Is it easier to learn Chinese after learning Japanese or vice versa?

Question

For those who speak both Chinese and Japanese, would first learning Chinese make it easier to learn Japanese?

Knowing that Japanese Kanji are derived from Chinese characters, how hard is it to do the opposite? Learning Mandarin after learning Japanese?

Answer 1

I think it would be easier to learn Chinese after learning Japanese and vice versa, because too many Chinese characters are used in Japanese.I would like to talk about this from 3 points.

1. Pronunciations

   Usually, in Japanese, one character has 2 types of pronunciations, "on yomi" and "kun yomi". The "on yomi" (in Chinese,音读) is similar to the pronuciation of the character in Chinese. This could be an advantange when you learn one of these two languages after you learnt one another.It can help you to remember the pronunciations. But it could be an obstacle in some cases, since the pronunciations of characters in Chinese also changed in the long history.

   Example: Character 人. In Japanese, its "on yomi" includes "Nin" and "Jin", and the "kun yomi" is "hito". In modern Mandarin, the pronunciation is "Ren", however, I know in "Wu Dialect", the pronunciation is "Nin", Anyway, this could also help you to remember the "on yomi". If you know "Nin" and "Jin" for "人“, you may guess "Nin" or "Jin" for ”仁“(actually, it's right!), because both "人" and ”仁“ have the same sound in Chinese.

2. Writing Characters

   Since Japanese uses a lot of Chinese Characters, it's an advantage for you to write down the characters if you have learnt one language. However, you still have to take care of some characters. Because both Japan and China conducted a reform (simplification) on traditional characters, and of course, they didn't negotiate with each other, so some characters are different after the simlification.

   Example: Character "对" in simplified Chinese while ”対" in Japanese, the traditional form is "對".

3. Meanings of Characters

   In most cases, the meanings of a character in Japanese and Chinese are the same or almost the same. This is a big advantage. However, Japanese generally keeps meanings of a character in Classic Chinese, while in modern Chinese meanings of some characters have changed. In this case, the learner should pay extra attention to these characters, compared to a learner who doesn't know one another language, because his experience will lead him to a mistake.

   Examples: Japanese verb "走れる", which means "to run". In modern Chinese, we use "走" to mean "to walk" and use "跑" to mean "to run", however, in Classic Chinese, "走" really means "to run".

Compared with the advantages and disadvantages, I believe it could be easier to learn one language of these two after you have learnt one another.

Answer 2

Apart from the Kanji/Hanzi, that they (partly) have in common, concerning the written part, there is nothing that can really help you with the other language:

• Chinese is pretty much SVO, Japanese is SOV;
• Chinese has tones, Japanese has no tones. When speaking, sentences do have a certain "tone", but not phonemic, i.e. it doesn't totally change the meaning;
• Chinese has one writing system (Hanzi), Japanese has 3 (Hiragana, Katakana, Kanji);

I can't come up with other substantial differences right now. But what I'm trying to say is that learning one or the other, won't give you a special advantage on the other one. You'll have some better knowledge about the characters they have in common but not all is always the same (pronunciation, strokes, meaning).

Answer 3

I found PART of the Japanese language easier to learn after studying Chinese.

Japanese has two basic strains, an "indigenous" strain, which its own hiragana and katagana script, and the "Chinese" based strain, in which the Japanese adopted the Chinese Hanzi as "Kanji" for many words, as well as a pronunciation similar to the Chinese for those words.

(Nearly) all Chinese Hanzi is part of the Japanese language, so someone with a knowledge of Chinese would be understood writing Hanzi. But it would be hard for the Chinese person to read (and hear) the non-Chinese part of the language, written in katagana and hiragana.

It's like saying that English has two strains, a Latin strain and a Germanic strain, and therefore, two words, e.g. "chair" and "stool," for many words. "Chair" comes from the French "chaise" and "stool" from the German "Stuhl." It's like saying that a French or German speaker could understand all the French/German derived words in the English language, and with some knowledge of English, could be understood using those words of his/her language that is part of English.

Answer 4

As i'm a Chinese that knows a little Japanese . I can say both of them are not.

if you studing them together, you will be confused by their appeared similar but actually different.

Answer 5

I had studied Japanese before I began Chinese (My father has lived in Japan for 15 years). In my experience, apart from the muscle memory in drawing characters, there was very little transferable knowledge / skills from Japanese to Chinese.

My Japanese was extremely limited however, so this may be different for someone with advanced Japanese.

Answer 6

Knowing Kanji can be both an advantage and otherwise.

Advantage: You get a good headstart in writing Chinese. If you have been studying Japanese for a while, you probably have a sense of the patterns of Kanji. Even more important is the patience you gained while learning them. (i.e. English speakers who had not enough exposure to Kanji find it more frustrating to memorize Hanzi.)

Disadvantage: Many characters are used differently in both languages, which can cause confusion.

I've learned Japanese before Chinese and knowing the latter hasn't really significantly made by studies considerably easier, since both are different in terms of grammar, pronunciation, etc.

Answer 7

Beyond the characters and grammar structures, Japanese has different levels of speaking, Keigo, as it is known, allows a speaker to change one's politeness when speaking to someone in a higher or lower social status, i.e a boss to co-worker and even more adults to kids. Even more so the structures used are also intended to be used when talking about these people in the abstract to show respect. More in to grammar the intransitive and transitive verbs can be very difficult to learn. 開く and 開ける is an example of this, and can be very difficult to learn and to use without lots of practice. I have not really experienced either of these concepts in Chinese, as I am sure they exist, as sentence structures are very simple and more literal and more direct when speaking.