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 Posted: Tue Feb 06, 2007 1:16 pm
A small question to learners on Japanese or other East Asian Languages. I'm planning on majoring in East asian culture and hopefully learning korean and chinese in college while continueing with Japanese.
This is mainly towards chinese though. If I was to learn chinese would it help my learning of Japanese Kanji? I know that many are the same, while also many are incredibly different.
The Kanji for letter in Japan is the same as toilet paper in Chinese. ect...
Any one know how benificial taking these languages will help the understanding of the others?
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Posted: Tue Feb 06, 2007 2:37 pm
I've studied both Chinese and Japanese, so I might be of some help. Since the Kanji is taken from the Chinese, I'm going to say yes it will help you recognize characters though the pronunciation is going to be different. The Japanese, however, have two different ways of reading a character: Onyomi readings and KUNyomi readings. The KUNyomi is derived from the Chinese way of pronunciation, while the Onyomi is purely Japanese this can make it difficult to keep track of. Take the symbol 不 in Japanese it's primarily pronounced "fu", but in Chinese it's pronounced "bu" while using the KUNyomi reading. Also the symbol they use for the primary "I/me" is different. Chinese uses 我(wo3) while the Japanese use 私(watashi). So yes, leaning Chinese will help with learning character recognition, but how frequently you use the character or how it's said is going to be different.
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Posted: Wed Feb 07, 2007 8:13 pm
3nodding Koreans use Kanji too, says my immigrant Korean mom, but mostly only in newspapers so it isn't quite as big of a deal. My Korean Teen magazines have no Kanji.
Mom recognizes Chinese characters here and there, and I'd always wondered why until she told me that they were taught them in school. 3nodding
김예뿐이니다!
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Posted: Sat Feb 10, 2007 5:23 pm
My first language is Chinese, and while some people say that Japanese is different and all, I find that there are many similarities in compound kanji which help me to remember. For example, "futsuu" (Japanese) and "putong" (Mandarin) are written using the same kanji and have the same meaning (normal). Also, "touzen" and "dangran", same kanji, same meaning (naturally). Another one, "sanpo" and "sanbu" (walk), again, same kanji/meaning (and this one even has similar pronounciation).
I have also noticed patterns in pronounciation, sometimes I know the Chinese pronounciation of a kanji, and can make an accurate guess on the Japanese pronounciation, saves me the trouble of loking up stroke count. For example, often, the Chinese 'j' sound is Japanese 'k', like Chinese "jian" and Japanese "kan", or "ji" and "ki", it's a little hard for me to explain.
Another pattern is Mandarin 4th tone characters often have a Japanese pronounciation that ends in 'u', for example, "iron", Chinese is "tie" (with 4th tone), and Japanese is "tetsu". Or "power", Chinese is "li", Japanese is "ryoku".
I have a feeling that there are even more pronouncation similarities with Cantonese, but I only know Mandarin.
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Posted: Tue Feb 20, 2007 7:58 pm
Japanese and Korean all have roots in Chinese.
Which is why there is a similarity with characters sounds made to an extent.
Which is why Kanji sounds like Hanja and Hanzi, there are similarities, yes, but Japanese I know does not have the same pronunciation as Chinese all the time, and they use some kanji that do not occur in Chinese, and some sounds which are not consistent with the Chinese equivalent.
Overall, it will help you recognize roots in characters because of the relationship, but as for sentences and grammar, Japanese and Chinese have different structures as far as I have learned.
And some DO have similar sounds:
天山 = Tien/Tian shan in Chinese, but in Japanese it's Ten Zan
Abstract example, but some of the things are similar.
Also, I've heard that Cantonese dialect has some pronunciations that sound closer to Japan than Mandarin even, but I don't know anyone who uses Cantonese, so I couldn't say for sure.
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Posted: Sat Mar 10, 2007 11:59 pm
I took Korean for like... a semester last year. And, although there was a lot that really didn't relate, taking Japanese for several years really did help a lot. I immediately understood the way the grammar was set up (they're almost the exact same order) and several words were even the same. For example, library; in japanese, it's toshoukan, in korean, tosokwan. Don't get me wrong, that would only help you... almost never. And you would have to learn hangul on top of everything.
But anyway, yes, I think learning one definitely helps learn another. (Although.. if you're not good at compartmentalization, it may screw you up more than help XD)
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Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2007 7:49 pm
I major in four languages: English, Japanese, Korean, and Mandarin.
