Which is harder? Japanese or Chinese?
This post doesn’t have anything directly to do with Japanese. It’s more like a personal blog entry, just to talk about the things on my mind lately. You see, I have spent a lot of time writing about Japanese in trying to convince the Internet that it is actually a very easy language to learn in many respects. The grammar rules are very consistent and logical, and kanji can really help you speed up your vocab memorization. But is Japanese actually easy, relative to other languages?
About a month ago, I started doing language exchange with a Chinese person every Sunday. It’s quite interesting because I teach her English, she teaches me Chinese and all of this is done in Japanese. It works well because she is quite fluent having lived in Japan for many, many years.
Now, Chinese is supposed to be like the holy grail of foreign languages, image-wise, for us Americans. Or maybe it was Japanese? Well, we probably don’t even know the difference. Anyway, if you tell your friends and family that you’re learning Chinese, they’ll probably go all “ooh”, “ahh” and “damn, you’d have to be some kind of a freak genius to learn that”.
Chinese characters don’t impress or scare me though, having learned Japanese. In fact, I was actually wishing for Chinese characters when I was studying for the GRE because all those stupid words started to look the same. And on top of that, now that I’m studying Chinese, I can’t help but get the feeling that Chinese is like the easiest language in the world. Of course, I’m still a complete beginner but from what I can tell, Chinese is just so much simpler than Japanese.
Of course, comparing the difficulties of two languages will always be impossible because so many things depend on the person learning the language. But still, it’s fun to try because it usually brings out heated arguments and one-upmanship, which is basically the whole point of the Internet. So here we go.
Conjugations
Because Chinese has nothing but Chinese characters, there are no conjugations of any kind whatsoever. This means that you miss out on all the fun you get to have with okurigana.
For instance, if you want to negate something, just add 「不」. It doesn’t matter if it’s an adjective, verb, or noun. It’s almost too easy.
Chinese
好。- Good.
不好。- Not good.
In contrast, Japanese has separate rules for two types of adjectives, nouns, and two types of verbs. You also have two exception verbs and two exception adjectives. English is probably even worse because you need to match the right tense to the subject and other stuff I probably couldn’t even explain.
This tacking on character trick works for all sorts of things that would be complicated grammar in any other language. You want to say something is “too much”? Just add 太. So since “small” is 小, too small becomes 太小. You want to say, “not too small”, just add 不: 不太小! You want to say that you’re in the process of doing something? Add 在. With Chinese, using a character based writing system actually makes sense! You can’t make this stuff any easier folks. You don’t have to conjugate and then conjugate the conjugation, and then conjugate the conjugated conjugation like you do in Japanese.
Language gone wrong
行きたくなくもないけど、行けなくならなかったら、行かないよ。
- I wrote this and even I don’t know what it means.
Still, I’m expected the other shoe to drop as I learn more Chinese. There has to be a price to pay for not having conjugations. For example, I’m already confused about 了 because it supposedly expresses a completed action but I see it in non-completed actions as well. I’ve also seen past actions without 了. I don’t get it.
Tones
A number of people have told me about how tones are so difficult in Chinese. I don’t really remember what they said, but I vaguely remember something about my mom being a horse or something. Pretty rude, if you ask me.
Now that I’m actually learning them, I don’t think tones are that difficult. I mean there’s only four and I have a sneaking suspicion that the second is pretty much the same as the third. I heard that Taiwanese has 7 tones. Now that sounds difficult. I don’t even know how that is possible. Is tone 7 like the chromatic scale or something? I can see the teacher saying, “No, idiot! Your tone is completely wrong! It’s supposed to be a harmonic minor, not melodic! And the third is flat!”
Anyway, I think having all the tones decided makes things clearer than Japanese in many ways. Japanese people have this strange belief that Japanese is completely flat but in reality, if you don’t get the intonation right, you sound like crap. If Japanese is completely flat, how come you can get an accent dictionary that shows the pitches for each word? With Japanese, the only way to get that perfect native intonation is to just imitate native speakers. Not very helpful, I know, which is why Chinese is easier to understand because it’s all laid out for you.
Even so, to make the comparison fair, I need to mention that tones in Chinese can sometimes change. I’ve figured out that while 不 is usually fourth tone, if the next character is fourth tone too, it changes into the second tone. I don’t know if this is a rule, just something I’ve noticed along the way.
不知道。- bù zhī dao.
不是。- bú shì.
Kanji
Aaaahhh, kanji, my favorite topic. With a language like Chinese, it actually makes sense! Kanji is great as long as you don’t totally f***k them up like the Japanese did.
I think a small number of characters have maybe a max of 2 readings. Even then, it’s because it means something completely different like 觉, which is “jiào” when it means “to sleep” and “jué” when it means “to think”. Let’s compare that to Japanese, which for instance has like a million readings for 「生」. What the hell, 「なま」 doesn’t even originate from Chinese! Why the heck do you write it in Chinese?!
Chinese is so much simpler that it wins hands down over Japanese here. It’s not even a contest. The only beef I have with Chinese is simplified, traditional, blah blah, blah… just pick one! Don’t make me have to learn both! The Japanese government can successfully mandate a new set of characters and they don’t even have a real army. Why can’t you?
Counters
Whoever invented counters should be shot. They add nothing useful to the language yet is such an enormous pain in the ass. It’s like a disease that somehow managed to permanently spread itself through all of East Asia. The worst part is, all the counters, for some reason, are all completely different for each language. For clothes, it’s 件 for Chinese and 着 for Japanese. It’s insane.
