New Language: Chinese or Japanese

[Luzion]

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That is silly. Japanese has a complicated writing system and grammar. Not to mention there are many ways to say things in differing levels of politeness.

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i have to disagree. I took japanese for only 2 years in HS. My family is italian and my dads side is all fluent and speak it at family gatherings and stuff. I went to itally for 6 weeks. I took italian in college. I still know MUCH more japanese than italian. The gramar of japanese is actaully quite logical (and they actually do have very few exceptions, unlike engilsh.) The hardest parts of japanese are kanji (obviously) and the weird words they use for describing objects in plural (that [censored] doesnt make any sense).

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The primary reason why Japanese is hard to learn is because of the politeness levels. Depending on someones age, gender, or their position relative to yours you have to change your style of speech.


So... if you cant learn to read/write Japanese because of the hard Kanji, and you cant converse with someone because its so overly complicated in how you address someone based on their age, sex, and "position" in society... how can you say its even easy?

[IronDragon1]

Chinese.

We can rag on white people together (as soon as I learn)

[benfranklin]

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I expect to do something with business/engineering.

Will it be useful to learn Chinese or Japanese?

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If you are fairly certain of a field of interest, it would be best to talk to someone already working in that field. I have a relative who works for a major manufacturer of telecom equipment. He speaks Spanish, and that has been a big plus in his career, as the company does a lot of business in Latin America.

[Phat Mack]

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So... if you cant learn to read/write Japanese because of the hard Kanji, and you cant converse with someone because its so overly complicated in how you address someone based on their age, sex, and "position" in society... how can you say its even easy?

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If you can't write kanji, you can always get by with kana.

Politeness levels are still regulary constructed--learn two or three conjugations and you've learned them all. If you don't know which to use, you can always over-polite it.

Spoken Japanese is still the nuts.

Edit: Learning to read kanji isn't that hard; learning to read it out loud is what's difficult. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[ChipWrecked]

Any reason why not Spanish? In terms of every day applicability in the United States anyway.....

[Broken Glass Can]

Chinese. You will be ahead of the game. The rest of us will have to learn Chinese down the road anyway when they become our overlords.

[Larimani]

chinese and it's not even close.

[BonJoviJones]

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Arabic!

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[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.

[handsome]

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japanese. It is IMO one of the easiest languages to learn (except for the kanji). I have heard that chinese is one of the hardest to learn. Also japanese makes more sense for buisness related stuff.

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That is silly. Japanese has a complicated writing system and grammar. Not to mention there are many ways to say things in differing levels of politeness. And "kanji" is a really big part of Japanese. I dont know how you can say Japanese is an easy language at all. Its one of the hardest imo, though definintely not as hard as Chinese.

I say learn Chinese. Choose Mandarin. Everyone knows that this is the language of the future. China will become more powerful and companies will be looking for people that can speak/write Chinese to become part of that boom. Plus, if you learn to read/write Chinese, you already have a large foundation in Japanese kanji.


Oh yeah, right now I am trying to learn Mandarin. I already speak Cantonese with pretty good fluency, so I am using Pimsleur to learn how to speak Mandarin. I downloaded the first three lessons of Pimsleur Mandarin on EMule hehehe... Later on Ill find something to help me learn how to read and write Chinese...

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Luzion's post is VERY biased, since he is a already a native chinese speaker, so take his advice with a grain of salt.

The fact of the matter is that Chinese is much harder to learn than Japanese. When it comes to pronunciation, there are a lot more subtleties that you wouldn't be able to pick up as an adult because it's past your critical period for language development. An incorrect pronunciation of a syllable could change a word's entire meaning. And not to mention the written language is nuts.

I am studying Japanese myself and it is very easy to pick up.