日本語　Japanese

Chinese and Japanese present almost opposite challenges to English speakers, and knowing one won't really be of any substantial help for you to learn the other.

But the main problem is:

I just want to learn JAPANESE only

studying another language just to study Japanese is not efficient.

I've studied both and am still studying Chinese. It doesn't help. Chinese uses either simplified or traditional characters, depending on where you study for (PRC, Hong Kong, Taiwan etc), whereas Japanese uses a mix of both. What's more, you can't always rely on them to mean the same thing. 先生 in Japanese and 先生 in Chinese are different words used in considerably different social contexts.

The languages are not related at all. Japanese has borrowed a lot of terms from Chinese over a long period (and relentlessly butchered them as linguistic borrowing tends to do), and they imported the Chinese writing system. They've borrowed a lot of English words too, but no-one is mad enough to claim that knowing English will help you learn Japanese. Knowing Chinese is no different.

it (Mandarin) sure helps more than any other language though, which should be what the others are trying to convey.

-similar pronunciation for some words

-basically knowing the origin of the word, and therefore (the gist of) its meaning should the word not to have undergone drastic (corrupting) change; or things like nouns that normally wouldnt get butchered by borrowing

-writing isnt automatically a bitch to start learning

-having the placeholder for the word already in your head even if its your 1st encounter with it in the japanese language (fear of kanji = 0)

-some proverbs are just copypasta

-stuff like knowing the original word from which hiragana and katagana are derived from can also help with learning

it helps imo, and they sure as hell the sun aren't totally unrelated.

Haha .. now i just can memorize Hiragana , and like you said .. noone like Kanji. Not even Japanese. lol.
I still cannot spare some time for learning it thoroughly (College tasks and so on)
But if we had friends who live in japan, we can take advantage by it ;)

Learning to speak Japanese will greatly improve your odds when trying to date a Japanese girl/woman. I dated a handful until finally meeting that Japanese woman that I would later marry. (Keep in mind that I still can't write or read Japanese at all.)

My advice if you want to learn to speak Japanese quickly and correctly, is to find a Japanese friend. Either online with voice chat, or in person. Watching subbed anime also helps.. but take it with a grain of salt; pro -and- fan subs are often wrong.

As for being a English teacher in Japan, you'll need at least a bachelor's degree to even be considered.

Also remember that Chinese characters might look just like Japanese kanji, often the meanings are totally different.

im learning on and off japanese. the real reason why im learning is because i want to buy a house in japan(and in some parts of the world) meet some beautiful japanese girl and make her my wife. why? you may ask, because japanese girls are so cute they are like dolls. most japanese girls have very stromg morals, not to mention most of them are very kinki in bed. before that i would bang tons of punani, OH YEAH!!!

Actually, all or most (I'm not sure so I'm going to say most) of the Japanese Kanji are "borrowed" from the traditional characters (simplified sometimes uses the same character too) and knowing Chinese/Korean does help with your learning of Japanese, some things do sound the same especially with the pronunciations in my opinion. I'm Chinese (well, Chinese-Canadian) and I speak Cantonese which isn't really the official "Chinese" language (only in HK) but I find that some words sound the same pretty much and mean the same things.

Example:
図書館 - to sho kan means library in Japanese. Plus, in Cantonese which sounds like to shi goon not sure how to write it but they sound the same.
電話　- denwa means telephone in Japanese. In Cantonese, "dean wa" is how it sounds like. Means the same thing.

But you are right, sometimes the kanji isn't even close to meaning what its Chinese counterpart is suppose to define. But for most cases it means the same, I mean 魚　means fish in both languages. 大人　means adult in both languages, lot of other examples.

There is a reason why there's 音読み　reading on Kanji :P derived from the Chinese reading of it.

Just saying Chinese does help your understand the Kanji better despite what others say, its just if you want to go learn Japanese, LEARN Japanese, no point in learning Chinese so you can have an easier time with JAPANESE, that's just stupid. If you have prior knowledge then you'll have an easier time, IMO.

先生 can refer to teacher in both languages no? Unless your talking about how Japanese use sensei for doctors, professionals, and what not. Just wondering.



I know... 2 Japanese people. And one of them doesn't or can't speak Japanese cause...she doesn't speak Japanese at home and just forgot how to speak it o.o She can just understand lulz.

I've always wanted to learn how to speak, and write japanese. Though i could never find the time to do it i look over some cheat sheets every now and then. i too plan on going to japan in the future

Try finding a place for a few classes, makes your vacation much more enjoyable if you can communicate in Japanese.

In Japanese, it does mean teacher, yes. But in modern Mandarin, it's equivalent to English "mister", and teacher is a different word altogether, 老师. The meaning and usage of the word in Mandarin has changed over time, whereas Japanese has preserved the original meaning at the time the word was borrowed.

So yes, a lot of words are the same. But you can't rely on them to be the same. It isn't a safe assumption.

That's why having your itouch with the Japanese dictionary app helps a lot as well haha even though I use it to help me with godan and ichidan ^^;;.

I'm 'learning' Japanese for fun actually. Just watching subbed anime regularly. I guess you just get used to the language after watching so many subbed anime

But i'll love to take up private classes when i have the free time

Watching subbed anime is not a good way to learn Japanese. You'll end up sounding like an anime character if you mimic the anime lol. That's what I've been told but I still watch anime nonetheless.

I have made it a goal of mine to learn as many languages as I can before I die, so I might learn Japanese at some point in the future. However, chances are I'm going to start with European languages (most likely French, German, or Italian) before I start to learn Japanese.

So, your going to try to learn a bit of everything. That's going to be really hard to master them if your not going to use it regularly. :|

I know three languages and don't want to make a 4th one.

I studied japnese and hav cleared 2 levels of the JLPT ie Japanese Language Proficiency Test..
Plus due to watchin a lot of anime im good at listening & understand better than my peers

I started learning on my own about 5 years ago. I bought books to learn Japanese. At first it went really well, and I was actually a fast learner. When I started to get into the polite grammar, I got pretty confused. After I while, I did not have that much time to put on my study, and I simply stopped.

That means I know basic grammar, but not that much vocabulary, so I can't really speak with someone else. However, I guess I could understand stuff with a dictionary.

My motivation to learn Japanese was the fact that I want to play Japanese video games that were never translated into English. :(