Quote (Chikin9gari @ Aug 26 2012 06:09pm)
For christ sake, I can't even write 憂鬱 lol Chinese and Japanese are nothing alike. Chinese might have simplified/traditional characters but I think Japanese sometimes overcomplicates things with so many exceptions and romaji, katakana and hiragana. My mom was a linguistic major so me and my friends talked about how culture and language affect each other vice versa. In a way, Chinese might be easier to learn for some people... possibly.
Japan has been ciriticized for taking other cultures on a superficial level, and integrating it and making there own as well as lacking patriotism up until recent years. If you can call patriotisn getting together once every 4 years for the Olympics than I guess it is a form of patriotism in a way. Taking other cultures is okay though, because other countries import cultures as well. But in terms of Japanese exceptionalism, and as a Japanese national, I have nothing popping up in my head other than sushi or manga because it is so obscure. Maybe it is due to the fact I've spent many years living outside of Japan. If I start living outside of Japan again, I think my vision will be more clear, and envision how Japan would be characterized in an international community. I'm not a linguistic major, but that is my opinion.
Well, I don't think I have said they are alike, and to some extent I agree with you that they are not. Japanese is pretty unique in that its language origins aren't quite clear cut and it's pretty distinct from, well,
everything... but let's face it, if there's any language Japanese is like, it just has to be Chinese, if only for the appropriation of kanji.
The overcomplication I think I'd agree with you on as being pretty damned annoying but, on the bright side, count nouns go out of the window and we have only mass nouns (if we conveniently forget about object counters), a logical, piss-easy pronunciation system (bar ra-ri-ru-re-ro for beginners), and TWO irregular verbs. Sometimes entire thoughts can be communicated in a single word, also, what with its tendency to omit stuff, and that probably makes things a lot easier than, say, English, where we have lots of useless 'dummy' words that don't add a lot of substance to the sentence. Then again, Japanese has lots of particles that have to be ordered precisely in one's head every time you want to open your mouth and say something more substantial (assuming no omission). Keigo, teineigo, kougotai, zokugo are a total pain, yet conjugation in Japanese is on the other hand much easier and does not require the re-arranging of the sentence. I think it's all a two-sided coin.
Quote (Xiok @ Aug 27 2012 01:44pm)
I've recently seen one chart for English speakers that lists major languages in eight categories in difficulty to learn from English. The hardest two are in the last category, Korean and Japanese. Mandarin is right under it, meaning that it is easier for English speakers to learn Mandarin than Japanese or Korean. I'll look around for it and post it tomorrow.
Quote (Chikin9gari @ Aug 28 2012 06:14pm)
I'd be interested to know!
Me too, definitely! If there's been some study done, I'd also be curious to know what criteria it is based on. Having studied both Japanese and Chinese, my own opinion is that Chinese is
infinitely harder to learn. If I didn't already have a pretty solid understanding of how characters are formed and best memorised from some years spent studying Japanese, Chinese would be like pulling teeth. This is also a bit anecdotal, but I know have a friend who has taken Chinese as a major, graduated, and
still cannot read half of what he comes across - reading blogs on the Internet, I have found this to actually be quite common. The following is a very good read explaining why Chinese is, well, just 'so damn hard':
http://pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html/For me there's absolutely
no question that it is the hardest language in the world, although I can only speak from the perspective of a native English speaker and things might be different if I'd grown up learning a character-based language. From what I know of talking to Chinese friends, though, it's just as hard studying English as a Chinese person and maybe we should count our blessings. They learn English from very young ages, pretty much at the same rate they learn Chinese, yet most of them still, in all honesty, are not very proficient at all. Basic conjugational errors ('I am boring' rather than 'I am bored'... EVERY time) and reciting stock phrases that just sound silly in translation ('It is a pity!' is a common one) are very common. I knew one girl who didn't even leave
spaces when I talked to her because she didn't know she had to, I'm not even joking.
This post was edited by Razzattack on Aug 28 2012 04:34pm