Chinese vs Japanese: Which is More Difficult to learn? | Learn Languages

[@user-96.-]

9:44 For anyone learning Japanese i HIGHLY recommend adding this guy to your studies, he has helped me tremendously. His name is Kaname Naito

[@polyglotdreams]

Yes...

[@Owjdnskoakansbskk]

Kaname is the goat

[@komiakankano]

日本人です。大学で中国語を学んだけど、文法はそんなに難しくなく、漢字も日本の漢字と同じものや似たものが多くて覚えやすかった印象があります。

[@polyglotdreams]

コメントありがとうございます！大学で中国語を学んでいたとのこと、とても興味深いですね。確かに、日本語と中国語は漢字を共有しているため、一部の語彙や表現が理解しやすいという利点がありますね。文法の違いにも触れていただき、ありがとうございます。中国語を学ぶ際に感じた体験談を共有してくださり、大変感謝しています。今後も言語学習に関する面白い情報や経験を共有できれば幸いです。

[@t.z.2464]

Right, I think the easiest part of Chinese is the grammar, and the hardest is probably the pronunciation, since it contains tones which doesn’t exist in most languages

[@サモエドもふもふ]

台湾人です。私も大学で日本語を勉強して、あなたと同じ思いをしました。🤣

[@qiangwang7717]

中文语法本来就是世界上最简单的啊，基本可以说根本没有语法

[@Han-eb1dd]

私は日本語を勉強してる中国人です。中国語のイントネーションと発音は外国人より難しいと思います

[@kittomottootto]

Japanese is easy if you want to learn it at a beginner level, but I think it's difficult if you want to learn it beyond that level. On the other hand, if you think Japanese is difficult, I think it's proof that you've studied the language a lot.

[@polyglotdreams]

Yes, the more your learn the more you see there is so much more you don't konw.

[@nnokki]

No it is quite the opposite. Once you are familiar with the grammar structure its easy to understand Japanese.

[@Akispark]

The steepest obstacles that seperate the beginners from those who learn beyond is the first set of Kanji and internalizing verb/adjective conjugations. Once the character salad a sentence is comprised of clicks by itself in your brain, you understand the complexity that is inherent to japanese

[@chikko6498]

漢語母語的人學日語的順序這樣會很簡單：日語（掌握到初階後）➡️韓語（掌握到高階後）➡️日語（輕鬆高階）

[@Rairosu]

I disagree, It's not having enough knowledge of it is what is hard.

[@翠始皇]

As someone who speaks Mandarin and Taiwanese, I find that Japanese is far more difficult to learn even though I already know all the kanjis. The thing that bothers me the most is that the same kanji can have many different pronunciations in Japanese.

[@翠始皇]

@JoshPecksDad There is also a reason why the US foreign office ranks Japanese as the hardest language. I speak from my personal experience and not your opposite syndrome.

[@alanguages]

I am in agreement with the op, due to the reason the FSI also rated Japanese more difficult than Mandarin Chinese and even Cantonese Chinese. DLI has a similar listing. By the way you are literally stating to the op who is a speaker of Mandarin and Taiwanese, that he was wrong about his own experience about Japanese being more difficult, than Mandarin showed your own ignorance.@JoshPecksDad

[@alanguages]

Both the FSI and DLI has the same type of rating. Proving you correct. I did contact the DLI and wanted to take one of their language course as a civilian, but it was a no go, as it was only for people who were going to work at the DLI.@@翠始皇

[@polyglotdreams]

The multiple readings can be difficult for Japanese native speakers too.

[@alexandermanzanares3879]

The Japanese just need to use hiragana and put spaces between the words and boom problems solved.

[@ロニーさん-x7i]

日本人です。 When I studied Chinese as a second foreign language in college, pronunciation was quite challenging. However, writing wasn't too difficult since we use kanji, and Chinese grammar is similar to English. I believe Japanese is considerably more challenging for native English speakers due to its greater linguistic differences.

[@polyglotdreams]

Then we do agree... thanks for your input.

[@papayongsarninei8133]

In English you can change the full stop , or period , into comma , in order to prolong your sentence .But this can not be done in Chinese .

[@papayongsarninei8133]

@@tianz1993 example: I met her yesterday . → I met her yesterday , at the train station . 我昨天和她见面了。我昨天在车站和她见面了。我昨天和她在车站见面了。 “我昨天和她见面在车站” ？

[@yo2trader539]

Those who have the easiest time learning Japanese language are the ethnic Koreans, Mongols, and Turkic speakers from China. They already know most of the KANJI used in Japan, and they instinctively understand Japanese grammar structure because of its similarity to Korean, Mongolian, and Turkic languages. (Tibeto-Burmese, Hungarian, Finn/Estonian speakers may also have similar grammatical advantages.) Many of them are able to have basic conversations in 6 months, and some are reaching N1-level in 3 years. Pronunciation is interesting too. From what we can observe, not all Chinese, Vietnamese, or Koreans are able to pronounce Japanese with the correct phonetics and pitch accent (i.e. "intonation"). Yet, there are native-Russian/Slavic, Mongolian, and Turkic/Tatar speakers who have very little difficulty due to phonetic overlap. Spanish/Italian/Romanian speakers appear to have an easier time with Japanese phonetics and intonation as well. As for native English speakers, the US State Department classifies Japanese as Level 4, or the most difficult to learn along with Chinese, Korean, and Arabic. Due to the history of England/English, Germanic and Latin/Romance languages are classified as Level 1 or 2 for native English speakers. My impression is that Germanic/English-speakers generally have far more difficulty mastering Japanese than Slavic/Russian-speakers from Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia. People from Central Asia are language geniuses, because you will hear them speaking Japanese like a near-native but often times Japanese is their 3rd, 4th or 5th language after Turkic/Tajik, Russian, and English. It's true that Chinese grammar is SVO and is similar to English. Yet, I think you need to be raised and educated in East Asia to know why the word "contradiction" is written as 矛盾. (It's the same with words/concepts/idioms such as 約束, 背水の陣, 四面楚歌, 臥薪嘗胆 that derive from historical Chinese tales, texts and practices.) I'm sure you know that Vietnam is 越南. Hanoi was historically written as 河内, and Ho Chi Ming is written as 胡志明 in KANJI. For us, the name starts to make sense when we recognize the KANJI, otherwise it's just random combination of gibberish sounds. Hanoi still suffers from periodic flooding.

[@Gcc-xy5uc]

@papayongsarninei8133 ？这不是语序的问题吗，你也可以直接说“我昨天和她见面了，在车站那边。”是你自己想一句话说完吧。你加逗号呗，中文哪里加逗号都无所谓，不像英语有语法的作用。在口语里，就算你说：昨天，我和她，见面了，在车站。没人管你好吧。听得懂。

[@yorgunsamuray]

Coming from Turkish with its many inflections, Japanese grammar was far less complex. Politeness was more challenging, having only this T-V distinction in my language. Speaking politely is not that much of a problem (when you’re in the service sector you do learn and it becomes automatic) but on the other side…when you’re the one spoken politely, that is harder. I remember going on the school trip for “ryugakusei” of the Japanese university I attended as an exchange student. The guide’s explanations all went over my head, because after all the honorific suffixes and extra words in the sentences I forgot what the topic was about.

[@polyglotdreams]

There are similarities with Turkish... I am starting to study your language now. Thanks for sharing your experiences in Japan.

[@yorgunsamuray]

@@polyglotdreams yes, the word order especially. BTW another experience regarding kanji readings. I once read Hitachi (日立) as “nichiritsu”, and the text was about companies too!

[@hayabusa1329]

I found Chinese easier actually

[@yorgunsamuray]

@@hayabusa1329 grammatically yes, if you manage the kanji in Japanese you would manage the characters as well. However the tones…oh boy, my nightmare.

[@cheerful_crop_circle]

​@@yorgunsamurayyes

[@coolbrotherf127]

I definitely feel Mandarin is the easier of the two, but I learned Japanese first because I really personally love the people and culture there. There's such a wealth of great linguist art in Japanese that non-Japanese speakers will never experience due to lack of translation and/or localization. So many things really can't be translated to other languages well while still keeping what makes them special. Even things as pop-culture as anime or manga lose a lot of nuance when translated.

[@polyglotdreams]

I totally agree!

[@maca_atomica_animacoes]

bro, it depends on your mother tongue and the languages ​​you speak. As a Brazilian speaker of Portuguese I still feel that Mandarin is more difficult, but even so I don't speak Mandarin or Japanese 😅

[@coolbrotherf127]

@@maca_atomica_animacoes For people who speak Germanic or Romantic languages, they are both still pretty difficult. It's like comparing if it's easier to lift a 115kg rock or a 120kg rock. One is slightly easier but both are difficult.