Still, if I had to compare, I would say Japanese is worse because they have all those crazy irregular readings like 「ついたち」, 「ひとり」, and 「はたち」. But then Chinese has 两, which is not as bad but still really annoying. I can never tell whether its going to be ニ or 两.
Conclusion
I haven’t seen too many comparisons of Chinese and Japanese, probably because the extremely small number of English speakers who know both probably aren’t wasting their time with blogs. So, while I am still completely new at Chinese, here are my thoughts on the topic. If you are trying to decide which language to learn, maybe this will help you decide.
In my opinion, Chinese is really easy and approachable for beginners as long as you’re not tone-deaf. I can say with confidence that it’s a lot easier than Japanese in the beginning. There are so many traps that you can fall into with Japanese in the beginning that just doesn’t seem to exist in Chinese. Common pitfalls include learning only hiragana/katakana or even just romaji, overusing the topic particle, learning the polite and dictionary forms backwards, thinking that 「だ」 is the same as 「です」, etc., etc., etc.
With Chinese, while you have Pinyin, I think Chinese teachers are much better at making sure students learn kanji. Plus, I haven’t seen too much regarding politeness levels outside of 你 vs 您 (so far). I doubt that Chinese has about 10 different ways of saying “sorry” like Japanese. （ごめん、ごめんなさい、すまん、すまない、すいません、すみません、申し訳ない、恐縮です、恐れ入ります）
Still, I’m going to hold off on making any definite conclusions because I have the sneaking suspicion that Chinese seems easy only in the beginning, kind of like my experience with Spanish. If it’s one thing I learned, it’s that there’s no free lunch in language. If one thing is easy, it’s going to make something else hard.
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July 20th, 2006 at 6:42 pm
I believe Chinese is harder to learn, a few of my friends who is learning Japanese and decided to give Chinese a go, all failed horribly. The reason for this is, at least I believe is, that Chinese characters doesn’t really have any written law for them, and in order to write fluent Chinese, you need to memorizes 10k characters. Japanese hiragana provides an alternative to that. And there is more then 10 ways to say hello in Chinese, if you count the different dialects (54 of them in total I believe).
July 20th, 2006 at 7:29 pm
Well, I’ve studied Japanese and some Mandarin, and I can tell you that, for the most part, Mandarin is indeed easier. Like you’ve mentioned, most characters have only one pronunciation, very few with two. Not only that, but the characters tend to be much easier to read and understand through the use of radicals, as use of phonetic and lexical components is far more common. The grammar also seems a bit simpler, and much closer to English as times than Japanese, especially with the focus on word order. 了, though. I have never hated a character like I’ve hated 了. I suspect it’s the reason I’m dropping Mandarin for Korean as my third language. As for tones, don’t be deceived. Second and third tones are most definitely not the same. The phenomenon you noted with fourth tone changing to second, as well as any other tone changes, is known as tone sandhi, and there are definite rules to how it functions. And finally, as far as counters go, most languages are crazy with them, even English, upon examination. It’s just kind of something to get used to, I suppose.
July 20th, 2006 at 9:15 pm
That’s odd. I googled around and most say you need to know about 3000-4000 characters to read a newspaper, slightly a little more than Japanese.
Plus, hiragana is not a substitute for kanji, you need both if you want to exceed the reading level of a 5 year old. If the characters were making your friends fail at Chinese, then I don’t think they have much of a chance at Japanese.
July 21st, 2006 at 3:47 am
I tried to learn both Japanese and Mandarin and after one semester I dropped the latter in favour of the former. I think there were two main reasons, first, even though I could hear and pronounce tones, I had great difficulties to remember them, it’s probably that my mind wasn’t trained from other languages to this “you need to remember the word AND tone” system. Secondly, the amount of hanzi required to be able to read scared me (and it still does). After learning Japanese for a short time I was able to understand with a help of a dictionary a simple text, just by looking up the unknown words and grammar. With a Mandarin text of similar difficulty, though, I was completely lost. It took me a ridiculous amount of time just to figure out where the word borders are. Maybe when I finish learning Japanese kanji I will be better equipped to start learning Mandarin again but for now the amount of effort required doesn’t seem reasonable.
July 21st, 2006 at 6:31 am
Yes, second and third tones are definitely different. First tone is kind of monotonic, or just a quick “breath”. Second is slightly longer, and climbs up. Third tone dips before going up, so it would technically be the longest tone. And fourth tone is a quick sound downwards. That’s why the symbols for the tones are respectively,
1: - (or . for quick breath, i think)
2: /
3: V
4: \
At least, I’m pretty sure the above is correct. I’m sure you knew the above anyways, so sorry if I’m incorrect in any place or if my post didn’t help at all.
July 21st, 2006 at 11:15 am
I find it interesting that the difficulty of Chinese characters made you choose Japanese over Chinese. Is it the timing of when you learn the characters? Maybe Japanese tricks people thinking it’s all fun and game with hiragana until it’s too late because kanji just seems so much more difficult than hanzi to me.
With Japanese you have completely irregular readings like 仲人 or 気質. You also have kun vs on readings. Sometimes both are used like 続柄（つづきがら or ぞくがら）. It get worse when you have multiple on or kun readings like 大量 vs 大学 or 未亡人 vs 職人. Also, you have different kanji to specify a specific meaning for the same word such as 見る vs 診る vs 観る. You also have all those voice changes. The most confusing prefix or suffix kanji like 所 in 刑務所 or 案内所. You can never tell whether it’s じょ or しょ until you memorize it.
Chinese might use a few more characters but I think if you take all the readings and exceptions, Japanese has a lot more to memorize. Or is there stuff in Chinese that I’m just not aware of yet?
