Is it easier to learn Chinese after learning Japanese or vice versa?

Question

For those who speak both Chinese and Japanese, would first learning Chinese make it easier to learn Japanese?

I know that Japanese Kanji are derived from Chinese characters.

Knowing one before the other would certainly help to an extent with literacy, but the order probably doesn't matter. I don't think a real definitive answer exists to this question. It's best to just pick the one you want to learn first and have at it! — ssb, Mar 12 '15 at 04:38
I highly doubt it, except that learning a second language generally aids in learning a third language. It would help reinforce kanji writing, but otherwise it wouldn't give you any advantage over pure Japanese. — Cat, Mar 12 '15 at 04:51
chinese.stackexchange.com - Is it easier to learn Chinese after learning Japanese or vice versa? — blutorange, Mar 12 '15 at 06:34
Chinese could be easier since the construction is really close to the english language. You could only focus on kanji and pronounciation first. Then it would be easier to attack the japanese language afterward. — oldergod, Mar 12 '15 at 08:28
What I would probably avoid with Chinese vs. Japanese is learning Simplified Chinese first, because then you would have to relearn all characters. — Earthliŋ, Mar 12 '15 at 09:48
This website claims that study times needed to pass the JLPT is significantly less for students already acquainted with kanji — oals, Mar 12 '15 at 10:39
@oals It's hard to draw strong conclusions from this without seeing the research it was based on - there could be other factors weighing in like people already knowing more Asian languages being more motivated and such (consider the MASSIVE difference when it comes JLPT1 part as opposed to others), as well as 'Asian languages' not necessarily being Chinese, as well as having more languages in the bag helping you learn an additional language in general? Not to say I doubt the causation part but still, there could be a much smaller direct effect from Chinese to Japanese than these figures show. — cirno, Mar 12 '15 at 15:46
@cirno: I'd assume it's mostly about how they already know kanji. JLPT 1 expects 2000 kanji. I'd estimate a Westerner spends about ten to fifteen minutes to properly memorise a single kanji. That's 330-500 hours extra. (That's not to say that the Chinese don't have to spend time learning -- just that they have to learn less and thus can do it quicker.) — oals, Mar 12 '15 at 16:30
@oals Very true. A native Chinese person should have a much easier time using the Kanji, than, say, a native English speaker - it wouldn't make sense otherwise. However, if a native English speaker were to face a dilemma of whether to start on either of both if he planned to master both eventually... I guess we don't really know the exact situation from the asker's question (perhaps he just wants extra motivation to learn Chinese?), so there's that. — cirno, Mar 12 '15 at 16:34
This question isn't "primarily opinion-based". OP is asking whether or not Chinese has propaedeutic value in learning Japanese, or vice versa. I don't know if there are studies investigating this, but there are studies evaluating the propaedeutic value of Esperanto with respect to other Romance languages. The relationship between Japanese and Chinese could surely be investigated in the same way, which makes this a question of fact, not opinion. — senshin, Mar 12 '15 at 23:36
@senshin I take the OPs question to be different than what you describe. I take it that OP wants to learn both Japanese and Chinese and is asking us whether (a) Japanese before Chinese OR (b) Chinese before Japanese is a better route. There are several complexities that make this appear to me as an opinion-bases question, viz., (1) we have to make judgments about degree of motivation, (2) we have to make judgments (I doubt there's data) on which sequence has more propaedeutic value from L2 to L3, (3) We don't even know OP's L1, (4) we don't know proposed learning strategy (classes? 独学?) — virmaior, Mar 13 '15 at 00:42
@blutorange why is this closed as opinion-based japanese se one but this not closed at all chinese se one? — BCLC, Apr 10 '21 at 11:35

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 12 '15 at 09:03

For English speakers, this site breaks down how many "hours" or weeks it takes to get "proficient"

http://www.effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/language-difficulty

If you want some detailed breakdowns, there is a nice analysis of relative language difficulties available here https://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/cryptologic_spectrum/foreign_language.pdf

One key way that languages are rated (in terms of difficulty) is basic grammatical orderings of "subject object and verb."

Group I (VSO):
  Arabic, Hebrew, Ancient Egyptian,
  Celtic, Polynesian languages

Group II (SVO):  
  Romance languages, English,
  Russian, Chinese, German,
  Albanian, Greek, Khmer,
  Vietnamese, all Thai languages
  except Khamti, Malay, Dutch,
  Icelandic, Slavonic, Norwegian,
  Swedish, Danish, Finnish,
  Estonian, Serbian

Group III (SOV):
  Japanese, Korean, Turkish,
  Burmese, Hindi, Navaho, Tibetan,
  most Australian languages

From the list above, you can see that Chinese (presumably both Mandarin and Cantonese) fit into the pattern of SVO or Subject+Verb+Object.

In mastering Japanese it would benefit one more greatly to study a language in the third grouping, to get one's "mind" wrapped into the form of SOV where the verb comes at the end. Thus, in preference to learning Chinese, which is roughly the same grammatical trickiness as English, you might want to look into Hindi, Tibetan, or even Turkish.

Knowing Chinese would probably help with the lexicon and mastering the writing system, but the Japanese writing system is catered for a language that is entirely different in terms of spoken sounds; even though they are derived from the same origin, their paths have diverged substantially in the last 1000-2000 years. This is not surprising if you look at how much English has changed since the time of Shakespeare, and that is an example of linguistic entropy within the "same" language.

In short: For writing, maybe yes. For grammar, there are other languages which exhibit closer behavior.

Is it easier to learn Chinese after learning Japanese or vice versa?

1 Answers1