{"id":9387,"date":"2020-11-17T23:12:29","date_gmt":"2020-11-17T23:12:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/?p=9387"},"modified":"2020-11-17T23:12:29","modified_gmt":"2020-11-17T23:12:29","slug":"chinese-or-japanese","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/chinese-or-japanese\/","title":{"rendered":"Weighing in: Should you learn Chinese or Japanese?"},"content":{"rendered":"<style>img#mv-trellis-img-1::before{padding-top:150%; }img#mv-trellis-img-1{display:block;}<\/style><p>A surprisingly common question is, &ldquo;Should I learn Chinese or Japanese?&rdquo; This is, equally, a surprisingly difficult question to answer.<\/p>\n<p>There&rsquo;s a lot of different factors that would influence your decision. I&rsquo;ll be covering a handful of different things, but we&rsquo;ll focus on the earning aspect first.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<br>\n[toc]\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2>Should I learn Chinese or Japanese?<\/h2>\n<p><b>From a purely financial perspective, learn Chinese, specifically Mandarin. Japanese pays slightly more, but there are fewer job opportunities. Chinese pays slightly less, but there&rsquo;s more opportunity. Also, the growth of Chinese is almost guaranteed in the future, while Japan&rsquo;s economy has been relatively stagnant for many years.<\/b><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><strong>What&rsquo;s the pay like for a Japanese speaker?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Several factors are going to affect this. First, and perhaps most obviously, is what kind of job you have. Next, it&rsquo;s what other languages can you pair with Japanese.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/comma-before-since\/\">Since<\/a><\/strong> you&rsquo;re reading this, I&rsquo;ll assume you&rsquo;re at least fairly fluent in English. Another big factor is your location.<\/p>\n<p>For example, if you&rsquo;re in Chicago, in an in demand specialization for Japanese, you could be pulling in nearly six figures.<\/p>\n<p>If you&rsquo;re living in Japan and working a blue collar job you can expect to make just over $24,000 a year, nearly a quarter the earnings of a native Japanese person in a similar role.<\/p>\n<p>Lucky you, <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/comma-before-or-after-however\/\">however<\/a><\/strong>, if you go the somewhat more lucrative route, you&rsquo;ll be earning roughly on par with your Japanese colleagues at around three grand a month.<\/p>\n<p>Plus, one nice thing about Japan is that, in theory, no avenue is closed to you if your language skills are good enough.<\/p>\n<p>Depending on your specialization, your salary could rise <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/even-more-so-in-a-sentence\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">even<\/a><\/strong> higher. Engineers can make $3.5k. Marketing and sales geniuses could even get close to five grand!<\/p>\n<p>And if you&rsquo;re an IT consultant of considerable skill, you could push even further, close to six grand a month.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, of course, if you start your own business you could end up striking it rich. Would you, strictly speaking, <i>need<\/i> Japanese to do that?<\/p>\n<p>No. You could rely on interpreters and whatnot, <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/but-rather-in-a-sentence\/\">but<\/a><\/strong> I imagine a good grounding in the language would give you a serious leg up.<\/p>\n<p>As a translator you could also make good money, turning Japanese into English.<\/p>\n<p>On average you can get 9-12 cents per word, <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/comma-before-or-after-although\/\">although<\/a><\/strong>, again, specialization can help pump that price up.<\/p>\n<p>Translating patent forms? Big money. Lunch menus? Not so much.<\/p>\n<p>And, unlike Chinese, the demand for Japanese translators isn&rsquo;t quite as high. In fact, it&rsquo;s less than 75% of the Chinese demand according to some numbers.<br>\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2>What&rsquo;s the pay like for a Chinese speaker?<\/h2>\n<p>There&rsquo;s a surprising amount of variance in salary for foreign workers in China.<\/p>\n<p>At the low end, for those trying to build a career in China from the ground up, you might make as little as $1,200 a month.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, the cost of living in China is significantly lower than in the West, so that $1,200 goes a lot further.<\/p>\n<p>In the mid-range you can expect to find jobs for between $3-4.5k, which can afford you a pretty great standard of living almost anywhere in China.