[@maca_atomica_animacoes]

@@coolbrotherf127 concordo, os dois são difíceis, isso é verdade

[@martin32074]

@@coolbrotherf127 　Japanese grammar is much more straightforward than Chinese or even English. For this reason alone, Japanese should be easier to learn. Also, you don't need to learn all the Kanji to communicate in Japanese, whereas in Chinese, Kanji is essential and you also have different tones for each character, which represent different meanings. For example, "Konbanwa" means good evening in Japanese, whereas in Chinese, you could use "下午好" or "午安， 安means peaceful" to convey the same meaning. You can combine different characters to have the same meaning in Chinese.Some words could have 4 or 5 combinations which makes it much harder to become fluent because people would use them differently. But you can never misunderstand English words or Japanese words.

[@えるざ-r1d]

Japanese is a difficult language, but it's also a very beautiful language. Please try learning it. Japanese people will welcome it.

[@1stMilcom]

This is by far the BEST video on KZbin about the fine differences in Japanese and Mandarin. Your videos are extremely well organised and presented. It's just a matter of time until you get your 100K subscriber award. Subbed!

[@polyglotdreams]

I really appreciate your encouragement.

[@wowaone340]

I think because he is an academic and not some poor youtube influencer wannabe! Good for him, god bless

[@백인줄어든다]

I am a korean. And many korean who study languages find that japanese is relatively easy compared to other languages because we have many similar grammer rule and vocabulary and word order. Nevertheless chinese character that is used in japanese is still difficult for korean. Probably european will be extremely difficult to learn japanese

[@polyglotdreams]

Yes... thanks for affirming what I said about Japanese and Korean

[@yugiohfanatic1964]

Korean has no kanji, so you say an obvious thing.

[@baptistegaussen4784]

It really depends where you come from. Spanish or Italian would be easy for me, at least in the beginning, since I am French. While Norwegians or Germans might find it difficult.

[@kairossoteria6215]

he is talking about the grammar not the writing system. korean and japanese are similar in grammar. chinese is completely different@@yugiohfanatic1964

[@GoraniJommanyshikkroun]

Modern korean doesn't use Chinese characters, but many korean words are chinese and japanese-based. So there are quite a few words that have similar pronunciation.

[@Botakagi]

I speak Chinese as mother tongue and Japanese as a second language, I also learned English in middle school and college,so ok to talk in English. It’s the 1st time I noticed the language I am using is so complex and challenging. Also 1st time to listen the explanation of 2 languages by a English speaker. Language stands for culture, it influences the way people think. Feel more and more about it.

[@polyglotdreams]

Definitely... language and culture are united.

[@trinhphamoan4135]

Thank you for your video. As a Vietnamese person who speaks a tonal language, when I learn Mandarin Chinese, I find its pronunciation quite easy, even much easier than when I speak Vietnamese. The most challenging aspect is probably learning traditional characters. However, when I started learning Japanese, I was still shocked by the complexity of its grammar, especially since even if I know the meaning of a kanji, it can be read differently when combined with different alphabets. I think Japanese is truly astonishingly difficult, but I will still try my best to conquer it. It was a really interesting video for me.

[@polyglotdreams]

有り難うございました、頑張って下さい

[@hongzexia7142]

@@polyglotdreamsthe use of kanji in this sentence is rare to see and I think you made the point that having the kanji sometimes can obscure the reading and comprehension 😂. Thanks for sharing. Love the video.

[@SVmathfarmer]

Thank you for your channel. As a fellow teacher (math in California ) it’s refreshing to have the scholarly viewpoint. My wife is from Hubei Province and I’ve been casually studying mandarin but really want to kick it up a notch after coming back from a recent family trip and planning the next this summer. Heisig books helped me with the characters but I’m Struggling with speaking correctly.

[@polyglotdreams]

Thanks so much for your support.

[@culage]

I'm Japanese, and my husband and I are very familiar with the both Chinese and Japanese languages. We enjoyed watching this video. I had been teaching Japanese a decade ago. It was funny that some of my Chinese students complained why the kanji characters have so many sounds for each though these were originated from China.

[@polyglotdreams]

Thanks for sharing!

[@raulenriquemoya6292]

no one on KZbin has provided so much detail in the language's structure - Thank you!

[@polyglotdreams]

Thank you so much for that comment. I strive to fill in the gaps in the information on KZbin.

[@jchan0425]

absolutely loved this video. so much depth into two languages that even native speaker could not give a better explanation than this video.

[@polyglotdreams]

That is very kind. Thanks

[@ramonmenendezrecio4442]

Professor Keeley, you are great! Such insightful approaches are rare and greatly appreciated. You've won a new subscriber.

[@polyglotdreams]

Awesome, thank you!

[@eunjioppa4803]

this is probably the best language analysis Ive watched on KZbin. Thank you!!❤❤

[@polyglotdreams]

Wow, thank you! I appreciate the encouragement 🙏

[@Morrisseys7thFriend]

I've studied Mandarin (traditional), Korean and Japanese, and I can firmly say Japanese is the hardest.

[@polyglotdreams]

Yes, we agree.

[@MMAandBoxingEnjoyer]

Japanese needs 2100 kanji. Mandarin needs 5000 hanzi. Mandarin is harder.

[@brotege2509]

@@MMAandBoxingEnjoyer That is not true, you can simply make up shit with Mandarin. Wine is literally grape alcohol. delicious is good eat. You only need to learn a few words to speak Mandarin, writing is another story.

[@林言-d9d]

普通话只是日常使用比日语简单，深入学习还有文言文，文言文对于母语中文的都不容易，现代书面语白话文是近代推广的

[@Leonlion0305]

Very comprehensive analysis on both languages! Love it when professors do well-organized videos like these on KZbin.

[@polyglotdreams]

Thank you so much for your support 🙏

[@yumechuu]

Thanks a lot for this video, you explained the differences really well. In my opinion, Chinese is much harder to learn because of all the phonetics. Some sounds I simply cannot differentiate from eachother. Also, the fact that Japanese has both the Mora system as well as Kanji makes it easier to read in my opinion, and additionally, readings for Kanji that one might have forgotten can be remembered through the context of surrounding conjugations. Thanks again!!

[@polyglotdreams]

Thanks for your input.

[@sss-hidden]

As Russian who learned Japanese and Mandarin I'd say that Japanese is way more difficult to learn for western people. Chinese has more and better resources for learning. Japanese has multiple pronunciations for kanji and Chinese almost always one. This is very important if you want to learn by comprehending raw input (reading, watching shows with subs). Japanese uses different to western languages word order (just google japanese word order) so it'll be hella hard to think in Japanese and even harder to translate something from English to Japanese and vice versa. But Japanese is super interesting to learn, not gonna lie

[@polyglotdreams]

Yes very interesting... thanks

[@WeiGuanNian]

thank you for sharing

[@LittleLulubee]

ありがとうございます 🥰この動画はとても面白いです。 私はアメリカ人です。日本語を勉強しています 🇺🇸❤🇯🇵

[@polyglotdreams]

頑張ってください

[@phen-themoogle7651]

As someone who has been fluent in Japanese for 20 years and studied Chinese around the same time and never made it above an intermediate level in Chinese, for me Japanese is way easier. Mainly because of the amount of entertainment and things I wanted to do in the Japanese language were overwhelmingly greater than the amount of things I wanted to do in/with Chinese (less entertainment I was into, besides some Kungfu movies). Also it was much faster learning pronunciation in Japanese and I would even claim that Japanese is the easiest language to pronounce in the whole world since you just need 5 vowels and most sounds just continue that pattern with adding consonants before them. In English there are too many random spelling rules that change pronunciation or weird things. Japanese is always the same, which makes it very easy to hear, and I think hearing a language transfers over to having skills in it eventually. Even Japanese people forget kanji or how to write so although writing is kind of difficult it's not like ultra important, well depending on your goals. Still easy to learn vocab without kanji, just don't get too distracted and focus on all the different readings of individual kanji (you only need one at a time, and learn from context) And in terms of writing Chinese is also a beast with even more kanji than Japanese. To me Chinese (mandarin, or canto, just any dialect) is like 3x harder. I even have a Chinese aunt and some family from China and yet I still got Japanese down instead lol Then again some people get fluent in Chinese and don't in Japanese that study both, so it probably depends on how much you get into the language and how invested you are/how much you enjoy it (how much pressure you put on yourself to immerse in it) *depends on what feels more difficult to learn for the individual*. I still think Chinese is harder though lol

[@polyglotdreams]

Exactly... motivation and effort are key factors.

