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>Learning Chinese is like learning Latin before learning a Romance language. >The added benefit is that Chinese isn’t a dead language. I wouldn't go that far.

>Learning Chinese is like learning Latin before learning a Romance language. >The added benefit is that Chinese isn’t a dead language. I wouldn't go that far. It's more like learning Greek and hearing many of the same root words, sounds, etymology, etc. in English. An Italian speaker can listen to Latin and grok maybe 25%. A Japanese speaker can listen to Chinese and get maybe 2%, max. Words like "library" use the same Chinese letters, and have very similar pronunciations, but that's about the extent. I'd say the best way to learn would be Japanese, Korean, then Chinese (what I did). Source: I speak Japanese, Korean, and Chinese.

49531 6y ago
That sounds similar to English and German. There are a few words that are still somewhat connected, like water / wasser, but knowing one gives little insight into the other.
- krebs_liebhaber 6y ago
  There's also "Gift" (Poison), "Pickel" (Pimple), "Wo" (where), "Wer" (who), "Fahrt" (travel), and so on...
AlchemistCamp 6y ago
> I'd say the best way to learn would be Japanese, Korean, then Chinese (what I did). Why? I speak Chinese and used to be fluent in Japanese. I find my Chinese (and English + katakana) a huge help when visiting Japan in recent years. What's your rationale for this ordering?
- throwaway66554 6y ago
  Because when you learn Japanese, you have to learn kanji, the more traditional strokes (non-simplified), both Japanese and Chinese sounds, and the grammar is closer to Korean (and closer pronunciation for a lot of words). So, it's better to learn Japanese, quickly pick up Korean, then learn Chinese. Chinese last since you have to learn simplified characters, the grammar is different, tonality is quite different, etc.
  - lifthrasiir 6y ago
    > kanji, the traditional strokes (non-simplified) Uh, both Japan and Chinese use different simplified glyphs. And they overlap a lot because they are different standardizations of handwritten glyphs in the bigger Sinosphere. I would be surprised if you indeed learned the traditional characters while learning Japanese.
    - throwaway66554 6y ago
      >Uh, both Japan and Chinese use different simplified glyphs. Wrong. Though there are divergences, Chinese in mainland China use simplified Chinese characters (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Chinese_characters https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Chinese_character...). Kanji is more closely related to the traditional Chinese characters (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji#Local_developments_and_divergences_from_Chinese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji#Local_developments_and_d...) than the mainland simplification. >I would be surprised if you indeed learned the traditional characters while learning Japanese. Kanji is closer related, or exactly the same as traditional Chinese characters (used in HK, Taiwan, etc.) than simplified.
      - lifthrasiir 6y ago
        My understanding of Chinese (the language) is limited, but having learned Hanja (essentially traditional one) first then learned Japanese later the divergence was already significant. Or, more quantitatively, the Joyo Kanji has 364 simplified characters out of 2,136 (~17%) [1] while the mainland China simplified probably about 2,000 out of 7,000 common characters (~28%) [2]. This divergence is not the biggest deal, but still big enough to refute the claim that Japanese is easier to learn because it's "non-simplified" (there may be other valid reasons though). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinjitai#Simplifications_in_J%C5%8Dy%C5%8D_Kanji_and_Jinmeiy%C5%8D_Kanji https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinjitai#Simplifications_in_J... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Chinese_characters#Method_of_simplification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Chinese_characters#...
        6y ago
lhorie 6y ago
You can definitely get a deeper appreciation of a language and get extra decoding tools for learning related languages when you learn about the history and etymology of words. As a romance language speaker, knowing about greek and latin particles helped me greatly in learning english of all languages, just because of the sheer amount of appropriations english does. Something that sticks with me from my early japanese learning after all these years is that, for example, "あ" (japanese "a") is a stylization of "安" (pronounced "an"). This helps make an association similar to how some kids books overlay hiragana over pictures of things that start with that letter, e.g. overlaying "い" (i) around a strawberry (ichigo). There are tons of similar examples in both japanese and chinese (pronunciation prefixes being a common tool used by chinese learners)
solarmist 6y ago
Speaking sure, because both Korean and Japanese were fully formed languages that borrowed a writing system. I've come to view Kanji/Hanja as an information layering on top of the language used to increase the information density/clarity of the written languages. If you look at written Japanese/Korean (with Hanja) and you get a much higher transfer. Esp. Someone who knows Chinese trying to get by in Japan.