<\/p>\n<p>And if you can leverage your Chinese speaking skills into a job at a multi-national company, with lots of experience behind you, you could even be making six-figures a year, which would give you a very posh lifestyle indeed.<br>\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2>Chinese opportunities outside China<\/h2>\n<p>Another great advantage to Chinese is that you&rsquo;re not locked into mainland China.<\/p>\n<p>You can bring your skills to Taiwan, Malaysia, or Singapore, not to mention to any of the wide-ranging Chinese diaspora communities around the world.<\/p>\n<p>And, as with Japanese, if you develop your skills as a translator, you can work from nearly anywhere.<\/p>\n<p>Chinese to English translators don&rsquo;t make <i>quite<\/i> as much as Japanese translators do, but the difference is only a penny or so per word, depending on specialization.<\/p>\n<p>Plus, the demand for Chinese to English translators is much larger.<\/p>\n<p><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-9398\" src=\"https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Chinese-vs.-Japanese-1.png\" alt=\"Chinese vs. Japanese \" width=\"924\" height=\"1386\" srcset=\"https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Chinese-vs.-Japanese-1.png 924w, https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Chinese-vs.-Japanese-1-200x300.png 200w, https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Chinese-vs.-Japanese-1-683x1024.png 683w, https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Chinese-vs.-Japanese-1-768x1152.png 768w, https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Chinese-vs.-Japanese-1-561x842.png 561w, https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Chinese-vs.-Japanese-1-364x546.png 364w, https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Chinese-vs.-Japanese-1-728x1092.png 728w, https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Chinese-vs.-Japanese-1-608x912.png 608w, https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Chinese-vs.-Japanese-1-758x1137.png 758w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 760px) calc(100vw - 20px), 720px\" data-pin-media=\"https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Chinese-vs.-Japanese-1.png\"><\/noscript><img loading=\"eager\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-9398 eager-load\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%20924%201386'%3E%3Crect%20width='924'%20height='1386'%20style='fill:%23e3e3e3'\/%3E%3C\/svg%3E\" alt=\"Chinese vs. Japanese \" width=\"924\" height=\"1386\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 760px) calc(100vw - 20px), 720px\" data-pin-media=\"https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Chinese-vs.-Japanese-1.png\" id=\"mv-trellis-img-1\" data-src=\"https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Chinese-vs.-Japanese-1.png\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Chinese-vs.-Japanese-1.png 924w, https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Chinese-vs.-Japanese-1-200x300.png 200w, https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Chinese-vs.-Japanese-1-683x1024.png 683w, https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Chinese-vs.-Japanese-1-768x1152.png 768w, https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Chinese-vs.-Japanese-1-561x842.png 561w, https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Chinese-vs.-Japanese-1-364x546.png 364w, https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Chinese-vs.-Japanese-1-728x1092.png 728w, https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Chinese-vs.-Japanese-1-608x912.png 608w, https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Chinese-vs.-Japanese-1-758x1137.png 758w\" data-svg=\"1\" data-trellis-processed=\"1\"><br>\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2>What&rsquo;s the final word on money between the languages?<\/h2>\n<p>From my analysis of the situation, I would say that, for the moment, it&rsquo;s a pretty even split between the two, when you compare the cost of living.<\/p>\n<p>However, it&rsquo;s hard to say, especially as China is growing, and Japan is&hellip; not.<\/p>\n<p>There&rsquo;s probably a lower ceiling on what you can expect from your earnings and lifestyle from learning Japanese.<\/p>\n<p>And with regards to China, that ceiling is likely to keep climbing higher and higher for the foreseeable future.<br>\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2>What other factors should I consider?<\/h2>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/comma-before-after-so\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">So<\/a><\/strong>, since the difference is fairly small, earnings-wise, one thing to consider is the road in front of you.