#it's pronounciation in comparison to writing is at least better than french

[felikatze]

"German is complicated"

The German language: this is a shape with four corners. We call it “fourcorner”

[rigelmejo]

tones, i will admit, ARE difficult for me

but i think, for me, flat comparison, chinese is easier for me to learn the writing system than japanese.

ok, for me (since all this IS just my personal experience and opinion), japanese pronunciation is easier. it can take a couple weeks or less to learn to pronounce japanese properly, if you’re a native english speaker. The pronounciation is very straightforward. Likewise - hiragana and katakana can take a couple weeks down to one solid day to learn. They’re very much like our alphabet, except based on mostly ‘syllables’, instead of consonants AND vowels. So the concept of hiragana and katakana is very easy to understand, and with the use of nmemonics (or premade ones from some learning worksheet or app or video - i used a free app) it should just take a couple of days to know them. After that, continous exposure means hiragana and katakana will be remembered and learned. Pronunciation, hiragana, and katakana, are not too difficult. 

When I was trying to learn Russian, I actually found the cyrillic alphabet a bit harder (but it also only took a couple weeks). I also found Russian pronuncation harder to learn, I thought Japanese was much easier for an english speaker to get used to. 

And, in that same vein - japanese listening skills are quite straightforward. The syllables are easy to pronounce, and they’re easy to identify when listening. The biggest ‘difficulty’ is the speed of speech, but you get used to it and the sooner you practice the better. The other difficulty is the same as with any language - if you don’t know a word, that will prevent listening comprehension.

The japanese grammar? It is very differently organized than english, so it can be difficult to train yourself to use japanese grammar correctly as a native english speaker. But overall, it makes sense and is understandable. The main challenge is getting used to using japanese grammar instead of trying to use the sentence structure you would use in english. I personally think particles make a lot of sense, and are very helpful in understanding. When I read chinese, particles tell me what EVERY part of the sentence is doing - which helps me try to comprehend sentences, even if I don’t know every word. If I can figure out which parts are the core details, based on object/subject/verb particle markers and whether the verb is present/past tense, negative/positive, i can interpret the main meaning of a sentence. (Shout out to French too, by the way, because as much as i get annoyed with the MANY word endings in French... French has pretty recognizable different word ending types depending on what Purpose each word serves, so sentences with unknown words still can be interpreted to some degree by locating the nouns/verbs/adjectives and if there’s negations/tenses in the sentence). 

Some parts of learning japanese are fast, some take time, but I think all of the above are straightforward and not that hard to at least understand and study. What is hard? KANJI.

KANJI KANJI KANJI. 

Kanji are really the thing that holds me back in learning. It is a FIRST milestone to learn some kanji  (and the applicable pronunciation) for the common words your learning. Then, if u ever wanna read, to go through some book (or nmemonic site, or flashcard site) trying to learn just the MEANING of some 2000 kanji. Then, if you actually want to KNOW the words they make, you need to start learning the multiple pronunciations of most kanji. Kanji also, like chinese, can combine to form words as well as sometimes be words as standalone. That part is about equally hard to chinese. But the multiple pronunciations??? THAT is the killer. EVEN if you studied a kanji, if you didn’t learn or remember enough pronounciations, then if you stumble on it in reading you STILL may not have any idea how to pronounce it. You might even be able to guess from context what the new word means... but not its pronunciation. This issue also crops up as you learn words from listening - even if you heard a word, and learned it, you may have no idea you are READING a word you know. Because you aren’t sure what the pronunciation of the word you’re reading is.  Moral of the story is WORK ON LEARNING KANJI. WORK ON IT SOME MORE. (cry).

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For me, at least, Chinese reading has been significantly easier.

Yes, there are still some difficulties. One being that UNLIKE japanese, there are not usually obvious markers in the sentence to tell you what each word’s function is. Japanese particles really are... immensely useful. I tried to overcome that difficulty in chinese, by reading a grammar guide early on in my studies (and I plan to read more later). Chinese DOES have verb marking words (zhe, dao, di are often put after verbs for certain reasons), and sometimes adjectives are easily identifiable (either because they’re proceeded by tai/hen or because they end with di/de like the ‘ly’ ending in english on adjectives). Knowing how verbs are made negative/positive and how the tenses are implied also helps a reader identify where the verb/subject/object in a sentence are. So yes, studying chinese grammar will make breaks between words in chinese easier to determine, and will make looking at an unfamiliar sentence a little easier to break down into some smaller comprehensible chunks. But honestly, for me... japanese and its particles still make this task FAR easier than in any other language I’ve tried studying. In addition, japanese usually uses kanji for adjectives/nouns/verbs and then the conjugations and particles are hiragana. So there’s yet another clear marker of when words start and end (a particle will end or preceed them, a conjugation will end them, and a new kanji will often appear with the start of a new verb/adjective/noun). So... on the basis of interpreting an unfamiliar sentence’s parts, chinese is a bit harder - although there are some details in a sentence that help you interpret.