July 21st, 2006 at 2:37 pm
Thanks for that blog, lately I’ve really been considering starting to learn Chinese. I’ve been learn Japanese for about 3 years now (with the last year in Japan), so I think I will have a head start on the characters.
Keep up the great blogging!
July 22nd, 2006 at 12:11 am
If you were to ask me, I think Chinese is much easier to learn than Japanese or English (since I know Chinese and English, and am struggling with my Japanese). Well, I think perhaps the most difficult aspect is learning kanji, proverbs, and idioms. Though they can get quite difficult at times, they are also the most interesting as well~!
July 22nd, 2006 at 5:30 am
Hey Tae,
While I have no experience with Mandarin I am interested in studying it. Do you know of any good online resources?
For some reason I found a great amount of online resources when I began Japanese 6 months ago, but I’m not having the same luck with Chinese. Most of the stuff I find is spotty. Well, I may be taking the course in the fall anyways.
And Tae, if I e-mail you from time to time with questions would that be alright?
btw…i miss your skype lessons. they were fun to participate in :)
-John Dyer
July 24th, 2006 at 3:06 pm
So far, the only useful site I found was this online dictinoary.
http://www.mandarintools.com/worddict.html
Oh, and how could I forget Chinese pod. I downloaded the torrent archives and they have the transcript of the dialogue right in the lyric section of the mp3 files.
http://www.chinesepod.com/
Otherwise, I use books I bought and my language partner.
I still want to do Skype lessons but I’m not sure when that’s going to be. If you want to ask me questions, I suggest my forum because I hardly check my email anymore.
http://www.guidetojapanese.org/forum/
July 25th, 2006 at 3:37 am
Tae,
I liked your
blog entry. :)
Before I mention
my experience/view
with Japanese vs Chinese, here are
a few websites for John Dyer
that I found useful for learning Chinese.
http://www.zhongwen.com
http://www.linese.com
http://www.chinese-tools.com
zhongwen.com has a chat link (liaotian) so you can practice with people from all over the world, but sometimes it is hogged by rude people using indecent language
(saying rude things in Chinese to each other).
linese.com has been recently launched by China
according to a news story on Yahoo.
I had perhaps a year or two of Chinese (spread over 6 yrs) and then a gap of 5 yrs when I came to Japanese. For some reason I was under the impression that Chinese is more difficult but was in for a shock when I found that each kanji has so many readings. I long to go back to Chinese. Tones don’t deter me because I found that I am able to communicate with Chinese people even without exact tones. I read on some Chinese language forum that instead of trying to “put on” tones (like non-English speakers try to put on British or American accent), if you speak in a plain tone, Chinese people are able to figure out what you are saying from the context.
However, if you put on tones, and get them wrong, they are left to wonder what the heck you are saying.
In my opinion, English requires accents and emphasis at certain places and it changes according to whether the word
is a verb or a noun. For example,
convIct (verb)
vs cOnvict (noun). This type of change in
pronunciation is difficult for people whose native language is phonetic and flat. So, it seems to me that native speakers of English have a slight advantage over non-English-phonetic -language-speakers when it comes to learning Chinese. :)
Regarding “le”,
my understanding is that you can use it to indicate that you have been learning something. For example, if you ask someone “ni xue le zhongwen duo jiu le?” you
are asking “how long have you been learning Chinese”, whereas
if you say “ni xue zhongwen duo jiu le”, you are saying “how long have you learned Chinese”. You may want to verify with someone if this is correct or not.
I found that the Japanese learning material is very organized and available in plenty on the net, but not so for the Chinese. For example, you have a known quantity of kanji for the JLPT tests and JLPT related material is available in plenty on the net. But not so with Chinese. I could hardly find any sites which have information about the HSK test (chinese language proficiency test).
Finally, I found WAKAN to be a GREAT tool. It has Japanese, Chinese and Korean pronunciations for Kanjis.
The same goes for
http://popjisyo.com
where I can see both Chinese and Japanese pronunciations for Kanji just by hovering the mouse-pointer on the kanji.
Good luck all
D
July 25th, 2006 at 9:01 am
I am a native English and Chinese (Cantonese) speaker,
and know some Japanese.
I will offer my perspective:
1. Tones do seem to be hard when you have to memorize them from writing. To native speakers, it doesn’t seem difficult at all because we learn first by imitating native speakers by ear. Cantonese has 6 distinct tone contours formally, but if you ask most native speakers they probably won’t be able to tell you the exact tone number for every character they know. They just know how they sound like (though, yes, sometimes even native speakers confuse the proper tone).
2. One possibly irksome problem to Chinese learners, non-natives particularly, is the large variety of characters used in serious Chinese writing.
The use of characters in Chinese differs in philosophy to Japanese: Japanese words are generally more ambiguous, and often have multiple slightly related meanings,
but in Chinese, there can be many different words referring to a general concept, with subtle nuances in each. And in serious writing (novels, newspapers, etc.), it is considered paramount to be able to choose the exact words with the perfect characters to express one’s intended meaning in a particular situation, and to understand them of course.
3. And no, you can’t reliably guess how unknown are pronounced even given the phonetic component, because often the tones vary. The Chinese seem to take the attitude that everyone should be a well-educated reader, so, unlike Japanese, pronunciations for difficult characters are almost never indicated in a furigana-like fashion.
Disclaimer: although I can say I am fluent in Cantonese, and can read (modern, not much classical) Chinese well, I don’t consider myself completely fluent in writing for the reasons outlined in (2).