<\/p>\n<p>For Japan, there&rsquo;s a long history of foreigners coming to work there. There&rsquo;s a clear path and tons of information and companies willing to hold your hand through the process (for some money, of course).<\/p>\n<p>It&rsquo;s different for China. The country only found political stability after World War II, and has only opened up to foreign workers in a broad sense in the last generation.<\/p>\n<p>The information out there is constantly changing, and often difficult to get a handle on.<\/p>\n<p>Let&rsquo;s also consider two more things: the cultural differences and the language differences themselves.<\/p>\n<p>f the environment doesn&rsquo;t suit you, a small advantage in potential earnings probably isn&rsquo;t worth it.<\/p>\n<p>Ditto if you end up needing three more years to learn one language over the other. So, let&rsquo;s look at these factors.<br>\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3>Environment: Japan<\/h3>\n<p>I&rsquo;ll be honest, I&rsquo;m a little biased towards Japan. I love China, but I <i>love<\/i> Japan. It&rsquo;s where I feel most at home.<\/p>\n<p>Let&rsquo;s cover the obvious things first. Japan is safe. Sure, you&rsquo;ll get some discussion on the internet about just <i>how<\/i> safe it actually is compared to the numbers the government puts out, but compared to just about any other developed nation in the world, it is incredibly safe.<\/p>\n<p>Anecdote: I was working at a Starbucks on my laptop. I was hungry.<\/p>\n<p>I left all my stuff at the table in Starbucks, went across the street to the mall, up to the sixth floor, ordered fresh-made Indian food, waited, sat down and ate it, then returned to my untouched property at Starbucks.<\/p>\n<p>There&rsquo;s not another place on Earth I&rsquo;d do that.<\/p>\n<p>Japan&rsquo;s also a wanderer&rsquo;s paradise. Every inch of the country has some sort of cultural significance and they let you know about it.<\/p>\n<p>There&rsquo;s a wide variety of terrain to enjoy, from Alps-like mountains, to wide, flowery fields, to even one (admittedly very small) desert.<\/p>\n<p>And with Japan&rsquo;s laws on camping wild being virtually non-existent, along with tradition of camping wild, you can pitch a tent just about anywhere you aren&rsquo;t in the way.<\/p>\n<p>Heck, I&rsquo;ve pitched my tent in the center of Tokyo for a few nights.<\/p>\n<p>Not to mention the food and drinks are incredible, and much more varied than you might think if you&rsquo;ve never visited.<\/p>\n<p>Plus, you rarely have to worry about food safety. It&rsquo;s all clean water, and relatively fastidious sanitation practices.<\/p>\n<p>What are the cons? For those staying a long time, the social culture can be a tough adjustment at times.<\/p>\n<p>There&rsquo;s also a lot of monotony to the scenery after a while, depending on how much you travel and where you live&mdash;the cities tend to all look a lot alike.<br>\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3>Environment: China<\/h3>\n<p>China&rsquo;s cons, on the other hand, are pretty well known. Air quality can be literally deadly in some places at some times.<\/p>\n<p>The water&rsquo;s not generally safe to drink. Food sanitation can be iffy, at best.<\/p>\n<p>And if you don&rsquo;t adjust quickly to the social flow, you&rsquo;ll find yourself waiting at the convenience store counter for hours as people push ahead of you.<\/p>\n<p>But the pros can outweigh the cons, in my opinion. The people are super friendly and wonderful to talk to.<\/p>\n<p>The country is huge, presenting almost every type of environment this planet has to offer, and it has an affordable high-speed rail system connecting all of it (faster than Japan, by a lot!).<\/p>\n<p>Plus, while Japan&rsquo;s claims to cultural homogeneity are way overblown, it&rsquo;s nothing compared to China, where the culture and even language shifts wildly depending on where you are in the country.<\/p>\n<p>China is a feast of varied experience and opportunity. But it&rsquo;s a bit unpredictable.<\/p>\n<p>China is like going to a pot luck dinner with a bunch of world renowned chefs&mdash;you have no idea what you&rsquo;re going to get, or if it&rsquo;ll even be to our taste.<\/p>\n<p>Japan is like going to an all-ramen dinner with a bunch of renowned chefs each giving their own interpretation&mdash;as long as you like the general idea, you&rsquo;ll probably like all of it, but you&rsquo;ll get a lot of interesting depth in the experience.<br>\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3>Language: <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wanikani-review\/\">Japanese<\/a><\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>I&rsquo;ll get some flack for this, I&rsquo;m sure, but I&rsquo;d say Japanese is harder than Chinese and will require much more time to reach a useful level of fluency.