New Language: Chinese or Japanese

[AngryCola]

I love all the people who are saying, "Chinese, and it's not even close."

First of all, that's a horrible cliche which needs to die.
Secondly, take some time to list reasons. If it's not even close, you should be able to list at least a few.

Anyway, I would choose Japanese, because there is a good chance I'll be living there one day.

[Blarg]

I constantly hear about how last century was accurately described by the phrase, "The American Century," but that "The Chinese Century" will more accurately describe the next one.

The income there is only a few hundred dollars a year, but with over a billion people, that's still an enormous market that pretty much no one can afford to be left out of. We give them most favored nation status despite the fact that they use prison labor to make goods, etc. - it doesn't really matter what they do, we're all bowing down because of the gargantuan amounts of money already tied up in the country and that will continue to flood in there.

Like Taiwan, it is already losing some of its cachet as the place to go to get cheap high quality labor, but it's still cheap enough and workable enough to keep the money flooding in. And as the nation upgrades the training, wealth, and general education of its citizens, it will have to rely less and less on being a repository of cheap labor. When you have a billion people, even pretty incremental changes for the better add up to a lot more power and wealth over time. And in many places, the changes are far from pretty incremental.

I'd do Chinese without hesitation. China's a monster.

[sexdrugsmoney]

Alright listen puto.

Mandarin Chinese aka 'Putonghua' is the next biggest thing. China is rapidly becoming part of the world market and Yankees who speak "the common language" (putonghua) will be treated like <font color="yellow">GOLD</font>.

Japan's GNP is off the hook but Japanese is only really useful in Japan, wheras Chinese spreads far and wide. ("Chinatowns everywhere!")

Anyway, despite all this, I say you should ditch the plans to learn a difficult language in college.

Trust me, college is going to [censored] you up more than you can anticipate and learning one of the hardest languages and complex writing systems will just put an extra burden on you.

Choose Spanish, it's fun, easy, and in 10 years Latinos will make up I think 40% of the US population. (read that somewhere while drunk)

So yeah, choose Spanish, trust me. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[chisness]

Say I learn Chinese. Will this help in learning Japanese in the future? Will Japanese after Chinese be so minorly useful to the point that it'd be far better to learn Chinese very well than to try to learn both?

My reasoning is that as far as I can tell, and as far as many are saying, Chinese is going to be GREAT to know in a few years. Economically and for business this makes Chinese the clear choice. However, from what I can tell, China is no where near as clean or technological as Japan. It seems shady and run down, while it would seem really cool to be a part of the Japanese culture. Even so, I don't really like travelling very much and I do like money a lot, so I think this should be more of an economic decision than one for enjoyability.

[sexdrugsmoney]

[ QUOTE ]
Say I learn Chinese. Will this help in learning Japanese in the future? Will Japanese after Chinese be so minorly useful to the point that it'd be far better to learn Chinese very well than to try to learn both?

My reasoning is that as far as I can tell, and as far as many are saying, Chinese is going to be GREAT to know in a few years. Economically and for business this makes Chinese the clear choice. However, from what I can tell, China is no where near as clean or technological as Japan. It seems shady and run down, while it would seem really cool to be a part of the Japanese culture. Even so, I don't really like travelling very much and I do like money a lot, so I think this should be more of an economic decision than one for enjoyability.

[/ QUOTE ]

If you are serious you will already have a phrasebook of both languages and you can go through and compare.

You'll find almost no sound similarities, and about 2000 Characters of Chinese are found in the Japanese language.

Aspirations of learning this then that are all good, but get one first, and if it's chinese, be prepared for a studious 3-4 years.

Cheers,
SDM

[chisness]

i am very serious and will probably buy the rosetta chinese software this week

i'm willing to put a lot into it and think it'll pay off

[lastsamurai]

i WOULD learn viet...so next time you play at commerce you know what DO MAH means.

[Lawrence Ng]

[ QUOTE ]

i am very serious and will probably buy the rosetta chinese software this week

i'm willing to put a lot into it and think it'll pay off

[/ QUOTE ]

Learn what "taa ma deh" means..and use it wisely young one.

Lawrence

[DasLeben]

Du sollst Deutsch lernen. Die Sprache ist einer der größte der Welt, und du immer betrunken zu sein scheinen kannst. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Being serious though...I'd definitely like to learn Japanese, but I think Chinese is your best bet. As far as programs go, I'd definitely do something along the lines of Pimsleur. I've used Rosetta Stone before, and it progressed far too slowly for my tastes. I am now, however, very fluent in expressing thoughts about kids jumping over tables.

A far less costly option than Pimsleur is the Barron's "Mastering" series. I'm using that right now, and it's great for learning how to speak a language. I got the full set at Barnes and Noble for $90. I'd look into it before dumping a grand for a full Pimsleur course.

[Allinlife]

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