49531 6y ago

That sounds similar to English and German. There are a few words that are still somewhat connected, like water / wasser, but knowing one gives little insight into the other.

krebs_liebhaber 6y ago
There's also "Gift" (Poison), "Pickel" (Pimple), "Wo" (where), "Wer" (who), "Fahrt" (travel), and so on...

AlchemistCamp 6y ago

> I'd say the best way to learn would be Japanese, Korean, then Chinese (what I did). Why? I speak Chinese and used to be fluent in Japanese. I find my Chinese (and English + katakana) a huge help when visiting Japan in recent years. What's your rationale for this ordering?

throwaway66554 6y ago
Because when you learn Japanese, you have to learn kanji, the more traditional strokes (non-simplified), both Japanese and Chinese sounds, and the grammar is closer to Korean (and closer pronunciation for a lot of words). So, it's better to learn Japanese, quickly pick up Korean, then learn Chinese. Chinese last since you have to learn simplified characters, the grammar is different, tonality is quite different, etc.
- lifthrasiir 6y ago
  > kanji, the traditional strokes (non-simplified) Uh, both Japan and Chinese use different simplified glyphs. And they overlap a lot because they are different standardizations of handwritten glyphs in the bigger Sinosphere. I would be surprised if you indeed learned the traditional characters while learning Japanese.
  - throwaway66554 6y ago
    >Uh, both Japan and Chinese use different simplified glyphs. Wrong. Though there are divergences, Chinese in mainland China use simplified Chinese characters (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Chinese_characters https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Chinese_character...). Kanji is more closely related to the traditional Chinese characters (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji#Local_developments_and_divergences_from_Chinese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji#Local_developments_and_d...) than the mainland simplification. >I would be surprised if you indeed learned the traditional characters while learning Japanese. Kanji is closer related, or exactly the same as traditional Chinese characters (used in HK, Taiwan, etc.) than simplified.
    - lifthrasiir 6y ago
      My understanding of Chinese (the language) is limited, but having learned Hanja (essentially traditional one) first then learned Japanese later the divergence was already significant. Or, more quantitatively, the Joyo Kanji has 364 simplified characters out of 2,136 (~17%) [1] while the mainland China simplified probably about 2,000 out of 7,000 common characters (~28%) [2]. This divergence is not the biggest deal, but still big enough to refute the claim that Japanese is easier to learn because it's "non-simplified" (there may be other valid reasons though). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinjitai#Simplifications_in_J%C5%8Dy%C5%8D_Kanji_and_Jinmeiy%C5%8D_Kanji https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinjitai#Simplifications_in_J... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Chinese_characters#Method_of_simplification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Chinese_characters#...
      - 6y ago

lhorie 6y ago

You can definitely get a deeper appreciation of a language and get extra decoding tools for learning related languages when you learn about the history and etymology of words. As a romance language speaker, knowing about greek and latin particles helped me greatly in learning english of all languages, just because of the sheer amount of appropriations english does. Something that sticks with me from my early japanese learning after all these years is that, for example, "あ" (japanese "a") is a stylization of "安" (pronounced "an"). This helps make an association similar to how some kids books overlay hiragana over pictures of things that start with that letter, e.g. overlaying "い" (i) around a strawberry (ichigo). There are tons of similar examples in both japanese and chinese (pronunciation prefixes being a common tool used by chinese learners)

solarmist 6y ago

Speaking sure, because both Korean and Japanese were fully formed languages that borrowed a writing system. I've come to view Kanji/Hanja as an information layering on top of the language used to increase the information density/clarity of the written languages. If you look at written Japanese/Korean (with Hanja) and you get a much higher transfer. Esp. Someone who knows Chinese trying to get by in Japan.