July 25th, 2006 at 11:51 pm
I am not studying Chinese, but I did see a related article, “Is Chinese really so hard to learn as a second language?” at:
http://www.themanager.org/Career/Learn_Chinese.htm
July 29th, 2006 at 6:18 am
“I downloaded the torrent archives and they have the transcript of the dialogue right in the lyric section of the mp3 files.”
How do you look at the lyric section of mp3 files?
July 29th, 2006 at 4:37 pm
imchinese! well actually i speak cantonese most of the time but were required to learn mandarin… and when i look at japanese, its much harder because of all the different pronunciations and slight nuances ..it helps immensely with the kanji, but then hmmm starting from cantonese, mandarin is way easier, but then at least cuz ppl write in the chinese characters in the text, but in japanese u at least get hgana so even if u dont know the word u can pronounce it ^^
July 30th, 2006 at 12:08 am
If you used iTunes, you simply right-click the file and select “Get Info”, then select the “Lyrics” tab. With the ipod you press the middle button a bunch of times while the file is playing.
If you’re using some other MP3 player, you may not be able to see it. It depends on the software, I think.
July 30th, 2006 at 12:33 pm
hey man, just for curiousity, how do u write foreing words (aka katakana in japanese) because i asked a chinese friend a time ago how to write “paul rodriguez” in chinese, and he wrote a bunch of kanjis that really surprised me that u can write “paul rodriguez” with chinese kanji.
July 31st, 2006 at 11:41 am
Here’s a interesting article (in Japanese) that says why Japaneses don’t learn 3000 kanjis in primary school while Chineses do.
http://www1.ocn.ne.jp/~kanamozi/hikari930-0202.html
July 31st, 2006 at 7:29 pm
It’s main point seems to be that Kanji in Japanese is much harder so they shouldn’t increase it, which supports my viewpoint that Japanese is just as hard if not harder.
August 1st, 2006 at 12:02 am
I’ve studied Japanese for 6 years, mostly at university and Chinese (Mandarin) for 5 years, mostly at high school, and for me, Chinese is definitely more difficult. Forget kanji, multiple readings, tones, classifiers, and all that stuff. What I find difficult about Chinese is — the grammar!
I know most people say it has no grammar, but Chinese is just as difficult as Japanese, if not more difficult, for many of the same reasons:
- you have to be conscientious of topics and comments; it’s like Chinese has wa and ga, but they’re just silent. But word order and word choice are affected.
- When to use 了, as a speaker above noted, is very very difficult. It is also based not not only on meaning but on the context of the cenversation (it’s right up there with ne and yo, or the English a/the distinction in terms of difficulty)
- Resultative and directional complements. Which complements can go with which adjectives is sometimes very hard to predict: 说定, 炸坏, 吃下. As hard or harder than the Japanese penchant for compound verbs (投げ込む, 探り出す, 言いそびれる, etc.). Similarly difficult are directional complements that aren’t about direction (看上去, 吃下去, 定下来, etc.). They are also numerous, sometimes hard to characterise, and not easy for an English speaker to get used to using as much as Chinese speakers do (English speakers like using auxiliaries and multiple verbs, so 吃不下去 becomes the awkward 不能继续吃)
- And so on, and so on. Somehow, for me, Japanese just seems more natural, and I was more comfortable using it when it was at the same level that my Chinese is at now. I’m sure for other people it’s the exact other way.
August 2nd, 2006 at 12:38 pm
Tae Kim: as a native speaker of English and (less so) Mandarin and learner of Japanese, I think many of your observations are accurate. As you note, multiple readings for hanzi are rare, and there is a very fixed way to append particles to verbs and adjectives (”不太小”). Sentences are easy to figure out once you know the grammatical words/particles (as opposed to the nouns and verbs) - there are quite a few of them, but not as many as in Japanese I believe. All those conjugation rules…nasty! :P
了 indicates whether the verb/phrase preceeding it is complete. After an action (verb), it represents the completed action. After a phrase, it represents the completed phrase. It can be used in conjunction with other particles (e.g. 去了, 了吗) and other time markers are present (e.g. 以后 yi hou). Here’s a simple comparison:
1. “wo zuo san ge yue” - I’m working 3 months / I’ll work 3 months [no tense specified]
2. “wo zuo san ge yue le” - I’ve worked 3 months (now)
3. “wo zuo le san ge yue” - I’ve worked 3 months (now) / I worked 3 months
4. “wo zuo le san ge yue le” - I’ve worked 3 months (now)
As you can see, they’re quite interchangeable for certain purposes, reflecting how Chinese tends to de-emphasize tense.
Now including 以后:
5. “wo zuo san ge yue yi hou” - After I’ve worked 3 months
6. “wo zuo le san ge yue yi hou” - After I’ve worked 3 months / After I worked 3 months
7. “wo zuo san ge yue le yi hou” - After I’ve worked 3 months / After I worked 3 months [? not sure]
8. “wo zuo le san ge yue le yi hou” - [unwieldy and probably unacceptable]
Ultimately 了 isn’t worth really agonising over. Just know where to put it in a sentence and your meaning will come across fine.
Tones are something that many Mandarin learners mess up. It’s important to pronounce the 4 basic tones exactly right and learn the basic rules of tone sandhi (there’re only like 3 or 4 of them); it doesn’t take much time and it makes you sound loads, loads better.
Russell: Verbs with ‘directional complements’ seem just like English phrasal verbs to me: “blow up”, “get [something] down”, “go on”. Memorising [verb]+[complement] is probably the best approach, although some complements are very consistent, e.g. [verb]下去 means to continue doing something. In any case, these verb-complements are more common in speech than in writing and shouldn’t interfere too much when you’re reading stuff.