Grammatically, Korean is very similar to Japanese, but because they do not have a lot of cognate words between the two of them they are in different language categories. Also there is no evidence that says that they influenced one another. Neither of them have any other languages in their category, they are considered original. As for Chinese, that help you with recognizing characters, but there are still a lot of differences. The characters do not all crossover, but there are cases that Chinese speakers can recognize characters, and (sometimes) get the meaning. The pronunciations for each language is very different, because Mandarin is more similar to English in the SVO sentence structure.
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Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2007 11:21 pm
For those that may be wondering what is meant by the "SVO" structure, it is, to my understanding, Subject Verb Object. Though thb's definition might mean something completely different.
For Japanese the structure is "TTPOV" which means: Time Topic/Subject (interchangeable) Place Object Verb. 3nodding
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Posted: Sat Mar 31, 2007 7:29 pm
Kita Cloud For those that may be wondering what is meant by the "SVO" structure, it is, to my understanding, Subject Verb Object. Though thb's definition might mean something completely different. For Japanese the structure is "TTPOV" which means: Time Topic/Subject (interchangeable) Place Object Verb. 3nodding I apologise for not mentioning that myself.
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Posted: Sat Mar 31, 2007 8:48 pm
Kita Cloud I've studied both Chinese and Japanese, so I might be of some help. Since the Kanji is taken from the Chinese, I'm going to say yes it will help you recognize characters though the pronunciation is going to be different. The Japanese, however, have two different ways of reading a character: Onyomi readings and KUNyomi readings. The KUNyomi is derived from the Chinese way of pronunciation, while the Onyomi is purely Japanese this can make it difficult to keep track of. Take the symbol 不 in Japanese it's primarily pronounced "fu", but in Chinese it's pronounced "bu" while using the KUNyomi reading. Also the symbol they use for the primary "I/me" is different. Chinese uses 我(wo3) while the Japanese use 私(watashi). So yes, leaning Chinese will help with learning character recognition, but how frequently you use the character or how it's said is going to be different. Actually, you mixed them up. On'yomi is Chinese readings and kun'yomi is Japanese.
Even though Korean and Japanese aren't that much alike with words, learning the grammar of one will help you with grammar of the other since from what I've heard, they both use particles and the order is the same.
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Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2007 7:31 am
I'm also studying both Japanese and Chinese. And I definitely think that I've got an advantage by knowing Japanese (started learning that language before Chinese), but there are some confusing things you need to be aware of. :/
First of all, Japanese uses a mix of traditional and simplified characters, and some of the simplified ones are only used in Japanese. Sometimes there are only small differences between the Chinese and Japanese ones like in:
単 and 单. The Japanes one has three strokes on the top of the character while the Chinese only has two. Both are simplified versions of 單. Then there are simplified versions that differ a lot, China tends to simplify more and use cursive script versions that mostly already are in use, while Japan has reduced strokes in some elements of the characters, a good example of this is the character 樂 which has turned into a character with nearly no resemblance to the original one in China; 乐, while the Japanese one more looks like the original one: 楽.
Another thing is that you sometimes think you know what the word means in the other language, while that's far away from the truth. Someone already mentioned that 手紙 means letter in Japanese and toilet paper in Chinese. 是非 can mean "right and wrong" in both languages, but in Japanese a more common meaning is "please" while it also can mean "quarrel" in Chinese.
Another thing, which I've talked with my Chinese teacher about, is that some words are "reversed" in the languages. For example, the word "introduction" is 紹介 in Japanese, but 介绍 in Chinese. When I first realised this started thinking that maybe the Japanese read the characters in the wrong direction or something like that, but according to my teacher some words n Chinese are the same even if you change the characters' places. So sometime both words probably have been in use, but one of them became more common in China and one became more common in Japan.
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Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2007 11:46 am
There's one character I can remember where the traditional looks more simplified. o: It's the character for car. I don't know it in Chinese...車 I also like the traditional character for love better than the simplified.爱愛
I'm gunna study Chinese and Korean soon.
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Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2007 11:51 am
I agree with you about the character of love, I remember when a friend of mine showed me a skin for his cell phone (this was ages ago) with the character of love on it, at that time I didn't know simplified characters, so I thought somebody had written it wrong or that it was an entire different character. XD But seriously, you can't remove the heart of love and turn it the bottom of it into "friend". >___<;
By the way, the simplified character of 車 is 车. ^^
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Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2007 12:13 pm
Thanks. I still think The traditional looks more simplified. xd
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Posted: Mon Apr 02, 2007 4:18 pm
Since people are on the topic of simplified chinese characters then an interesting fun fact that you people probobly do not care about is that in Taiwan they do not use as many simplified characters as they do elsewhere.
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