]

[Brianhjh]

No, Japanese is harder than Chinese, I'm serious.

To be fluent in Chinese, you have to learn around 6000-10000 Chinese characters, and Chinese nuances. One easy thing about Chinese is that it does not have a specific grammar. It's like stringing beads of words to form a sentence. There are certain things you need to look out for to make sure you don't sound like an idiot but Chinese essentially doesn't have grammar.

Japanese... It has one of the hardest Grammar to learn if you do not come from Asian background. Its verbs are pieces of cake, unlike French it does not have gazillion of verb tenses and (shudders) subjectives, but it has a system of honorific which is hell for westerners. ON TOP of the grammar, you have to know 2000 Chinese characters, because 40 percent of Japanese is, surprise, Chinese. The Japanese Chinese are harder to learn than Chinese Chinese. Unlike the original, Japanese Chinese characters have different pronunciation depending on what part of the sentence it can be found in, or what word. One common kanji (Chinese characters used in Japanese) has 13 different pronunciation rules. Most of 2 or 3.

If you can only speak, say, English, learn a language related to English first, and then an Asiatic language. Don't tackle two languages classified as "The Hardest languages to speak" for English speakers just yet. I recommend German or Spanish. French if you like learning 14 different forms of verbs.
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[SilverKitsune]

In that case, learn Spanish, its very easy.

[edit] when judging difficulty, I was going more on pronounciation wise. Then again, I don't know chinese nor am I very familiar. I watched the whole season of MARS but that was about it .
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[b]xAmiDarkfieldx wrote:
"Your a bird, I'm a cat of the jungle. Birds can't get pregnant last I checked. They lay eggs."[/b]

[Trinity_Fire]

Brian's post - seconded. :o

And this from someone who speaks both Chinese and English. (Okay, I can't even read the Chinese newspaper, but I CAN speak it)

Chinese has simple/nonexistant grammar, and although I can't understand written japanese, there's always a few pieces of Chinese in there which usually give me a clue or two as to what's going on.
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[Red_Quatre]

[quote="Ryokou"]My friend and I both want to learn Chinese and Japanese. Which one would be the best to learn first, so that it will be easier to learn the other language. Can you help us?[/quote]

Study Spanish. It's good for you.
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[Brianhjh]

Spanish might as well as be US' second language, it's a good, easy language for English speakers. German's easier because English is technically "West German", but Spanish is more practical.
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[fallenangel]

Learn Finnish.
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[Brianhjh]

[quote="fallenangel"]Learn Finnish.[/quote]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjvVBCNcL_A
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[TK421]

Moar liek

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIa9o7yXmaA
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[Brianhjh]

Not Finnish though.

For some reason, all bands from Scandinavia play most of their songs in English. Probably for market reasons.
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[fallenangel]

Beat me to it. Except they always wrote in english and spoke it well enough to pass as british. For obvious reasons in Hanoi's case. Almost everyone speaks english anyway, and Finland isn't exactly their target audience. Though they play there more often now. Still...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMe--kKuPyo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBYXRKiDJUs

I used to ponder learning Finnish because of them. And 'cause written it looks like gibberish. Fun.

But I was too lazy to even learn spanish more than the required two years in high school.
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[Squidman]

I wanna learn Romany.

I'll be riding horses and living in a Caravan with the best of them.
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[Fayore]

Speaking from the view point of someone who's studied both, I'd have to say that Japanese is harder. Not only does the pronounciation of a word change depending on how it's used, the grammar is is really difficult - like English, every rule of grammar in Japanese can be broken - and they're usually broken quite often, especially in casual speech.

Chinese, well, the only difficult part is learning the intonations. When reading, the characters rarely change pronounciation, though sometimes it happens. The grammar is almost identical to that of English, sentence-structure wise.

I'd advise learning Japanese first, though, despite how difficult it is. Learning Chinese gives you an idea of the meaning of the characters, and Japanese uses those characters (kanji) BUT they often do not have the same meaning as in Chinese. So, if you learn Chinese first, I guarantee you'll get confused by some kanji easily.

If you're good at concentrating and ignoring precedent, then Chinese will be easier to do first.

Whatever. Do what you want. Either way, they'll both end up confusing you when you start learning the other language, so. <<; Both will take a lot of dedication to learn if you're not familiar with it/have a background in asian languages. A romantic language will likely be easier for you at this stage.

[KaptainH]

As someone who used to be a Mandarin Chinese linguist, I recommend it as a pretty awesome language. Grammar is simple, and pronunciation is easy if you crack down on the tones from the beginning, and because of the relatively easy syntax, it's not hard to put sentences together even as a beginner. Having studied and understanding Chinese also makes learning about Sino-Japanese really interesting.

Maybe I just think Japanese is an overrated choice among young people and that Chinese is often overlooked as being too difficult, but the two languages both have different tough spots in different ways, and how hard it is to learn depends a lot on how you learn.

I'm just glad I got forced onto the Mandarin bandwagon by the army, because I can see it being a useful language career-wise.

[Pyrodragon125]

I'll have to agree with Brian on this one.

I recently began self-teaching japanese because my school got rid of a japanese class (apparently too many people were failing it, go figure hahaha). Just at the start I'm extremely happy that I made it all the way through French 4. Japanese sentence-structure is extremely complex from my standpoint of starting off with english. I'd like to think of french as a nice...1/3 jump ahead to learning japanese. I'll be able to understand the reasoning behind the sentence structure a lot more from it.

Also, since that's technically what the topic is even about....

Learn japanese first. It'll be a lot less confusing now rather than later unless you learn a more basic language first (like those mentioned earlier).

[Brianhjh]

Yay, Matt is in exactly the same boat as me


[size=7]except my first language is Korean with identical grammar as Japan cough cough[/size]

Keep learning those moonspeaks folks. It will help you when the Chink overlords take over the planet or some other shit.
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[GollumDragon]

In response to the Spanish thing, too.

Since English is based off of Latin-style languages, once you learn any Latin-based language (such as Spanish, Italian, French, etc) its fairly easy to learn the rest. (Sort of like if you learn a string instument like violin its fairly easy to learn the others).

The same is with Eastern languages , learn one its easier to learn the rest. Harder than with Latin-based because they are not as close to each other as the others, but its still easier. From what I've seen/heard/am learning, Japanese is harder in the long run. My theory is, though, pick whichever you think you'll find most useful to learn first, because if you look at it that way, you're fine no matter which you start with. Easier one first means you'll get into the groove of things. Harder one first means you'll be well prepared.

[ZinnKid]

You should learn English, Spanish, and Chinese. With those three languages you could speak to 3/4 of the world.