[@charlesrodolf7309]

aint not way japanese is easy language to pronounce lol are you even aware of pitch accent

[@phen-themoogle7651]

@@charlesrodolf7309 I majored in Japanese Linguistics, took Dogen's pitch accent course on Patreon, so I think I'm aware of it lol Every language has a form of pitch accent in the flow of a sentence or rises and changes in intonation of individual words (Japanese isn't completely flat, and some people might sound like a robot if they speak in monotone). To support your point: Japanese has way more variations of pitch-accent for dozens of dialects not including standard Japanese like if you were to learn Kansai ben, there's still subtle differences between Osaka, Kyoto, Hyougo, Wakayama and everything can be quite different in isolation (especially completely different from Standard dialect/Tokyo). But for the standard dialect, there are many resources nowadays for people that study it. 20 years ago it wasn't that popular to study. But let me ask you this question. If there are many regions in Japan with different forms of pitch accent, then are there many 'correct' ways to pronounce it in Japanese? And is it easy to be understood without pitch accent? How do Japanese people understand others from different regions? Basically, you can become fluent in the language without studying pitch accent in isolation (natives never do), and still be completely understood even if you don't sound like a standard speaker from Tokyo, sometimes people give off being raised in America or other country vibes when they are fluent but haven't mastered pitch-accent, but it doesn't change the fact that you are understood completely (and sometimes intuitively have a good pronunciation and natural flow in your pitch accent, from just being exposed to the language enough) . Try speaking Chinese without ever learning the tones...(maybe possible too with enough exposure, but seems a lot harder) Well, if you have like 10k,20k hours of listening to the language you absorb the flow and don't really need to study pitch-accent, it's only like a spice to improve your language ability closer to native-level language. Listening to the language is more important for the first year or two, and just knowing the pitch accent basic patterns, there's only like 4 main ones you need and it's only something I occasionally go back to if I feel off (or want to sound more native). Basically you will know when you are off if you have enough exposure to the language. I think people who are perfectionists like Dogen really zone in on pitch accent, and I do find other regions more challenging to study for pitch accent because lack of resources, but I can sometimes get Kansaiben pitch accent correct since I lived there and watch a lot of youtube videos with speakers from the region. But I don't really search for ways to study it in isolation or zone in on individual words. Overall sentence flow has always made more sense for me, since in a conversation you won't slowly pronounce individual words, but use them with surrounding words/sentence and context. Also pitch accent changes depending on what words follow, so you could sometimes sound unnatural if you study it too much in isolation. Much more useful to shadow a full sentence if you are at an advanced level or fluent. And occasionally look something up if you feel off.

[@beniocabeleleiraleila5799]

@@charlesrodolf7309 　every region in Japan has a different pitch accent, and a japanese person can understand clearly absolutely any japanese person. And even if pitch was really that important, it would still be way easier than english

[@poissonblanc3106]

日本語、話すのに比べると書くのは、難しいかな しかし、君の難易度の判断が、漢字の数って、まだ、日本語を、表面的なレベルでしか理解してないのが、ばれちゃったね

[@xilingsinqueso]

what a great video! so informative and well-explained!

[@polyglotdreams]

Thank you so much

[@makeemar]

Very interesting, thank you for the video! I'm a native Polish speaker - my Japanese is around N3 level and I also had Mandarin classes at the university for 2 years (it was very badly taught). Personally I find Mandarin harder - I could not grasp the difference in tones. Japanese pronunciation on the other hand is relatively easy for Polish speakers. Of course there are nuances as correctly pronouncing "ん" or "r" sounds or pitch accent but you will still be understood even if you don't master these 100%. Yes the multiple ways of reading kanji is a pain. Sometimes I can guess the reading by looking at radical and sometimes I can work out the meaning of kanji compound but don't know how to read it 😂 Keigo is also very difficult - I have the basics of it but that's about it. I don't think I will go back to learning Mandarin in any case, I will continue with Japanese.

[@polyglotdreams]

Cześć, Studiowałem na Uniwersytecie Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu. Bardzo dziękuję za Twój komentarz i podzielenie się doświadczeniami! Faktycznie, różnice między językiem chińskim a japońskim mogą być znaczące, zwłaszcza jeśli chodzi o aspekty takie jak ton, który, jak wspomniałeś, stanowi wyzwanie w nauce mandaryńskiego. Wielu Polaków rzeczywiście znajduje japońską wymowę stosunkowo łatwiejszą, co jest częściowo związane z większym podobieństwem do struktury fonetycznej polskiego. Trudności z opanowaniem dźwięków takich jak "ん" czy "r", a także akcentuacja wysokościowa są zrozumiałe, ale jak słusznie zauważyłeś, nawet nieperfekcyjna wymowa nie przeszkadza w zrozumieniu. Co do kanji, to zgadzam się, że różnorodność sposobów czytania może sprawiać trudności, ale umiejętność rozpoznawania znaczenia kanji na podstawie klucza jest bardzo przydatna. Keigo, czyli japoński język uprzejmości, faktycznie może być trudny do opanowania ze względu na jego złożoność i różnorodność form. Rozumiem Twoją decyzję o niekontynuowaniu nauki mandaryńskiego i skupieniu się na japońskim. Każdy język ma swoje unikalne wyzwania, ale pasja do nauki i zrozumienie kultury może znacznie ułatwić proces. Życzę Ci powodzenia w dalszej nauce japońskiego i mam nadzieję, że znajdziesz w tym procesie wiele satysfakcji!

[@makeemar]

@@polyglotdreams dziekuje za odpowiedz :) Ja studiowalam japonistyke w Krakowie 20 lat temu. Potem mialam dluzsza przerwe w kontakcie z jezykiem i okolo 2020 zaczelam lekcje online z naciskem na mowienie. Bylam z rodzina w Japonii w zeszlym roku i w sprawch codziennych porozumiewalam sie bez wiekszego klopotu - bardzo mnie to podbudowalo i zachecilo do dalszej nauki :) W tym roku znowu wybieram sie do Japonii, tym razem sama. Na pewno chetnie bede zagladac na pana kanal! Przepraszam za brak polskich znakow, mieszkam w Irlandii i nie mam ich na sluzbowym laptopie.

[@DanielSangorrin]

Great video! As a Spanish native speaker fluent in Japanese after living and working in Japan for 13 years, I can attest to the similarity between the Japanese and Spanish pronunciation systems, including most consonants, all vowels except "u," and the use of syllables. For instance, I find it much easier to comprehend a drama or movie in Japanese than in English. Hiragana and especially katakana, with many words of English and European language origins, actually make the language easier for Europeans, not more complex. In fact, we are better at katakana than Chinese students. I've been studying Chinese for almost a year now, and having learned Japanese first has proved to be a significant advantage when it comes to learning Chinese vocabulary, characters, and readings. However, I find the tonal system of Chinese to be quite challenging. Perhaps my perspective will change as I become more proficient in Chinese, but for now, based on my experience, while I acknowledge the difficulties you mention about Japanese, I believe Japanese has been much easier to learn than Chinese.

[@Santino5788]

我想学西班牙语

[@atharv_bajpai21]

As an Indian learning Mandarin Chinese currently at B1 level,I personally didn't find Chinese as difficult as I thought. I tried to learn Japanese too but I found it harder than I expected.

[@polyglotdreams]

It is challenging, but I hope you succeed

[@sahasraillindra]

How did you get interested in it? How long have you been learning?

[@atharv_bajpai21]

@@sahasraillindra I have been learning Mandarin Chinese for almost 1.5 years now,and my interest in Mandarin Chinese developed because of the Chinese script as it looks so beautiful and appalling to me and also during my Chinese learning journey, I started watching C-Dramas and I realised a lot of similarities in Indian and Chinese culture which kept me motivated to learn Chinese.Also I saw vlogs of different Indian vloggers travelling to China which also made me wanting to travel to China at least once and experience it on my own. Edit: Apologies if my English is bad 🫠

[@Primalxbeast]

​@@atharv_bajpai21Your English looks good to me, but I think you meant appealing instead of appalling, but the characters could be appealing because of their beauty and appalling because of their difficulty at the same time. :+)

[@enchongliu4339]

English is dramatically similar to chinese, maybe for this reason is easier learning mandarin in terms of?speak ing as a Chinese, I speak Spanish and living Spain 16 years, then I found that the pronunciation of Japanese is similar to Spanish😂😂

[@celulaperfecte]

As I said to a chinese friend: speak japanese is easier than chinese (specially for me that as an spainard that japanese phonetics is 90% alike to spanish), but read and write in chinese is easier than japanese

[@polyglotdreams]

The vowels are similar...

[@mapl3mage]

In China you learn 2500 Chinese characters by the end of elementary school. For comparison's sake, the highest JPLT test, the N1, requires knowing "only" about 2,000.