Also, ‘ne’ and ‘yo’ are not hard at all, and neither is ‘le’.
Scott: Certain Chinese characters are used for their sounds to render foreign names. It’s similar to how katakana is used, except that the words are more complicated to write (being hanzi).
August 3rd, 2006 at 2:31 pm
Dennis: I realize that they are similar. However, the various combinations of complements that occur with various verbs multiplies the total amount of words to memorize, and the non-overlap with English can make it difficult. My point was that there are parts of Chinese grammar that require effort to master, not just the characters and tones.
And, I have to disagree on all counts of ne, yo, and le. Though the basic idea of when to use each is easy enough, when each is appropriate and most natural to use is far from easy. Each of these has book-length treatments from native speakers of Japanese and Chinese, respectively, and they -still- don’t come to a concise or even comprehensive description of when exactly they are used. For instance, it is not true that every time you describe an event that has completed you add a ‘le.’ It also has to do with how you are presenting the information in what you say, what other things surround the sentence, and the overall flow of the discourse.
To give an analogy: in English, when do you use a passive verb? when do you use “you know” or “so”? These are very difficult to answer, and so learners often have trouble with them. I certainly couldn’t just think about it for a while and come up with an answer that would give an ESL learner the ability to use these constructions as naturally as a native speaker.
I agree that, in general, you can get away without knowing these things and, as you say, “your meaning will come across fine,” or perhaps in some genres (e.g., formal writing) you don’t need to know about certain constructions (like directional complements). But that doesn’t mean you can ignore these things when you consider whether learning the language is easy or not. Reaching a certain level of ability might be easy, but beyond that every language has huge numbers of aspects that are very difficult for 2nd language learners.
August 3rd, 2006 at 2:35 pm
Ah, I almost forgot, regarding these sentences:
7. “wo zuo san ge yue le yi hou” - After I’ve worked 3 months / After I worked 3 months [? not sure]
8. “wo zuo le san ge yue le yi hou” - [unwieldy and probably unacceptable]
Part of the reason 了 is confusing is that there are two varieties: one that comes after verbs and one that comes after clauses. Historically they were different words, pronounced and written differently, but now they have the same pronunciation and character; but the meanings are still different. That is part of the explanation for the badness of 7 and 8.
August 11th, 2006 at 11:20 am
Hi Tae Kim!
I’m here because I wanted to say a Huge Thank You for your wonderful guide to Japanese grammar on guidetojapanese.org! I’m learning Japanese with a textbook (Japanese for Busy People 2) and my basics are really crappy so I’m constantly refering to the net for stuff that I’ve forgotten or aren’t sure of. I get all this info some >90% of the time from your guide! Thanks so much for putting in all that effort into writing the guide (and my, you don’t even charge? Thanks so much for the genorisity!)
Well as for your Chinese vs Japanese language blog, I find it a really interesting comparison and I can see how Chinese is much easier, probably because I’m used to that (I’m ok with English and Chinese). And YES, doesn’t all that Japanese conjugations/inflections/etc etc just drive one mad! I’m learning Japanese solely for the sake of understanding Japanese shows, animes and dramas, most of which I enjoy alot, and it’s proving to be quite a tough journey. Still I’m not giving up!
Sorry for such a long winded thank you note! But I really would like you to know that your efforts are most sincerely appreciated :)
August 13th, 2006 at 3:16 pm
Russell: I’d no idea the usages of ‘ne’, ‘yo’ and ‘le’ were so contentious. What I don’t understand is why learners should worry about native authors not “[coming] to a concise or even comprehensive description of when exactly they are used” - with the basic rules for ‘le’ you’ll sound pretty much fine to most Chinese, even in colloquial situations. It’s the idiomatic expressions learners need to watch out for - 做不了 instead of 不能做。In any case, I think that naturalistic approaches and immersion probably work best for the more informal expressions and constructions in 2nd languages, rather than comprehensive academic analysis.
BTW, I never said that ‘le’ was the exclusive marker of event completion; there are of course quite a few alternatives.
August 19th, 2006 at 10:54 am
I think grammatically Chinese is a lot easier to pick up than Japanese just because there aren’t as many rules, but it’s a lot harder to speak like a native Chinese than it is as a Japanese. Japanese follows consistent grammar patterns, and after you master them it’s really quite easy. With Chinese there are a lot of nuances that are much less systematic than intuitive. So while Chinese seems a lot easier, it actually is a lot harder to master.
September 10th, 2006 at 1:47 pm
Hi Tae Kim,
Come to know this site because of your Japanese Grammar website. Great job, keep up with it.
I am a native speaker of Chinese Mandarin and English, and I am learning Japanese. I agree with what you said, Chinese is easy in the beginning, but it can be extremely difficult as your level go higher. Depend on what you want, if you just want to read daily chinese newspaper, do basic conversation, then it is not difficult at all.
However if you want to write a good article or book, or you want to become a chinese expert, then, chinese language can be a difficult thing. The most difficult part of chinese langauge faced by native speakers is the classical chinese. While, one can say that we don’t need to learn classical chinese to survive. This is truth, but if you want to become a chinese expert, you need to know classical chinese, it is almost impossible to write a very impressive chinese article or essay without any knowledge of classical chinese. But don’t worry, I dare to say that most Chinese people in both mainland china and taiwan today are not good at classical chinese, hence, degrading of the chinese langauge standard used by most chinese today.
September 10th, 2006 at 6:58 pm
Hi Ben, thanks for the informative comment. I think a similar thing can be said about classical Japanese, something I have no clue about. In fact, I have trouble with literature only 100 or so years old (all those ゐ、ゑ, and ふ instead of う etc.)
