Discussion Learn language chinese or japan

Which language worth my time to learn japan or chinese to read novel
and how long to learn it?

 

Chinese, if you want to use it in a job in the future. Japanese is also an option but it will be more difficult.

 

i thought that chinese had many character for every word, why japanese more difficult

 

In a find a job kind of setting. He's talking about language and job after all.

 

From my experience i would do cn because it has one "main" written form jp has 3.

Edit: But that only written form on pronuniation etc jp is a bit "better" there are not as many areas where the spoken word change much but i do not know what you want to do with it.

Edit v2: Link for a FSI ranking

 

learn faster by start to writing other than reading only (around 4 years) normal
point plus if you could converse with chinese or just go fly there (1 or 2 years all out)

 

Learn whichever interests you more. No matter which you learn, you're going to be dedicating hundreds or thousands of hours of your life to this. Both languages are hard to acquire, so why not learn the one that you'd be more passionate about?

You could ask yourself these questions: Do you like Chinese or Japanese novels more? Do you like learning about Chinese or Japanese culture more?

Good luck

 

If you consider market size and needs, China has way more potential and people than Japan.

If we take into consideration in language difficulty, both will be difficult to a native speaker of non-related languages or script groups. Say, a native English speaker for example.

In terms of reading, kanji (Chinese characters) borrowing from China at its root does not fit the Japanese language. So you have weird readings where it uses both phonetics and semantics, or a mix. Because of that, difficulty in learning Japanese is much more difficult than Chinese. Yes, it’s nice that Japanese has a syllabary, a phonetic lettering system. This will ease you into Japanese easily, but the learning curve is high due to a difficult grammar system. Chinese has, from a linguistic standpoint, no grammar. But that doesn’t mean you can do whatever you want in a sentence construction.

As you said, Chinese has many more characters than Japanese, but many more characters have only one way to read them, whereas Japanese may have two, three, or more possible ways to read a character or compound which makes Japanese more difficult than Chinese. The only complaint a beginner may have is the difficult pronunciation system of Chinese, but once you get past that it could be considered smooth sailing if you put in time and effort to learning the language. Many say Japanese is easy for pronunciation, and they are correct. Chinese tonal system is difficult for a non-native, and Japanese uses a pitch accent system which may not matter as much if you don’t hit the right pitches, but should you decide to focus on that, it could also be considered a difficult part of Japanese.

I could put in more analyzation between the two languages and scripts. This is somewhat abbreviated in explanation, but at the end of the day it’s your call to consider the pros and cons for both languages. Or you could also learn both as I have.

 

Learn both and become a part-time translator

 

Depends what type of novels you most enjoy. If your learning it mostly to read novels then I'd suggest finding out what type of novels you enjoy most and deciding based on that. It's a more long term approach.

 

thanks all i think im gonna try both

 

but i didnt do it to become a translator

 

Make sure you stick to only one for a certain amount of time or until a certain proficiency, or you may start to mix both languages.

 

Chinese has no alphabet, so to learn Chinese, it's basically 90% memorization.

 

Japanese is probably easier to learn, at least for spoken language. The phonetics are way simpler. Written Japanese isn't a whole lot different from Chinese though and there's also some crossover.

 

^ This. Be very careful, I made (or rather was exposed to) this mistake with 2 dialects of Chinese when young and even today decades later I keep mixing the 2 into a single sentence.

 

Chinese is harder to learn, but it will be rewarding. Chinese is the most used language in the world, and if you become proficient at it, many more opportunities would present itself to you.

 

Why not both ?

 

I suggest Japanese but it depends on your goals