[@cheerful_crop_circle]

Yeah , they have the same 5 vowels

[@salutisdeus1498]

Modern Chinese or you can also call it Mandarin,compared to the former written language that was officially used in ancient China, no doubt that its grammar is much easier than Japanese. you don’t need to spend a lot of time learning it. One of the most difficult points for the beginners is probably its writing system. The pronunciation is also quite easy except its four tones,however practice makes perfect, mastering them is not very hard. For me, learning Japanese is easy at the beginning,its pronunciation is similar to the dialect that is spoken in my hometown,but when I continued learning the language,I was bothered by kanji...Each character may share two or more sounds...so I quit😭

[@polyglotdreams]

Where is your hometown?

[@salutisdeus1498]

@@polyglotdreams Shanghai,my hometown is the third largest island in China.

[@alanjyu]

I speak both Japanese and Chinese. I loved this video. I appreciated your analysis. Very thorough and good description of linguistic features. One of the mitigating factors for Japanese is that it borrows a lot of English loan words of which you would write in Katakana script. That does make the acquisition of vocabulary significantly easier. In chinese, vocabulary is generally going to be bi-syllabic compounds where you do have to learn two Chinese character together most of the time. A big challenge of Chinese is that you don't always know where one word begins and one word ends whereas in Japanese, you can look at the script and it's pretty clear because the verb is usually at the end and follows certain conjugation patterns, all of the words that before the verb at the end of the sentence are marked with particles or inflections. Japanese, as a mixed script, does work better for my eyes and brain from that particular standpoint. It's well organized, I would say. So I think those are actually some other factors that should be considered when you're looking at the difficulty of Japanese versus Chinese at least on my own analysis, I've always thought that Chinese was the harder of the two languages, but this video made me consider otherwise, especially your discussion of politeness linguistic structures and the use of Chinese and Japanese derived readings for kanji characters.

[@polyglotdreams]

Thanks so much for your comment.

[@tinyRedLeaf]

English is my first language, but I also speak Mandarin and Cantonese, and read Chinese (not very well, but enough to get by most of the time). I'm curious about what you mean about not being able to tell where a Chinese word begins and ends.

[@alanjyu]

@@tinyRedLeaf Thank you for the question. In both Chinese and Japanese, characters can either stand alone or be part of a compound word. The challenge arises because sometimes it's unclear whether a character is forming a compound with the one before it or the one after it. Unlike in Japanese, where markers like particles or regular conjugations indicate word boundaries for multi-character words, Chinese lacks such clear indicators, making it more difficult to discern where one word ends and another begins solely based on the characters. Therefore, distinguishing between individual characters and compounds can be less straightforward in Chinese compared to Japanese.

[@tinyRedLeaf]

Thank you for your explanation. That's quite novel to me, and I think it comes down to one's knowledge of Chinese vocabulary. As a native speaker of both Mandarin and Cantonese, I don't experience such difficulties: the greatest challenge of reading Chinese remains that of recognising the characters and remembering how the character is pronounced in that instance. The "words" aren't difficult to discern within a written sentence when one knows them from everyday speech. In my experience, Japanese is much harder to learn, due to how words and sentences are phrased differently because of tense and contextual conjugations - these don't exist in Chinese, as pointed out in the video.

[@NotSomeJustinWithoutAMoustache]

This. I swear, the amount of gairaigo, sometimes even for words which already exist in tons of ways in Japanese is astounding. I feel like you can pretty much hold a conversation with a Japanese speaker with maybe just vocab for connectors and the inflections, etc. and pretty much substitute like, half the verbs, nouns, adjectives, etc. with Japanese pronunciations of English words. Some of them like yankee turning into delinquent or mansion becoming another term for apartment, etc. however do have different meanings from their English origins.

[@jojoking6638]

Although Chinese pronunciation is difficult to practice, if you speak slowly, Chinese people can understand you even if the pronunciation is incorrect.

[@polyglotdreams]

True

[@sapphosplace]

Japanese has some difficult tonal differences, too. T and D being switched with regard to aspiration, for example, combined with the overall small amount of sounds (and corresponding increase in amount of words that sound similar) can make it really easy to hear an incorrect word. I also like that Chinese classes will requisitely teach pitch from tge beginning, but many Japanese classes don't really teach pitch at all. It was learning the Japanese pitch that helped me more than anything to more readily understand what I was hearing. Chinese pitch also creates a lot more dynamism in the spoken language. It's easier to follow along when there is a lot of ups and downs.

[@polyglotdreams]

Yes. It is quite strange that pitch is not taught at an early stage.

[@qingbu]

It's a good idea to read the rules on pronunciation in the NHK Japanese Pronunciation Accent Dictionary. If you're serious about learning Japanese, I think having that dictionary is essential.

[@lingfengzhang7273]

As a Chinese, I learned a lot about Japanese language from your video, thank you!🥰

[@polyglotdreams]

My Pleasure! Thank you for your kind comment.

[@MD-xf2qy]

Im learning Japanese and I think that what we are calling conjugation is technically just a mix of blocks of verbs and adjectives. For example. Tabetai is not a conjugation of taberu, but taberu verb stem - Tabe + adjective tai. It's like building blocks. I know that what you said was just a simplified idea but i just wanted to say in advance for people who are willing to learn Japanese. Its easier than you think guys! And btw thank you for another amazing video!

[@leonxd321]

As a Chinese person, I consider Japanese to be the hardest language in the world. They have three writing systems (hiragana, katakana, kanji), but we don't really need alphabet. Japanese has more syllables than Chinese. Our grammar is similar to English (subject-verb-object), but Japanese places the verb at the end of the sentence.

[@polyglotdreams]

Thanks for sharing your view.

[@bW9taeH4]

If Chinese is your native language, you don't have a fair basis for comparison. Which language is harder depends on which languages you already speak, as well as other factors such as age. As an English speaker, I find Japanese relatively easy. Hiragana and katakana are straightforward since once you know the characters, reading is easy. If you think that verbs at the end of sentences is hard, then why would you consider Japanese harder than German? Japanese grammar is relatively simple. For me, Chinese would be impossible because it's tonal and if I give it my best try, people won't understand me. If you think that more than one pronunciation makes things difficult, then English must be harder.

[@Hithere-dl2cx]

If Chinese is your first language it doesn't make sense that you consider Japanese more difficult than Spanish or Portuguese for example, do you think a Chinese person would learn Spanish / Portuguese / Dutch ... Faster than Japanese? Also Japanese is not the only language that verbs go at the end.

[@bW9taeH4]

@@Hithere-dl2cx Spanish and Portuguese grammar is harder at an advanced level, but for basic present tense conversations, the grammar is closer for a Chinese speaker. If you want to translate "I have fish" to Chinese or Portuguese or Spanish, you can do it word for word and get it right. Lots of basic grammar is easy to grasp because if you learn the vocabulary, you can understand the sentences. Once you get into more advanced study, Spanish and Portuguese have a lot more to learn with respect to tenses, irregular verbs and so forth. It's also a question of how easy it is to pronounce, and I can't say how it would be coming from Chinese, but if a native speaker finds it that way, it makes sense for him to say that he considerd it that way. Plus, given that the comment is in English, the concepts I mentioned in Spanish and Portuguese wouldn't be so foreign.

[@GoktugErol-o9c]

I speak 5 languages now learning Japanese and Cantonese. One thing I notice is that these asian languages are very similar to Turkish (grammatically), because of their Ural Altay linguistic family (Finnish and Japanese)

[@araka_kiwi]

Wow, that’s amazing! You know,as a normal Chinese,most of us have learned a lot of Japanese words in their animation and tokusatsu tv show.thank you for making this unique version to help more Europeans and American audiences to understand their differences! And 谢谢你（ありがとう）❤❤❤❤

[@polyglotdreams]

有り難うございました

[@NetosRunneros]

Excellent factual comparison. No BS!!!! No gimmicks. Thank you.

[@polyglotdreams]

Glad it was helpful! Thank for that feedback

[@theredbar-cross8515]

Finally a video that presents a clear and correct answer to this often asked question. The multiple readings of kanji is something so complex that most native Japaneses speakers struggle with it, especially if they're dealing with vocabulary outside of their profession. Keigo is another point where young people in particular struggle with, but at least it's a transferable skill across all professions, once you've learned it, you've learned it. No so with kanji reading, that's a life-long struggle.

[@polyglotdreams]

ありがとうございます

[@Clippurr]

I'm Chinese and know some Japanese. My reflection with the politeness system, is that with Chinese, politeness mostly comes from specific nouns (mostly titles), but very few verbs and adjectives, whereas for Japanese there are even different verbs and adjectives, and given that the challenge of Japanese grammar mostly comes from verb conjugation, makes the politeness system exponentially difficult. However, when I speak Chinese in a formal setting, I am often a bit embarassed with my speech because I can use the same set of verbs as if I'm talking to a close friend, which makes me wonder if Chinese should use different verbs to show politeness as well.

