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mandarin or japanese?

Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2001 4:49 pm
by lisa
which language would be easier for an english speaker to learn?
i want to learn both eventually but want to learn the easier of the two since im learning a language already.

Re: mandarin or japanese?

Posted: Wed Aug 08, 2001 12:59 pm
by Li Er
What language are you learning? Learning spoken Japanese is easier since they don't have the tones of Mandarin. But, written Japanese is harder than Mandarin since you have to learn 4 ways of writing, so maybe it evens out.

Re: mandarin or japanese?

Posted: Thu Aug 09, 2001 11:36 am
by someone
written japanese is harder than written chinese???

Re: mandarin or japanese?

Posted: Thu Aug 09, 2001 1:13 pm
by Li Er
Yeah. They use 2 syllabries: hiragana, katakana. Then they have the kanji (Chinese characters). Then they have romanji (the roman letters). That's four sets of writing all mixed together.
While Chinese only has the Chinese characters. But, of course you have to memorize a lot of characters in Chinese. About 3000 for an average person. About 4000 for a college-educated person.
In Japanese the government tried to limit the amount of kanji used to about 2000, but, even a Japanese educated person must learn about 3000.

Re: mandarin or japanese?

Posted: Thu Aug 09, 2001 3:46 pm
by me again
if those figures you provided were correct, so...
an educated chinese memorize/read/write/ about 4000 chinese characters.
an educated japanese memorize/write about 3000 kanji(chinese characters) or sth + 45hirakana (seion) characters + 45katakana characters + 2 hatuon and i think that is all.
the 45katakana characters are nothing but the corresponding characters for the sounding of the 45hirakana (sieon) characters for non-japanese words.
besides, i don't think japanese writes romanji in their daily life. in newspapers, document, letters, you can hardly find sth like "watashi wa nihonjin desu" <-> same as the pinyin in chinese. in fact romanji in japanese is just identical to pinyin in chinese.
pls correct me if i made any mistakes regarding this issue.

Re: mandarin or japanese?

Posted: Sun Aug 12, 2001 10:49 pm
by Sallin
Spoken Japanese is very easy since the pronunciation is really limited, but its grammar is harder than the Chinese.
: which language would be easier for an english speaker to learn?
: i want to learn both eventually but want to learn the easier of the two since im learning a language already.

What is hatuon ?

Posted: Sun Sep 23, 2001 11:03 am
by Frank
: an educated japanese memorize/write about 3000 kanji(chinese characters) or sth + 45hirakana (seion) characters + 45katakana characters + 2 hatuon and i think that is all.
Can you please explain hatuon.
Thanks in advance
Frank

Re: mandarin or japanese?

Posted: Tue Jul 07, 2009 6:14 pm
by kasera
Learning spoken Japanese is easier since they don't have the tones of Mandarin. But, written Japanese is harder than Mandarin since you have to learn 4 ways of writing.
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Re: mandarin or japanese?

Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2009 9:01 am
by replicaprada
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Re: mandarin or japanese?

Posted: Mon Feb 01, 2010 8:23 am
by bell22
If you want something more popular then go learning mandarin...but I myself prefer Japanese, since I love Japanese culture...moreover, Japanese is more comfortable to listen and it's quite easy to learn it... :P