The big places chinese shines as significantly easier: I genuinely think their grammar is more ‘natural’ to an english speaker. In many simple sentences, chinese will word ideas the same way english would, and is usually subject verb object. When chinese has a different word order, for me personally it is a word order I still COULD find comprehensible even if I didn’t know it was ‘meant’ to be ordered that way in chinese. Like, take chinese word order - say the sentence in english words, in the same word order. It may sound clunky, or oddly worded, but it will be comprehensible - you will be able to understand it as meaning the same thing as if it were worded in the usual english word-order. Vice versa, if you’re an english speaker trying to speak/type chinese, your word order is sometimes comprehensible even if its the ‘wrong’ order. And when you have your mistakes corrected, you will be able to see ‘why’ they were corrected the way they were. (Usually, at least with my mistakes, its a small matter of me putting one section of my sentence in the wrong area, or just using the wrong verb - like neng instead of hui, etc). They are mistakes you will be able to understand on why they have been corrected the way they have. So they are easier to learn from, at least for me. While the grammar is sometimes decently different from english, I think its comprehensible enough to a person used to thinking in english. When I watch chinese dramas, even if a sentence is worded a way i do not Expect it to be worded, i can still COMPREHEND the sentence correctly if i know the words. Word order is less jarring in a transition from english -> chinese, compared to english ->japanese.

And now, HANZI. I think HANZI are significantly easier than kanji to learn. Now, they are NOT easy objectively. Both kanji and hanzi I would imagine are hard for anyone to learn who has not grown up learning them and using them.

But hanzi seem so much more... straightforward. Hanzi, very very often, have either one or both useful features: they have some part of the character imply something about it’s meaning, and some part of the character imply some part of it’s pronunciation. Many characters include BOTH features. And very few characters have multiple pronunciations compared to japanese. For me, I have found that the characters that DO have multiple pronunciations come up frequently and are in commonly learned words, so they come up well before you’re diving into native reading materials. in juede for ‘think/feel,’ the jue character is also jiao, in shuijiao for ‘sleep.’ those are two words which come up so frequently the character’s 2 pronunciations are easy to pick up. Another is the characters that form the word endings for adjectives - the very frequent ‘de’ that is used for a lot of things in grammar, becomes pronounced ‘di’ when its used like an adjective ending ‘ly’ in english. While its confusing maybe the first few times you REALIZE it happens, its very common so you recognize it quickly. And I personally think the distinction makes LISTENING easier (since two ‘di’ pronounced characters often follow adjectives, making the adjectives easier to identify). Also for me, I associate seeing that ‘de/di’ character with something grammatical happening. So the fact it changes pronunciation based on what it’s doing grammatically, I think is helpful. So yes, there’s some characters with multiple pronunciations. But OVERWHELMINGLY they’ve got one main pronunciation.

Also, overwhelmingly, a ton of them hint the pronunciation IN the character. Which I think helps a TON in connecting a word you’ve only HEARD, to a word you run into for the first time in reading. You know ‘xia4′ means fear as well as down, but have only SEEN the character for ‘down’ before. You run into the character for ‘frighten’ when reading - you realize it’s fear because you know frighten is pronounced xia4 too, and this new character contains the symbol for ‘down’ in it on the right side. The left side has a mouth - and it reminds you of screaming. It is fair that you will guess this new word you’re reading for the first time, is the word ‘frighten’ you’ve heard before. And because a person ‘shouts’ and someone else ‘falls down’ because they got frightened by the shout, the new character is now easy to remember. The new character has both a clear hint at the meaning, and a hint at the pronunciation. So in reading/listening, its easier to start matching up what you hear to things you read later and vice versa. New words and characters seem easier to pick up than in japanese. 

For chinese, just for me... it makes a lot more sense as to why this would be a writing system chosen to be used. The hanzi can represent all the sounds they need, and the way the hanzi are designed make incorporation of a hint of meaning, pronunciation, or both a relatively straightforward process. Kanji are just... some full level more difficult, because they do NOT have that pronunciation hint in them. And they also tend to have many more pronuncations than chinese characters.

I think the grammar points, being often the hiragana and katakana parts of sentences, make japanese grammar easy to look at and identify more quickly if you’re studying it. But I also think, as time goes on, its lack of vocabulary that holds your comprehension back. And for chinese... vocabulary that includes characters is easier to amass and remember, compared to japanese vocabulary with kanji.