[@Pollymichaelis]

As a Chinese who has N3 Japanese proficiency the hardest part for me is the polite and formal forms of Japanese to show the amount of respect in speech. Chinese doesn’t have that, at least it’s not built into the language’s grammar. One of the reason I’m afraid to use Japanese sometimes (online or in real life) is I’m afraid the way I said things are not polite enough/if I mess up the sentence structure I would piss off someone. In Chinese if I want to express respect I just bow a lot lol

[@polyglotdreams]

Yes... in the video, that is what I said too.

[@Cora-eq4kb]

If I do mess the politeness level up do you think it is a really big deal to them?

[@bluespangle]

I will be 70 years old soon. In my village in Toyama Prefecture, children used to speak to their seniors (grownups at home and outside) with 敬語. Nowadays, kids speak to their parents and older people as if friends.

[@polyglotdreams]

Yes, times have changed.

[@dethswurl117]

I'm about N3 in Japanese (~B1) The sole reason I think Japanese is the most challenging is due to the fact that almost every Kanji has two or more readings You can learn the same number of Kanji readings as Chinese but only read ~half as much of the text

[@polyglotdreams]

Exactly... that was also my argument in the video

[@canelo4079]

For anyone interested in Chinese, you can try using Traditional Chinese characters. I think they are way more beautiful and meaningful with just a single word. But to be honest, they're a bit harder to learn, so no stress. just about knowing something fun.

[@polyglotdreams]

I love traditional characters

[@theunicyclist35]

I speak Korean and attempted to learn both languages. Now I dropped Chinese and doing well with Japanese. If you happen to know any one of the East Asian languages you will have a much easier time with the other two.

[@polyglotdreams]

Yes... please watch this video kzbin.info/www/bejne/l4DPeZRvhL-hrqssi=RFQHFMhWGfpYnS-_

[@猪武者]

JP is pretty rough. I have studied it to the point where, I have read perhaps 25 books or so in Japanese. However I still have to look words up constantly. Sound words, all kinds of idioms, and yeah, I don't have all the N1 kanji yet either. I'm missing like 500 kanji still. Plus kanji, is a kind of weird system since kanji can have so many readings. Anyway, I always think that even though CN is no cakewalk, how can it be as hard as JP? Plus yeah, keigo isn't that easy. Luckily foreigners aren't really expected to have mastery of keigo or anything, but still, you need to know some of it just to read books since it is used in literature all the time.

[@polyglotdreams]

Go for N1 ... you can do it

[@sirmione905]

Even for native Japanese speakers, keigo is difficult. Many Japanese write/speak keigo incorrectly. Also, on these days, many people can read kanji but cannot write them correctly. We don’t do handwriting much anymore, just type words on the PC or phone instead, so we don’t need to remember detail forms of kanji. It’s similar for English speakers that they don’t need to remember correct spelling of words as they get automatically corrected on the PC/phone.

[@renanpereira5487]

This channel is gold. Congratulations, Sir!!!

[@polyglotdreams]

Thank you very much! I really appreciate your comment.

[@cesar.m.ibarra]

I am Mexican and have always loved learning languages. I learnt Japanese and it had some advantages for me: Pronunciation is VERY easy for Spanish speakers. Grammar is quite different but also much simpler than Romance languages. Kanjis would be the most difficult aspect for the majority of learners but then you can become very fluent in it, even if not able to read it at all. I am learning Mandarin now and while knowing Kanji is useful, I find tones just a nightmare. So I consider Chinese more challenging as a whole.

[@polyglotdreams]

Thanks for sharing... saludos

[@Hithere-dl2cx]

I'm Brazilian and I'm also studying Japanese, bro do you really think that Japanese grammar is easier than French or Italian for example? 💀 I'm starting to think that I'm too dum* for this language.

[@cesar.m.ibarra]

@Hithere-dl2cx I didn't say it is easier. I said it was simpler. Unlike Spanish and Portuguese, Japanese lacks of conjugations, genre, number, most tenses etc. It may more complicated to switch to a different grammatical structure but as a whole, it is simpler

[@martin32074]

As someone who speaks Chinese natively and has just started learning Japanese, I find it easier than English due to the similarity of its pronunciation to my local dialect, which is Shanghainese. I believe that the difficulty of learning Japanese really depends on where you come from. For Eastern Asian countries, Japanese is not that hard. However, I still believe that Chinese is much harder to learn than Japanese due to the variety of accents and slangs in China. With basic knowledge of Japanese, you should be fine traveling around Japan. However, in China, you will most likely have trouble communicating with people from different areas, even if you are a native Chinese speaker. I, myself, still have trouble understanding other Chinese speakers from different parts of China because of the accent. You can speak fluent Japanese with 5 to 10 years of living in Japan, but you will still not be nearly as fluent in Chinese after the same amount of time. Most foreigners who study and live in China for 10 years do not speak Chinese nearly as well as they should. Japanese is harder to learn on paper for English-speaker and Chinese is harder to master in real life.

[@polyglotdreams]

Yes, your linguistic background is a very important factor.

[@mgill1996]

An excellent presentation based on an objective, academic perspective. Liked and subscribed.

[@polyglotdreams]

Much appreciated!

[@youzhi7251]

My opinion is that there are much more perspectives to any language than just reading, writings, speaking. You will find bottleneck at different stages of learning for different languages. For example, you want to learn ancient Chinese if you want to really be part of the culture, but it’s really a pain as even native speakers find it hard when they learn it at school. On the other hand, Japanese Keigo system is much more complicated to deal with, and you have to master it if you wish to blend in with the society.

[@polyglotdreams]

Yes... the cultural aspects are extremely important.

[@trayamolesh588]

My personal opinion based on experience (intermediate Japanese studies and fluent and literate in mandarin) - Japanese without a doubt is more challenging. The real cagematch video you should do is Japanese versus Korean ;)

[@polyglotdreams]

Thanks... coming soon.

[@eljaminlatour6633]

It's true that 音読み(onyomi) is based on Chinese reading, but not quite. Most of them are based on Middle Chinese reading, like the onyomi of 日("hi", day) is "nichi" based on Middle Chinese reading "nyit", which is different from Mandarin Chinese 日(ri). The closest modern sounds equivalent with onyomi would be Cantonese and Min Nan Chinese. Also, a Japanese user proved her point on why the Japanese language has inflections because the meaning of the Kanji on their own are not specific enough, like 食("shoku", eat), but is it to eat, will eat, or ate? No one can tell. So inflections were added, like 食べる("taberu", to eat/will eat), 食べたい("tabetai", want to eat), 食べました("tabemashita", ate), etc. Also, also, the reason why the Japanese have 2 readings because some onyomi of Kanji are homonyms with one another, like 市("shi", city), 四("shi", 4), and 死("shi", death), especially since they're based on the Chinese language that depends on tones. Also, about the amount of kunyomi, you don't need to stress learning all of them, some of them are just similar with pre-existing readings, others are rarely used or even obsolete. Just learn the ones that are absolutely necessary. Japanese inflections are always based on kunyomi. Also, onyomi, most likely that not is used for Kanji complex words like 山 on its own is pronounced "yama" based on kunyomi, while the onyomi "san" is used in complex words like 富士山("fuji-san", Mt. Fuji) and 火山("kazan", volcano). Kanji is used more often in workplaces due to its formality, like 有り難う御座います("arigatou gozaimasu", thank you[formal]), when talking to someone else in casual situations, you can just convert the words back into Hiragana as ありがとうございます, or to be more casual, remove ございます("gozaimasu"). In short casual sentences, you only need to add a few Kanji, if you can, to avoid confusion, make text more readable, and make text less childish.

[@polarninjawastaken]

67 YEARS OLD?? YOU LOOK 15 YEARS YOUNGER I AM REFUSING TO BELIEVE YOU'RE 67 😭

[@polyglotdreams]

LOL, thanks ... yes 67, born in 1956.

[@FellowOfHammer]

@@polyglotdreamsyou look mid 40s. What’s the secret

[@kiki11111-f]

I'm Japanese, learning Chinese. Speaking Chinese is so difficult for me. I can read pretty well (obviously)😂 but when confronted with a real Chinese person I cannot make sentences. I guess I just need more practice.

[@polyglotdreams]

Yes, it just takes practice.

[@chihirokannda7501]

I grew up bilingual in English and Japanese and I always found Chinese and all the kanji they use incredibly intimidating, not to mention the tonal differences (i tried to copy the lady's "a" sounds and i could only get one of them close), but I never properly considered all the politeness levels of Japanese and realized that I can only do very basic customer service level respectfulness. My mother says i text like an anime character at times, so must sound quite silly.