However, I was wondering why it would be impossible to write a chinese article or essay without classical Chinese?
All you need is modern Japanese to create a perfecty good piece of writing (unless of course, it’s about classical Japanese). Or did you mean, you need classical Chinese to write a good article or essay about Chinese?
September 11th, 2006 at 2:24 am
Hi Tae Kim,
It is still possible to write chinese essay without any knowledge of classical chinese, just that it won’t be impressive. To produce impressive essay, one must know how to manipulate the words. To manipulate chinese words effectively, one must know how it came about. This is where knowledge of classical chinese come into play.
Besides writing impressive essay, knowledge of classical chinese is also required to a lesser extent if you want to enjoy reading chinese novels. If one has no knowledge of any classical chinese, he won’t be able to enjoy reading it.
Most chinese students, wherever they are from, to it be from china, taiwan, singapore or malaysia, dislike to learn classical chinese, because it is just so difficult. And a lot of time it looks redundant. During my school time, I really hated it too. Nevertheless, we still have to learn it as part of the subject. However, I appreciate it so much now, I couldn’t imagine if I have no knowledge of classical chinese at all, I really couldn’t enjoy reading chinese novel or watching those swordfighting chinese drama. Moreover, it really helped so much when I learn korean and japanese.
Well, you are right, to write good piece of japanese article, all you need is perfectly good modern japanese. In my opinion, if you want to write a scientific article in chinese, all you probably need is perfectly good modern chinese, since there is not much manipulation of words needed in these kind of articles. However, if you want to write an article about chinese and chinese culture, then it is needed. If you want to write a novel, it is also needed. In the end, it really depends on what you want.
Regarding chinese grammar that you mentioned in your article. I should add on that most chinese people have no sense of grammar. That is why it is so confusing for a non-native to learn chinese, especially something like 了. I would say, it is how you manipulate this word to express your intended meaning, rather than following a fixed “grammar” rule.
September 11th, 2006 at 1:33 pm
Hi Tae Kim,
Just wanted to add something interesting.
100 years ago, people in China don’t speak the way modern chinese people speaking now. The words and vocabularies are just so different to a great extent.
Modern Chinese was heavily influenced by Japanese. I don’t know if you know the term 日製漢語 in Chinese or 和製漢語 in Japanese. It means “Japanese-made-Chinese langauge”. It is estimated that there could be more than 10000 Japanese made chinese words. In fact most of the common words that we see, such as 人民,共和國,電話,社會 etc…all these are Japanese made chinese words that appear in the chinese language. So if one is very good at Japanese language, modern Chinese shouldn’t be much of a problem.
There is a joke about the official name of China, 中華人民共和國,where among the 3 words,中華,人民 and 共和國,2 of them are Japanese made.
September 11th, 2006 at 3:57 pm
Where is my post?
September 11th, 2006 at 4:04 pm
Ben, where’s your source regarding the origin of those words being from Japan? Furthermore, it’s absurd that you think that being good at Japanese makes you good at modern Chinese, if you have any knowledge of modern Chinese at all.
September 11th, 2006 at 4:12 pm
Why is my long post not showing up?
September 11th, 2006 at 6:27 pm
Because I have to approve your comment before it shows up. What you don’t see behind the scenes (lucky you) is the dozens of spam comments I have to discard everyday consisting of like 20 links to crap and some stupid message like, “Your site is great!”.
On the other hand, I believe once you get a comment approved, further comments from the same IP usually don’t have to be moderated.
If you’re referring to some other comment I haven’t seen, it might have gotten lost somewhere in the void of the internet.
And to reply to your comment, I’d like to say that although knowing Japanese, of course, doesn’t automatically make you good at Chinese, it is certainly a lot easier to memorize words in Chinese that have the same kanji and meaning as Japanese.
September 17th, 2006 at 6:33 am
Dear Ri,
If you want to know more about Japanese-made-Chinese words, Wikipedia has a brief introduction.
http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/日製漢語.
If you want to know more about it, you can read this:
王彬彬：现代汉语中的日语“外来语”问题(http://www.china.org.cn/chinese/ch-yuwai/193347.htm)
Alternatively, if you can’t understand Chinese, Japanese Wikipedia offer a brief introduction too:
http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/和製漢語.
Here is also an article about 和製漢語 in Japanese:
(http://www.peoplechina.com.cn/maindoc/html/200303/fangtan.htm)
A quotation from this article:
“現代中国語の中の社会科学に関する語彙の60～70％は、日本語から来たものだという統計がある。”
November 16th, 2006 at 5:01 am
figure that out
事已不了了之了.
人也乐不思屬了.
了解了就了不得了吗
where is the grammar?
November 16th, 2006 at 5:16 am
correct that
事已不了了之了.
人也乐不思屬了.
了解了就了不起了吗
是不是就能就此而言了吗
July 10th, 2007 at 4:43 am
I found Japanese to be easier in everyway just because there are no tones.I quite like the Hiragana and irregular verbs.Hiragana simplifies Japanese rather than using all idiotic Kanji.I believe they should just both adopt the Korean Hangul system to their own languages.the Hangul system is far better than both and Im not even Korean lol.Its just more simple than having Kanji,hiragana,katakana and for chinese the HANZI!
July 15th, 2007 at 4:23 am
I’m finding Chinese grammar to be a lot harder than I first thought mainly because there is no grammar! The main problem I have is with sentence order. Unlike Japanese, order does matter but not in any way that makes sense to me.
Overall, I’m starting to feel that Chinese is a lot harder than Japanese.
