The eternal question

Which is harder to learn on your own: Chinese or Japanese?

Reddit and Quora suck at answering this.

Japanese. Chinese has simple grammar, no conjugating/inflections - Japanese has the latter, and the grammar is very different from any other language, making it difficult for learners to grasp. In both languages you have to memorize characters, but in Chinese a character is associated with a single specific pronunciation, while in Japanese a character will have multiple ways it can be read.

HOWEVER, because of how many weebs there are compared to sinoboos, there are way more Japanese learning resources.

from what Ive read: chinese has much easier grammar, but very difficult pronunciation.

japanese has difficult grammar, but very easy pronunciation.

when it comes to writing systems, both are kind of shit. chinese is the worst, but they have pinyin (phonetic help alphabet) and japanese has something similar, but if you want to read real-world shit like online sites or newspapers, books etc. you'll have to learn the writing system, which is SHIT. it's literal shit. just shit.

you have been warned

Thank you. Do you have any tips for learning Chinese characters? I realize Chinese grammar is a piece of cake but I just suck at remember how to write each character. I can recognize them when reading, but struggle when writing.

write them over and over again until you stop struggling.
but honestly, it's more important to be able to type them out than to be able to hand write them.

I'm gonna argue chinese is harder.

If chinese grammar is at a 1 difficulty, japanese might be at a 3. Still way easier than spanish, so I wouldn't put much weight into it.

The double reading difference is also not a big deal. Chinese has it too, it's just rarer, plus it doesn't impact understanding, only pronunciation.

Japanese often uses the english transliteration for words, chinese uses pictographs for basically everything.

Chinese has a lot of hard to remember phrases and sayings that come from old classical shit and prose is almost another language.

As for , nobody handwrites anymore. They all use pinyin and keyboards.

>chinese has much easier grammar
How so? Japanese grammar seems to be pretty simple already.

it has a steep learning curve but it's really not that bad, once you learn 100 or so and understand the radicals you can learn the rest pretty fast

chinese

practice of course. learn what the radicals mean and their history, where they came from, and pay for skritter if you want, it's pretty good.

Actual Chinese speaker here. Most people have trouble with the Chinese tones, so the pronunciation learning curve is much harder. Each character has 1 syllable and usually 1 pronunciation, where Japanese you use 2 sets of 50 alphabets on top of character that has multiple pronunciations.

Writing wise Japanese Kanji is literally a version of Chinese. The mainland Chinese version is the simplest of all stoke wise, the traditional version used in Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and other SE countries are the hardest version. Japanese Kanji uses half and half, but each have a bunch of pronunciations. Tho the number of Kanji you need to learn is lower than in actual Chinese obviously. The characters usually share the same meanings when alone but the common way to spell words are different.

Grammar wise I always thought the "Chinese and English have the same" is a trap. Yes offically modern Chinese is SVO, where Japanese is SOV. But in reality both old style Ancient Chinese and verbal Chinese become SOV often. Like in old fashioned martial arts films ppl speak differently than in real life. If you only follow the English way of SVO, usually your verbal speech will sounds very "stiff".

Japanese conjugate everything, Chinese grammar is almost 100% word order

as well
korea is invisilbe town

china korea japan-only geogrpay

both are hard for you

I only know Japanese and my perspective is limited but having kana often feels like a life saver imo. Pinyin doesn't seem to be very widespread among actual Chinese people which might be a problem if you try to rely mostly on native materials (something you should definitely start doing after you get past intermediate). Having to write/radical search every new character you encounter in a book feels like a drag. Thank God we have computers though.

how about your nation of illtercacy rate

im smile
cuz hree 0..................................... ? i can go on? ok ......................... percent

y'all can't even understand your own language without hanja kek

>"Let's toss away part of our language cus it has too much Chinese and Japanese influences"
>"woops younger kids can't even understand the older classics anymore"

>y'all can't even understand your own language without hanja kek
what? you can understand almost all korean without hanja

맣왓한글창제됮훟핫돜옷랰됬얼립잊긐간으로나라에서한글전용정책펴서이제는한자없이도모든국민들이문자를쓰는데아무문제가없다오히려이제는한자를배울려고노력중입니다만?우린한자없어도아무불편함도없고문맹률이뭐야이러고있는데너희는어떠냫?ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ?


plz use goolge translator

almost isn't good enough. korea has a larger proportion of functional illiteracy (comprehension ability as opposed to just being able to read) compared to other developed nations

i don't see why you should be asking me about being illiterate considering the fact that you can't even communicate in a language other than your own, bro

only ur coment about other letter
its only
sorry

Chinese: Bing bong ching chong
Japanese: anime senpai baka hentai son goku
Was that fucking hard to you?

This is literally a lie.

is correct. You do not need hanja to understand Korean.

I've had an easier time with Korean especially because of its genius writing system. Pronunciation is kinda tough, and you might not know exactly how to write a word just from hearing it, but it feels easier to acquire new vocabulary by being able to know what a word sounds like just by looking at it, and having that sound associated with whatever you were reading and then encountering it somewhere else and remembering it