[@polyglotdreams]

Even university graduates have to brush up on polite language.

[@jojoking6638]

Although Chinese pronunciation is difficult to practice, if you speak slowly, Chinese people can understand you even if the pronunciation is incorrect.

[@NolanJapan-e7y]

My native language is tonal language. We have 3 tones and Chinese Mandarin has 4 tones. So we find Chinese easier. Japanese grammar is similar to ours but a lot more complex.

[@polyglotdreams]

Which language?

[@guillermodelapuente4688]

Thanks for this video. Fascinating!

[@polyglotdreams]

Thanks... I really appreciate it 🙏

[@user-qwertyuiopasdfghj]

I remember he hardest part for me as a chinese kid to learn English is the grammar rules, since chinese is analytic. I guess learning English would be easy for people who speak French German or Russian because their native language have even more complicated grammatical rules. While for Japanese I can read some of them without learning thanks to shared character system. it’s so magical sometimes. Unfortunately I have not learnt to speak any Japanese.

[@polyglotdreams]

Give Japanese a try.

[@mihalyzentai9868]

They say chinese haven't got any grammar. I think the japanese writing system is much more difficult.They have Hiragana, Katakana,Kanji,Rómaji,Hepburn. At that the kanjis have several readings in japanese and in CHINESE too. But all in all the chinese musical intonation makes learning chinese more difficult.

[@polyglotdreams]

I addressed those issued in the video

[@mihalyzentai9868]

@@polyglotdreams Sorry I haven't watch the video yet but along with english(Native hungarian) german,Hawaiian,and more than 20 languages I am learning this two as well, and i have been asked a lot of times which is the harder. So I wrote what i said for this question.(Hungarians always say that hungarian is the most difficult language to learn, but those who say this never learned chinese,japanese,korean,arabic or russian) Of course chinese is the most difficult to learn BUT not mandarin chinese , Instead Cantonese.So if you said this in the video then i agree with you and promise I never write a comment for a video which I haven't watch from the beginning 'till the end.

[@polyglotdreams]

@@mihalyzentai9868 have a look ... it is much more objectively analytical

[@mihalyzentai9868]

@@polyglotdreams Thanks,I will do just that. Seems to me I will be an avid follower of your channel.

[@thepassportog]

I speak Japanese and am learning Chinese. This is such a good topic! Bravo

[@polyglotdreams]

Thanks

[@YunLuoShanZe]

The difficulty of Chinese in daily communication also lies in the extensive use of 成语, 俗语 and 歇后语. These contents are rarely learned when learning Chinese, but are very important in real-life communication.

[@polyglotdreams]

Indeed, you've highlighted a significant aspect of learning Chinese that many learners encounter. 成语 (chéngyǔ), which are idiomatic expressions usually consisting of four characters, 俗语 (súyǔ), commonly used proverbs or colloquial sayings, and 歇后语 (xiēhòuyǔ), a type of traditional Chinese enigmatic folk simile and humorous allegorical sayings, are all integral parts of daily communication in Chinese. They carry cultural nuances and historical contexts that are not immediately obvious to learners. These expressions are often not emphasized in the early stages of learning Chinese due to their complexity and cultural specificity. However, understanding and using them can greatly enhance not just communication but also an appreciation of Chinese literature and culture. It’s advisable for learners to gradually incorporate these into their study routine to better grasp the language's depth and enrich their conversational skills. Engaging with native speakers and consuming a wide range of Chinese media can be particularly helpful in encountering these expressions in context.

[@WolfyLuna]

Am Dutch myself; I studied Chinese first for about 5 years but struggled with the tonal system too much. Both to listen and speak properly. Other than that I found the language relatively manageable. Currently I am studying Japanese. At times it can be confusing to have first studied Chinese as modern mandarin pronunciations pop up when reading hanzi instead of the borrowed from 600 years ago by southern Chinese people pronunciation that the Japanese use as kanji. The verb bending so to say is complex in Japanese but it is learnable. What I find complex is that when formulating a sentence or when listening one does not know the time frame used, whether it is a question, request or a command or such until the end of the sentence. Which works in both Chinese and Japanese. with ma for yes/no in mandarin and ka in Japanese. Although both use the ne for a "isn't it?" kind of expression. I intent to go to Japan for 3 months this year April to study Japanese there instead of 1½ hours per week which I used to in the Netherlands. Also I will be staying at a Japanese family to further hopefully have more need to speak and listen to Japanese increasing the getting used to doing both quicker. One thing about both languages I am glad about is that fictional Genders of non living things does not inflict the way words are written which it does in many European languages. Sure a occupation is obvious when speaking about a male or female but a house or a door even in Dutch are not of the same Gender thus get a different word in front of it "Het huis" and "De deur" but at least Dutch has basically either non gender or a gender words. unlike German, French, Italian and Spanish (probably more but my knowledge does not reach that far with other languages ^_^) Informative and somewhat relatable video. Thanks for making the video and sharing your insights :)

[@polyglotdreams]

Thanks for your input... all the best to uou Herr in Japan

[@Pollymichaelis]

I think once you overcome the difficulties of tonal Chinese, forming sentences in Chinese is easier in Japanese as Chinese has less grammatical rules as you can rearrange characters and still make sense. As Chinese I struggle to form sentences in Japanese

[@kice]

I think the extreme hard difficult mode will be Cantonese. I would like to see an analysis on this.

[@polyglotdreams]

Cantonese tones and pronunciation is very challenging.

[@dmitriimishchenko1379]

Awesome video! Super informative

[@polyglotdreams]

THANKS

[@jumpinallans]

I love how you enunciate when you speak English.

[@polyglotdreams]

I do my best.

[@liliKd712]

well, I am crazy enough to learn Korean, Japanese, and Chinese simultaneously and study C1 English. it is fun 😁😁😁😛😛

[@polyglotdreams]

Fantastic... all the best to you!

[@yofura]

素晴らしい動画、ありがとうございます！日本人の私でも上手く説明できないことを事細かく解釈して頂き、大変勉強になりました。 在向欧美人说明汉语与日语的区别时，我也不知道该如何解释，多亏您的视频，我又长了很多知识，这对我学习语言上提供了很大帮助。非常感谢您！

[@polyglotdreams]

有り難うございました

[@lazy-bird8198]

Don’t worry everyone! Even Japanese including me can’t use KEIGO properly 😂

[@Tsurusampachi]

16:35 標準語だとややこしい敬語も、方言だと割と単純な所がある。 食べる－召し上がる(標準語) 食べる－食べはる(関西弁) ただ書き言葉ではないのが難点か

[@polyglotdreams]

面白い

[@Raifu__]

The Kun’yomi readings of 生 are not 16, but 10 in the given example : い, う, うま, うまれ, お, は, き, な, なま, む. What comes after the dot is not the kanji reading. For instance 生やす is は.やす, so the kun’yomi reading is only は. Obviously, it’s still difficult, but context generally gives a hint for the reading.

[@polyglotdreams]

That is a valid point... Nevertheless, there are other readings not given in the examples.

[@Raifu__]

⁠​⁠Yeah, great point. I’m pretty sure there are other readings for obscure words in classical literature and in modern first names. I’ve stumbled upon lots of words with a reading not referenced in the kanji dictionary I use when reading novels.

[@angamaitesangahyando685]

​@@Raifu__How would you know a given word's reading in a book? Or do you mean audiobooks? - Adûnâi

[@Raifu__]

@@angamaitesangahyando685 Simply by knowing the word. : If you learn kanji's, you'll have to make a guess that will prove wrong in a lot of cases. But when you know the word 年上 is pronounced "toshiue", you won't make the mistake of reading it "nenjou" (another reading of the same kanjis, which is wrong here). There are other cases where 2 readings are both okay, and you choose what you prefer (but those are low frequency words) Honestly, there are cases where you have to get some experience in listening to guess which reading a word has in a specific context. For example, 入る which can be both read "iru" or "hairu" depending on context. -> This is rare. Mostly, you can guess the reading when reading a book without audio input by knowing the word.

[@KenAze17]

As a filipino I find Japanese way easier tho.. I can't really grasp the tonal language. I also find chinese grammar so simple that it feels difficult cause I'm not use to it since filipino grammar has a lot of affixes, markers and particles as well.. In that case I find Japanese are closer to our grammar but only in opposite way. We start with verbs while Japanese ends with vebs. Only kanji makes it difficult but even natives are also affected by it.

[@hilina148]

I watch every video you upload and it never disappoints. I have started to study Japanese half a year ago because I met students from Tokyo in Spain to which I currently only speak Spanish to and one of them started studying German as well (my mother tongue) 😂 I love the language journey I have started, the only hard thing is keeping myself from starting to many new languages at once.... once you're hooked, you are hooked 😅 I would love to also study Mandarin one day

[@polyglotdreams]

Thanks so much for your support!