August 1st, 2007 at 12:43 am
learning Chinese vs Japanese.
I’ve studied Chinese for 10 years. And just started on Japanese.
Japanese is much easier!
1) Better educational material available - most of the Mainland material is very boring
2) Nice loan words from English - you get 2000 words for almost free.
3) I lived in Taiwan - different characters Traditional(Taiwan) vs Traditional (HK) vs Mainland simplified.
4) Different methods of writing BOPOMOFO vs Pinyin in Chinese is adds to complexity basically equivalent to katakana vs hiragana.
5) I hate how chinese deal with foreign words and foreign names - you have to learn them all
6) I hate how chinese use chinese characters to describe everything SanFrancisco sound like zhojinshan. NOT! Names of foreigners again all have to be learned.
7) as someone mentioned you only have to learn 2000 kanji. Less kanji = easier - I don’t care what they say.
8) Japanese grammer/politeness levels are not too bad - kind of like a european language.
9) Japanese pop culture is more interesting to North Americans. I have 35 Chinese sat channels and find most of them really boring. Particularly the mainland channels.
10) Ask any chinese to write Penti - sneeze - aka da penti and you will see. Most university grads can’t write(spell) it.
August 2nd, 2007 at 2:02 pm
I’m starting to agree with you Anthony. I still can’t seem to get the hang of Chinese grammar (or rather the complete lack thereof). I should write up a follow up post once I actually learn enough Chinese to talk (complain) about it without sounding like an ignorant idiot.
October 12th, 2007 at 9:20 am
I’m thinking about studying a language mostly because I have way too much spare time. I wanted to learn Japanese at first, but now I’m leaning toward Mandarin. I have no intention of learning kanji, I just think it would be cool to be able to speak it. What do you think?
October 13th, 2007 at 3:03 am
I think learning kanji will help you to learn vocab which is obviously very important for speaking so it seems silly to cripple your goal by not studying it. However, you probably wouldn’t have to study it as rigorously as you would for people who want to read and write.
As for which language, where does your interests lie? I think it depends on your interests and preferences.
October 13th, 2007 at 3:32 am
I think that if I’m going to take the time to study one of them, Chinese would be more useful than Japanese. I should say that I know very little about Japanese, and even less about Chinese. I like the idea of no conjugations. Does Chinese have that whole “ga” and “wa” topic marker thing or whatever it is?
Thank you
October 27th, 2007 at 1:57 pm
Im fluent in Spanish(Mex) and English(us) which language would anyone recomend for learning how to speak not so much how to read or write, Mandarin or Japanese?
October 27th, 2007 at 1:59 pm
E-mail. me at tamayo_mr@hotmail.com it would greatly apreciated
November 24th, 2007 at 2:10 pm
If Japanese would get rid of the Kanji and lose a great deal of the honor conjugations, it would be easier hands-down. The tones in Chinese are unbearable sometimes. I speak both, though Chinese I know on a textbook level, and Japanese I know nearly fluently. Though Chinese is much simpler on a technical level, it makes up the difficulty in tones. I personally like Japanese. Besides, Japanese tv and manga tends to be more pleasureable than stuff from China (IMO). Good luck on learning!
February 8th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
Hi Tae Kim (sounds like a Korean name…),
Both 二 and 两 mean “2″, when 2 comes before a measure word, 两 is used instead of 二. But in numbers larger than ten, 二 is always used even when a measure word comes before it.
I just wanted to share :)
March 26th, 2008 at 11:26 am
Hi, interesting blog -I’m learning Japanese now and it is fairly difficult…but I’m trying!
March 27th, 2008 at 8:29 am
WOw, this is a great blog. I have taken Japanese 101. I think it was great, and like an earlier blog, Japanese pop culture is more interesting to me. You need to stay motivated and want to learn a language to really learn it. I think the more interesting language will be easier to learn.
If anybody can help me find out more about the useful;ness of mandarin over chinese, please leave a blog on my yahoo answer page.
just search Chinese or Japanese?
April 3rd, 2008 at 9:22 pm
learning chinese is like a spanish speaker learning portuguese or italian…
learning japanese is like…
umm…
impossible.
japanese is made for native speakers only in my mind
but i shouldn’t be talking i only know a bit of chinese
再见！
你们是猪！
April 28th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
I found Japanese really easy to learn..
Haven’t tried Chinese yet, buy about to start.
Programs like Rosetta Stone help a hell of a lot, but can be expensive.
Use torrent for it if it doesn’t bother you to do so.
Also, japancast.net can be helpful for learning, but only for phrases.
I recommend Rosetta though.
My language is English (duh), but my family speaks Spanish.. I prefer Japanese or Chinese however to learning Spanish.
June 22nd, 2008 at 3:33 pm
Wow. This website is very good. Okay. So I am a native English speaker and speak pretty fluent Spanish because I just totally and innately know Spanish. Now I started to learn chinese a year ago and I wouldn’t say that it necesarrily hard, but it definitely depends on the student. For me, the problems I have most difficulty with are the pronunciation and then I can memorize the characters, but in 3 months if I don’t review them, I forget them. The character issue is no big deal but what irritates me most is the pronunciation issue. Part of it is because I can’t really say that much, but what I think is the main factor is that my first two languages were English and Spanish. Spanish being Romantic and both these languages are, in my opinion, much louder and since they don’t have tones, much easier to pronouce. I don’t know if that’s every student’s problem, but it’s mine. Oh! And another reason why I think my pronunciation is kind of bad is because I am caucasion, like I’m white. No trace of asian in my blood. So I only get to hear Chinese when I go to Chinese School or practice with my asian friends.
