Which is harder to learn, Chinese or Japanese?

[True2marie]

Which is harder to learn, Chinese or Japanese?

I ask because I know people from each of these cultures. If they aren't born and raised in their native country, they often struggle to speak the language of their heritage.  And, they rarely know how to write in their native tongue.

[Antiquarian]

For my case, Japanese is more of a challenge as far as speaking is concerned. Writing-wise, I find Chinese much harder. It will vary upon person to person. For me, Chinese is easier to grasp in terms of Speaking compared to Japanese. Reason is because Japanese is comprised of various speaking styles. Styles include honorifics/polite speech as well as separate forms of speech between men and women. Japanese is also filled with indirect nuances, intricate formalities and words with a myriad meanings. Chinese - especially Cantonese - on the other hand is more direct and straightforward. Clear, harsh at times but immediate.

Chinese characters (Kanji in Japanese, Hanzi in Mandarin) however are much harder. Even Japanese people themselves have a hard time mastering and memorizing all the Chinese scripts. Chinese people themselves too, especially the younger generation nowadays, have a difficult time writing their own characters fluently thanks to typing, computers and phone buttons (i.e. the gradual fading of writing ability).

To summarize it all up, Japanese is harder to learn as a Language while Chinese is harder to learn as a Writing System. Again it will be different between people to people. This is from my take and personal encounters. Lastly, I happen to be a Japanese who doesn't speak Japanese but who speaks Mandarin. Grew up abroad all my life and it was 3 years ago that I came to Japan and experience my supposed homeland.

Sincerely,

The Antiquarian.

[Firelily99]

I can't speak, read or write either one so they both look extremely difficult to me.  I am fascinated by both of them but don't see myself, at least in the foreseeable future, learning either one.  My hat is off to anyone who can master either or both languages.

[pandandesign]

I think Chinese is harder to learn because all the strokes and characters, which have two forms - Simplified and Traditional writings. I have found Japanese is harder to speak because I have a hard time speaking most of the words when I learned Japanese in high school. Chinese is harder in a way that you have to write the strokes in the order in which they're written.

[Daimashin]

Japanese is harder. Not because I already know Chinese but it's the fact that Japanese have different ways of speaking based on what person is speaking. I have seen a lot of Japanese materials but I still can't seem to grasp the words to use in different situations it's very confusing. Boys and girls use different words, old and young use different ways.

[Trellum]

Uhm, this is a really hard question.  Both languages have their own quirks that make them specially challenging!  I was really interested in learning japanese when I was younger (a teen), but I never managed to do it.  I'm no longer interested in learning it, but I have a friend who is very interested in learning it. He says japanese is a really challenging language to learn! 

Our love for the japanese language started with anime   It was thanks to anime that I learnt a lot japanese words, same for my friend.  He's way more advanced than me tho; he even bought a course! You can tell he is really passionate.  As for chinese... I've never even tried learning that one.  I guess learning to write chinese can be really hard! 

I just read Japanese is in no way related to Chinese, but the japanese language uses a lot chinese characters.  I really think the answer to this question depends on your mother language and the other languages you have learnt.  But to me the hardest to learn is chinese!

[Scurventery]

Chinese is more difficult to learn. Not only do you have to learn about 3000 more characters to be literate, but there is also much more nuance in pronunciation and tone that can severely affect what you're saying. While Japanese can have some obscure rules, the rules themselves are almost always very simple: there may be more than one level of honorific, but everything is set at that level using the exact same conjugation. It's no more difficult than remembering to add "please" and "thank you" once you know the rules.

[Miya]

For me, writing Chinese is definitely harder than writing Japanese. But at the same time, I also think that the grammar and sentence structure in Japanese is harder than Chinese.

Both languages have their hard/easy parts, but if I really, really, really had to pick one, I'd say Chinese is harder to learn.

[Peninha]

I haven't studied any, but I have a friend that studied both and he commented with me that he found Chinese easier than Japanese because the sentence structure and grammar from Chinese is really simple...?

If you ask me they seem two of the most difficult languages to learn in the world, just the sight of those infinite Chinese characters scare me away!