[@Porquesi502]

I am a tutor in both Japanese and Mandarin in case you are interested 🙌

[@kalvon]

I am currently learning Japanese but im also interested on other languages such as Spanish and Chinese. But from what I've heard, you can't really learn 2 languages simultaneously especially when the language is closely related to each other.

[@polyglotdreams]

Ever since I was 18 years old, I learned more than one language at the same time. I've even studied Portuguese in Spanish.

[@abfab117]

This video is brilliant. All my respect and congratulations. I know both languages (Japanese much better than Chinese). I am absolutely convinced that Japanese is far much harder to master. The only simple thing in Japanese is the pronunciation, anything else is nothing but complexity... As for Japanese, you might have forgotten TWO other 'Big' challenging things : 1/ Joshi (助詞　gramatical particles), they are many and their use is difficult and confusing 2/ The fact that in a sentence many things can be omitted (subject in most cases)... for that reason the Japanese sentence is often ambiguous for we don't really know who did what. Even the Japanese get confused sometimes and have to ask : sorry but who did? I experienced once reading a manga in Japanese: I was lost many times despite my honorable level... I read the same manga translated in Chinese and all was so clear. At last I could know who did what! Thank you if you can confirm and/or develop those two points, and again, CONGRATULATIONS for your excellent work. You are such a talented person.

[@polyglotdreams]

Thank you so much for the kind words and sharing your experiences.

[@tobiaswolf6630]

Nice comparison. I think you left out one VERY important aspect, which is listening comprehension. Since Chinese has only relatively few readings (about 400 without tones, about 1500 with tones) the words are very hard to distinguish when listening. Reading is a different story because the characters help you determine which morpheme is intended - that´s why the characters came to existence in the first place. The words of Japanese origin within Japanese are MUCH easier to distinguish when listening, simply for the fact that there is more "variety" in the "building blocks" of words. Now interestingly, the words of Chinese origin within the Japanese language are much harder to distinguish even when speaking Japanese, for the very same reason they are hard to distinguish in Chinese: there are way less building blocks, and a lot of words either do sound very similar or actually use the same readings with different meanings (e.g. こうてい 校庭 肯定 皇帝 工程 高低 公邸) The advantage in Japanese is that the Japanese vocabulary serves as a kind of framework, so that not ALL the words are hard to distinguish. The same applies to Korean. In contrast, in Chinese you have to rely on either context or the mere fact that many words are made up of two characters. I know this because I have studied Japanese and Uni and am now learning Korean, and I am struggling with the Sino-Korean vocabulary, even though I am using Hanja to learn them. I haven´t learned Chinese yet, and I actually never might, because it just seems so difficult to grasp Chinese by ear.

[@polyglotdreams]

That's an interesting perspective.... though it seems more subjective than objective... I didn't experience the same.

[@tobiaswolf6630]

@@polyglotdreams I might just be wrong and talentless when it comes to Chinese. 😅

[@KingPaulW]

Thank you for this video! I have never heard of keigo until now. You explained everything in great detail.

[@polyglotdreams]

I'm glad you enjoyed it!

[@LovelyAngel.]

17:48 - a little correction on pronunciation here: even though the dictionary form is nasaru, since it's one of the archaic verbs, when changing to ~masu form we don't change the -ru ending to ~ri~ but ~i~ instead (this comes from how hiragana evolved throughout history). Making the verb not nasarimasu but nasaimasu. Other notable examples are: irassharu - irasshaimasu kudasaru - kudasaimasu gozaru - gazaimasu which "coincidentally" are also used in keigo

[@Josui1471]

This is a great video. Spot on with mandarin and matches my understanding of Japanese. Admire your achievement with the languages.

[@polyglotdreams]

Thank you so much!

[@shensei4]

Fantastic explanation of the differences of my home language growing up which is Mandarin Chinese, and the struggles I'm going through right now learning Japanese as a 20 something year old student. Your expertise and teaching experience really stand out, though maybe review some of those Chinese pronunciations in your examples every once in a while haha

[@polyglotdreams]

Thanks so much

[@photon434]

This was an outstanding presentation. Katakana and hiragana can be a little intimidating for beginners, but they can be learned in a short time. While I greatly enjoy Kanji, I find the number of meanings and pronunciations very time consuming to learn. I think it would be easier to learn Chinese writing first. And while the meanings embedded in Kanji are beautiful, it gave rise to what seems like an endless sea of words in the Japanese vocabulary. So, I just relax and study for the love of the language. I admire your dedication to these two fascinating languages. Thank you for your insight into questions that I’ve wondered about.

[@vivida7160]

I don't think you understand. Words come first, in any language. The vocabulary already exists and you designate written letters to represemt the words. The only thing that increases the number of words are loan words and fusions of existing words. The things you call pronounciations are seperate words that have been given the same letters for writing because the meaning of the letter is the same or similar.

[@photon434]

@@vivida7160 Of course, you are correct in that a large number of words came even before the Japanese borrowed the Chinese characters. But the Japanese made these characters their own naturally creating the term kanji "漢字" to them. While languages like English that only use phonetic alphabets do use word roots to form new words, it is more common just to simply use two existing words to describe things. On the other hand, it is a natural progression was for the Japanese to mix these ‘Kanji’ into different combinations. They are used either one of many possible Japanese pronunciations, known as ‘Kun’yomi’, or adopted the Chinese pronunciations, known as ‘On’yomi’. This process formed new words that had not previously existed.” “They combined kanji with complementary meanings and desired sounds to create entirely new words.” I’ve heard Japanese people talking about the beauty and descriptiveness of the Japanese language saying that there are over 100 different words to describe rain. Here are just a few examples: Ame (雨): This is the basic word for rain. Kosame (小雨): This term is used to describe light rain. Ooame (大雨): This term is used to describe heavy rain. Niwaka Ame (にわか雨): This term is used to describe sudden rain. Yuudachi (夕立): This term is used to describe heavy evening rain. Touriame (通り雨): This term is used to describe rain that starts and stops suddenly. It is so easy and actually artistic to fit characters together in ways that seem so natural and retain their original meaning for a millennia. それが日本語の漢字です。

[@vivida7160]

@@photon434 You've just told me you don't understand. The words were designated Chinese letters based on meaning. The words that are pronounced the Chinese way are Chinese loan words. Not inventive complucated ways of pronouncing Chinese letters.

[@polyglotdreams]

The multiple pronunciations indicate different usage and meanings as you may have noticed

[@Alkakha1989]

Thank you for uploading this video:) How to pronounce 生　 In Mandarin; 生(shēng) In Japanese; 生（i）け花を 生（i）き甲斐にした 生（ha）え抜きの生娘（kimusume） 生絹（suzushi）を生業（nariwai）に生計（seikei）をたてた 生（o）い立ちは 生半可（namahanka）ではなかった 生憎（ainiku）生前（souzen）は 生（u）まれてこのかた 生涯（shougai）通して 生粋（kissui）の　生（ubu）だった

[@silveran1650]

正にその通りです。 読み方が行く通りもあり 漢字が２つに繋がると 全くの習った事が無意味な程読み方が変わります。 他国の方は混乱するのは 当然の事です。

[@polyglotdreams]

And many more possibilities.

[@Alkakha1989]

それゆえに、 ー日本語には語彙が豊富にある。 ー日本語にはボキャブラリーが豊富にある。 上記の文はどちらもほとんど同じ意味だけど、時と場合によっては、受ける印象が若干違うわけです。

[@abc2713]

聞いていい？ →聞かせていただけると嬉しいのですが。 で大爆笑しました🤣🤣🤣日本語めんどくさいですね！確かに日本語を習うのは大変ですわ！ 我现在学中文！你的视频很有意思😊

[@polyglotdreams]

大変ですよ❗

[@Pollymichaelis]

謝謝你學中文❤ありがとうございます❤

[@johnwang9341]

日本人快向中国道歉

[@田中一郎-n7s]

聞いていい? ↓ 伺ってもよろしいでしょうか。 の方がより自然です。 会社でもお客さんに使ってます。

[@norabalogh5910]

I just stumbled across this video as I am interested in languages and language learning and do speak several languages, though all of them are European languages. I stayed until the end out of curiosity and learned a lot about these two languages. Pretty cool!

[@polyglotdreams]

Great... welcome to Asian languages.