June 30th, 2008 at 7:21 am
Well, this is a good site. And, yes, I am a native chinese language speaker, and a semi-native english speaker also.
The first thing you need to know before learning chinese is that, you need to pick the aspect, say:
In written (Text)
1. Traditional Chinese
2. Simplified Chinese
In verbal (Speak)
A. Cantonese
B. Mandarin
C. Japanese
so what is the difference? well, it is huge man, let’s talk about the use of these stuffs in region,
Hong Kong: 1+A
Taiwan: 1+B
China: 2+B
Japan: 1+C
So if you wanna do business with chinese people in china, then you should go 2+B, otherwise, you can go 1+B, but if you wanna master both languages, it is wise that you go 1+B+C
One more thing, A is supposed to be much more difficult than B, and 1 is even much more difficult than 2.
And yes, one more thing, both chinese and japanese languages got over 5 ways to say the exact same thing.
What can I say? Good luck and God Bless man…
(As a salesman, I master english, A, B and some C, and I know 1 and most 2 too, I am learning Japanese right now)
June 30th, 2008 at 7:22 am
Ah, shit, forget about:
Singapore: 1+B
July 11th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
Hi, I’m from Hong Kong and read about what you said about “Kanji” which consists of some traditional chinese characters and some simplified chinese characters. When I was growing up in Hong Kong, I was taught in traditional Chinese the whole time. I’m pretty sure you’d need to know more than just 3000-4000 characters in order to read the Hong Kong newspaper, and 3000-4000 characters..I mean is it a joke? I don’t know what Chinese you are or were learning, but I can tell you that it’s that you’re probably not learning it properly. The only thing hard about Japanese is that it has a different linguistic root from the chinese and romantic languages, so the Japanese grammar might seem more unfamiliar.
As far as the “Kanji” go, they’re about less than a quarter of the existing Chinese Traditional characters. In regards to Japanese written language, it was evolved from Chinese language, it would probably only get more “user friendly”, not more “user difficultly” as time progress, just like how Mainland China came up with the simplified Chinese (which I bet it was what you were learning and you have no idea that traditional chinese still exist?). The only time I was allowed to use some of the simplified Chinese characters was during high exams because the traditional Chinese we were taught in Hong Kong took forever to write. So please don’t tell people how much harder Kanji is…because you’re pretty much insulting the hard work of those young kids in Hong Kong and Taiwan who are still leaning these “tedious” characters while the Japanese kids are only learning not even a quarter of them. Thank you.
I think you’re probably fluent in Chinese by now if Chinese is that easy, yea? Maybe you should take on a different Chinese dialect? What about Cantonese, we have more tones.
July 17th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
I seem to be stuck in a predicament. I will be attending university in the fall, and i can’t quite decide on the route in which i want to venture onto.
I will definitely continue my study of spanish because i have taken it for for four years and since i’m close to the finish i might as well go all the way. but i want to learn another, specifically mandarin or japanese.
I took a semester of japanese, so i know hiragana, katakana, and some kanji, i am just VERY unfamiliar with any further grammar or anything regarding the matter, which from wha i’ve read can be tricky.
chinese, though, i am just altogether very unfamiliar with. how difficult can it really be?
Which language would be easier to learn with spanish? or would they both be about equal?
Also, what is the number of english speakers in china and japan like?(would learning one be more useful than the other? cuz i have heard many chinese learn english, as where japanese dont learn it on a level of speaking)
I would just like some general feedback, for i cannot decide on which i want to take. If it helps, im majoring in international relations and either japanese or chinese, with a minor in spanish and business!
thank you very much!
July 21st, 2008 at 5:21 am
@Dawn
Wow, are you actually insulted that I said Chinese is easier to learn? It’s really sad that language difficulty is some sort of weird pride for you… If Japanese is so easy, I assume you must be fluent already then?
@Kete
I suggest not picking based on which is easier. Both are hard in different ways and both provide plenty of business opportunities. I would base my decision on which culture seems more interesting to you.
BTW, my blog has moved here:
http://www.guidetojapanese.org/blog/
This same post can be found at:
http://www.guidetojapanese.org/blog/2006/07/which-is-harder-japanese-or-chinese/
I check that one more frequently.
July 26th, 2008 at 12:00 am
汉语是全世界最先进的语言。
August 17th, 2008 at 6:34 pm
Hi everyone, what a great blog this is! I’m from the UK, and I start Japanese at night school in September.
I’ve always had a passion for all things Japanese, I have a Japanese tatoo, I love the culture, the food, anime and import video games, architecture, the way the language sounds when spoken, trying to understnand kanji, artwork, etc. I am visiting next year to.
However, after I signed up to the class, I was a little daunted at the comments I read on the net, that Chinese is much easier to learn than Japanese.
I’ve scoured Google for hours to make sure I am making the right choice, but my advice to people who are undecided as to which is easier, is to just follow your heart.
I believe, that as I have had a life long obsession with Japan (and recognise a lot of kanji from games and literature) that I WILL be able to do it, even if it may be harder…. But with that interest already there, it will inevitably be easier to learn, as I WANT to learn it.
Anyway, thought I would share this as my journey of deciding whether I should swap courses has come to an end after reading this blog. Do which language YOU want to do, irrelivant of which one may be trickier… I believe that it will be easier as there is a genuine passion and will to learn…. Besides, there seems to be a debate as to which one is easier (coming from people who can speak one or both) and I believe that if one was proven to be more easier than the other, then we wouldn’t even be debating it.
I rally enjoyed reading this blog, and will come back on in 2 months to let you all know how the Japanese is going.
Greetings to you all!
-Charlie