<\/p>\n<p>Japanese requires mastery of about <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/how-many-kanji-to-be-fluent\/\">2,500 kanji<\/a><\/strong> to be truly literate, plus another almost hundred syllabic characters.<\/p>\n<p>To top it off, the vast majority of those kanji can each have multiple meanings as well as multiple pronunciations (usually at least two, sometimes well over half a dozen).<\/p>\n<p>These writing systems then get twisted together to represent native-Japanese words, ancient Chinese compounds, and modern foreign concepts.<\/p>\n<p>Then you need to fully rewire your brain to shove the verb at the end of the sentence, drop the need for a subject, and pick up the nature of particles.<\/p>\n<p>If you already speak Korean, good news, Japanese won&rsquo;t be too hard for you.<\/p>\n<p>Ditto German (or so I hear). Verbs work similarly to German, so it&rsquo;s less of a leap than it is for us native English speakers.<\/p>\n<p>If you speak Chinese, you can focus your energy on speaking and grammar since you&rsquo;ll recognize most of the characters.<\/p>\n<p>If you speak English or any other Romance language, good luck. It&rsquo;s a long road.<br>\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3>Language: Chinese<\/h3>\n<p>Contrary to popular belief, you actually need to know <i>fewer<\/i> characters in Chinese to be considered literate&mdash;just 2,000. Plus, each character has only one way it&rsquo;s said, and generally just one meaning.<\/p>\n<p>To be considered well-educated in Chinese, you&rsquo;ll probably end up knowing about 8,000 characters.<\/p>\n<p>But, when you consider that each character stands alone (unlike Japanese, where each character changes constantly based on how it&rsquo;s used), it&rsquo;s not as big of a hurdle as you might imagine.<\/p>\n<p>Chinese does have a concept of particles, but they&rsquo;re more intuitive than they are in Japanese. And the grammar order is quite familiar to use European language speakers.<\/p>\n<p>Chinese has those pesky tones, which are intimidating, sure, but they can be learned. And once you learn the four tones, that&rsquo;s basically it, you&rsquo;re done.<\/p>\n<p>Japanese? You need to get your intonation right for every single word, and there isn&rsquo;t even tons of readily available information on it, like there is for Chinese.<\/p>\n<p>If I had to give my opinion (disclaimer: I&rsquo;m a newb in Chinese, intermediate in Japanese), I&rsquo;d say Chinese is way, way easier.<br>\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2>Learning Japanese or Chinese: Final verdict<\/h2>\n<p>If I&rsquo;m advising someone who is strictly looking at future career and professional opportunities, I&rsquo;d have to say learn Chinese instead of Japanese.<\/p>\n<p>Chinese is more widely spoken, is comparatively easier (or at least not more difficult), and shows signs of serious growth into the future.<\/p>\n<p>But don&rsquo;t let that deter you if you really love Japan. There is lots of room to make money and live an equally good life off of your bilingual English-Japanese abilities.<\/p>\n<p>If you really can&rsquo;t decide, go over to <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/duolingo-japanese-review\/\">Duolingo<\/a><\/strong>, or some other free learning source, and try each language out for a bit. Watch some movies in each language.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe take a look at some documentaries too. Find the one that suits you best and then aim for the stars!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A surprisingly common question is, &ldquo;Should I learn Chinese or Japanese?&rdquo; This is, equally, a surprisingly difficult question to answer. There&rsquo;s a lot of different factors that would influence your decision. I&rsquo;ll be covering a handful of different things, but we&rsquo;ll focus on the earning aspect first. &nbsp; [toc] &nbsp; Should I learn Chinese or &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9396,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"disable-in-feed":false,"article-schema-type":"","disable-critical-css":false,"_convertkit_action_broadcast_export":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,33],"tags":[200,138],"class_list":["post-9387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-japanese","category-chinese","tag-chinese","tag-japanese"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9387"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9387\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9403,"href":"https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9387\/revisions\/9403"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}