[@The-Mediator]

For me, Japanese is basically Chinese but 2X harder. 1 : Not only does Japanese have Chinese characters, it has 2 (or more) different readings for each character and plus 2 other writing systems. 2 : Japanese had more complex grammar, more different from English. It’s SOV 3 : Japanese has “pitch” which is harder than tones because they’re random and unpredictable for beginners. I think the only easier thing about Japanese is its many English loan words and simple pronunciation …

[@phen-themoogle7651]

I think Japanese is easier at more advanced levels though because: 1: You only need 2k kanji or so (maybe 4k readings) : Chinese they need to read 3k-4k kanji which is similar amount in readings in Japanese you would learn, but that's a ton of kanji. I wouldn't consider hiragana or katakana too difficult, and those can help you read kanji because manga has furigana or the existence of the concept furigana is huge for learners. (I got fluent reading hundreds of mangas over the years, without trying to focus on individual readings or kanji study in isolation too much, I prioritized vocab over kanji, like how Japanese children do it) 2: True, Japanese has more complex grammar, but it also has touchibun (inverted grammar/ where it's very flexible and you can change word order, once you get the hang of it down, example: 海賊王に俺はなる (kaizokuou ni ore wa naru, the pirate king I will be (slightly poetic, famous one piece quote), 俺は海賊王になる (ore wa kaizokuou ni naru) "I will become the pirate king. " 　海賊王になるのは俺だ kaizokuou ni naru no wa ore da "The one who will become the pirate king is me" Just gotta know where to put the particles and where verbs come in relation, you can invert sentences and it's very free and flexible once you get to intermediate/advanced levels. 3. Chinese tones are harder than pitch accent for me , instead of all the readings of kanji in Japanese, memorizing the tones for each chinese character is sheer pain, especially when you have so many words with similar sounds. At least in Japanese even if you get your pitch accent wrong you might appear to be from kansai , touhoku or some other region since they have many pitch accent patterns, but you will still be understood. In Chinese, if you get a lot of tones wrong it will be ultra confusing. At least Japanese is way easier to speak and hear... Writing system might be harder in some ways though like you mentioned. Especially at beginner-intermediate levels. Once people break through it'll feel a lot easier than Chinese, at least I never made it far in Chinese, and started Japanese at the same time. Probably depends on how interested you are though/time investment.

[@polyglotdreams]

Yes...

[@polyglotdreams]

Do you like anime... just asking based on your examples

[@cheerful_crop_circle]

The Japanese language has a very similar pronunciation and rhythm of speaking to my native language so the words are easy to remember

[@The-Mediator]

@@polyglotdreams yes, I’m a little into it. But I’m mainly into Japanese music 😀

[@jewii3824]

The hardest things about Chinese/mandarin is the characters (hanzi) and tones

[@moahammad1mohammad]

Writing and grammar wise japanese is way, way wayyyy more difficult.

[@polyglotdreams]

Yes

[@China-bizvalueinstories]

great lecture video. The tonal system variations in China is also difficult for Chinese from different regions across the country, namely from different accents, almost like how Spanish is different from Italian. That's why the first Emperor's effort in unification of writing system is huge in the Chinese civilization.

[@polyglotdreams]

Thanks so much...

[@redneckscumbags4422]

that's also a reason why china never moved onto a phonetic based writing system since there hasn't been a unified spoken language across china until the past few decades.

[@ahom9387]

Amazing. Thx for your insightful analysis! I like your content!

[@polyglotdreams]

Much appreciated!

[@portable_charger]

I'm a native Chinese speaker both Cantonese and mandarin and my second language is English and Japanese. I personally find Japanese easy to learn because of my vast knowledge for Han Zi and similar pronunciations of them, its true that Chinese grammar is similar to English and I did have a hard time dealing with the difference in Japanese grammar. But to me, I think the grammar structure wasn't that hard to overcome. I think any language can be hard or easy depending on different ways you look at it. Great video!

[@polyglotdreams]

Thanks so much... Cantonese helps with the readings of some Japanese characters. BTW Chinese, Cantonese, Japanese and Korean are head final left branching, the opposite of English. The person who came yesterday... 昨日来た人

[@CHELSYLOVESLANGUAGES]

Wow! I'm trying to learn both languages... This video is very helpful✨️

[@polyglotdreams]

Great... all the best in your studies! THANKS for the comment.

[@tanvirrafid2821]

As a Bengali speaker 🇧🇩, to me Japanese was far less complex excluding the writing style. The word order and the particle system is a lot more similar considering the case endings in Bengali. Also in both of the languages, the inflections for verbs are there but lesser than Japanese. So when I started to learn Japanese comparing it to my language, I could catch the grammar more easily. And the phonetics is a lot lot easier.

[@polyglotdreams]

But not politeness levels.

[@tanvirrafid2821]

@@polyglotdreams Yes yes... In Japanese, the politeness levels are more and it reflects on the whole sentence specially verb endings and use of different words. But in Bengali we also have different pronouns for expressing politeness. Like there are 3 forms for the 2nd person basically (and 2 forms for 3rd person) and they influence just the verb endings. But for first person, we don't have that many different word forms, just one. Thank you for the reply!!

[@PaulKTakahashi]

Great video ❤ I'm glad I've stumbled upon your channel. Thanks for making the videos. I will be watching them with great interest ☺️

[@polyglotdreams]

Thanks... welcome 🙏 to the community

[@gymleaderbubbles]

As a native Central American Spanish speaker, Japanese pronunciation is muuuuch easier. Similarly, we change the way we speak and how some verbs and accents are modified or changed to be more polite. Happy to say that 2 months into my self Japanese studies i do NOT regret my decision to pass my N1 JLPT in the future. 😊 ありがとうございます！

[@polyglotdreams]

頑張って下さい

[@akikohorie4764]

もちろん、中国語発も漢字文化圏だから多いと思うが、元々中国にあった言葉だけ、 西洋発祥の新しい文化の言葉の翻訳は70％が日本語の応用！

[@polyglotdreams]

和製漢語

[@Laurenlee87721]

As a native Mandarin speaker living in Melbourne Australia, I find Japanese grammar and verb conjugations very challenging 😅

[@polyglotdreams]

頑張って下さい

[@caleb7475]

How is it that you have a American English Accent if you are from Poland and live in Japan?

[@polyglotdreams]

I wad born in the US and lived in 🇵🇱.. I live in Japan for 42 years and am a Japanese citizen.

[@cheerful_crop_circle]

Lol

[@hayleybarbara1589]

I definitely find Japanese harder. But i think a portion of that is how i learned Japanese then Korean then Chinese. So by the time i started learning chinese i really understood what learning methods work for me

[@polyglotdreams]

Thanks for sharing

[@josir1994]

I see Japanese as an easier language for European language speakers. Having a phonetic alphabet to start with is nice, and while hiragana and katakana are two more type of characters, ther's only ~100 of them compared to the thousands to tens of thousands of kanji/Chinese characters that ends up making Chiinese more difficult. The polite speech comparison also sounds like a random goal post just for the Japanese, as that would likely not appear if you're comparing say Chinese vs Thai. It fits more as a subsection under grammer.

[@polyglotdreams]

Can you read Japanese at a high level? Polite speech is not a random goal... it is an crucial part of learning to speak Japanese and cannot be compared to Chinese vs Thai... only Chinese vs. Korean.

[@josir1994]

@@polyglotdreams I am fluent in both Japanese and Chinese, and I fully undestand polite speech is an integral part of the language. My point is that it doesn't make a separate category when comparing two languages, but rather as a part contributing to the difficulty in Japanee grammer (or maybe count it as extra vocab). The other three main categories: grammer, pronounciation and writing(spelling) make a good framework for comparing languages in general.

[@4kOnix]

Really depends on what your goal is for the language. If you just want to be able to minimally communicate by speaking and listening then I think Japanese is easier because it’s probably easier to hear and say. You could just learn phrases and vocabulary and they aren’t hard to pronounce. Being a foreigner, Japanese ppl with accommodate to your level and congratulate you on how great your Japanese is. But as OP says, this is not anywhere close to a fluent level of Japanese. To understand Japanese, learning kanji and its vocabulary is a must. As well as all the ways forms of verbs, politeness etc. If you can’t fluently use these effectively, you aren’t fluent in Japanese. Working in a Japanese environment, understanding the social situations going on around you, identifying how you should act to different people and how you are seen by different ppl is impossible if you can’t do this. But you won’t realize it if you aren’t from Japan because the concepts are so foreign, and nuances are masked by the indirectness of the language

[@josir1994]

@@4kOnix I'm kind of repeating myself by now but what I'm saying is that polite speech don't make sense as a standalone category in comparing languages, because if it does, it should appear in comparison of any and every language. Unlike grammar, which should be discussed no matter you're comparing English vs Russian or Arabic vs Spanish or whatever. I'm not even saying you shouldn't consider the difficulty brought by polite speech, it's just not a separate category.

[@Hithere-dl2cx]

Speak Japanese for me is easy, the problem as a Brazilian is the grammar, which is totally different from Portuguese.