What do you guys think?

[Bikaben]

By the way if this belongs in the China forum, then by all means move it there. I thought it was relevant to both so I posted here.. I was kindof confused.. anyhow a few years ago when I was 14-16 I posted here.. when I was like 14 I became absolutely fascinated with Asian culture, mostly so Japanese. I tried learning a bit but you know when you're in your mid teens learning a language usually won't happen. Now I'm 19 and I actually made really good progress learning Japanese.. I'm beginning college this year (Took a year off because a lot of people recommended thinking for a year and making sure what I want to do so I can save money in the long run), and I registered for a Chinese 101 class. I always wanted to teach in Japan after acquiring my Bachelors degree so I figured learning Chinese could one help with Kanji and/or two, get me started in Asia as if I am correct, it is actually easier to get settled teaching English in China than it is in Japan.

Anyway, is the Chinese going to help me? And I was now thinking of going to China first to get established so I have a good resume after a few years, then go to Japan.

Is the Chinese going to conflict with my Japanese studies?

Thanks..

And yeah I posted a topic years ago.. the culture love stuck with me all these years.. haha

[Glenn]

How advanced are you in Japanese? I think the answer to that question will go a long way to answering the question of whether Chinese will interfere. Although, maybe if you're still doing Japanese every day while learning Chinese, it wouldn't be too much of a problem, but then again, if you aren't already fairly advanced in Japanese you may just be overloading your brain without actually retaining anything.

Learning Chinese can help with learning kanji to a certain extent, but there are characters that are used differently than in Japanese (there are also false friends -- words that look the same/similar but have different meanings), and you'd have to learn different forms of quite a few of the characters as well, since Chinese is split into traditional and simplified scripts, and neither of them completely matches up with the Japanese kanji. That brings up the question, "how advanced are you with your kanji studies?" If you aren't very, it may not do you much good. If you're thinking of using Chinese as a shortcut to learn the characters, I'd say forget about it. If you need to learn the characters for Japanese, learn the Japanese versions and learn them as Japanese. Chinese is a different skill, even though the two may look similar.

[visser300]

Nevertheless, Chinese pronunciation is really a great great barrier for you. If you study Chinese characters without pronunciation, it likes travel across the pacific ocean on a tiny boat.

[akiyamine]

Chinese isa beautiful language and is also a bit difficult because there are only Hanzi, so it will help you writing japanese that's for sure!!
I did both and I have to tell you that prunounciation are very different, and in no way learning chinese will interfere with learning japanese.
You have to program your brain.

[Glenn]

because there are only Hanzi, so it will help you writing japanese that's for sure!!

I think this is an oversimplification. I can't imagine learning 头, 书, 现, 实, 显, 丰, 韩, 汉, 园, and 圆 will help your Japanese writing all that much. Plus you have to learn the readings. And what if you don't already know 頭, 書, 現, 実, 顕, 豊, 韓, 漢, 園, or 円? Or are we talking about traditional Chinese? That list is better (as it relates to the above examples), because now you only have four different forms: 實, 顯, 豐, and 圓. But you still have to learn those and the readings in Chinese aren't going to be too much of a help. Also, I'm assuming we're talking about Mandarin here. If you're talking about learning Cantonese it gets a bit more complicated (because of characters like 唔, 佢, 冇, 啲, 嘅, etc.).

[Bikaben]

Yeah it's Mandarin. The reason I chose the Chinese is to get me used to working with difficult Kanji characters, and also to learn another new language. I know Japanese is definitely different but I'd assume there are some similarities. I mean I doubt I'll see anything close to watashi wa ryoushite imasu/en or anything easy like that. As for my Kanj I never dove into that yet. I'm learning to speak and read at the same time with Rosetta Stone.. What I do is I'll put it so everything is in Kana at first and if I cannot read it I will switch back and forth until I can read each character in the sentence(s). It's worked wonders so far. I still have some work cut out for me though, but ultimately I thought its easier to get jobs in China so maybe get my feet wet over there after I get my Bach in 3-4 years and then when my resume is good, go to Japan. I don't know if that's a foolish idea though, I know I have my work cut out for me when it comes to learning the two languages.

[Glenn]

If you're just starting with Japanese, I'd say stick with that for a while until you get it down. Otherwise it'll be hard to keep everything straight. I know Japanese pretty well, and I still have issues sometimes either reading a word like it's Mandarin or forgetting the reading and going with a sort of Japanized Mandarin reading. Usually if it's that latter I end up forgetting if something has a voiced initial, so I'll read a sou like it's zou or something. There are even a few occasions when I just can't remember and have to look it up, and we're talking about fairly common characters (at least as defined by the Japanese government). Or if you want to go with Mandarin first, do that on its own. I think you'll get better results that way.

[Bikaben]

Well I was planning to learn what I can this summer. Master Kana, and learn how to speak at least relatively fluently and then when school starts next month go with the Mandarin. I need to figure out how to balance it. I was just under the assumption that because Japanese was influenced by Chinese that it would've been more similar to it, but I suppose I failed to grasp the fact that this isn't a thousand+ years ago so Japanese is completely branched off at this point.

[Glenn]

Influenced, yes. The same thing, no. They never were, as far as I know. First, Mandarin didn't exist until relatively recently, around the early-to-mid-12th century according to Wikipedia. It's not the same as Old Chinese and Middle Chinese. The Japanese had imported the writing system long before then, but the langauges were completely different, even belonging to different language families. Mandarin is a Sino-Tibetan langauge, while Japanese is in the Japonic language family. It's important not to conflate the writing system with the language.

Anyway, look at the differences between these sentences:

これはペンです。(kore wa pen desu. "this (topic) pen is.")
這是一支鋼筆。(zhe4 shi4 yi1 zhi1 gang1bi3. "this is one (measure word for rods) (fountain) pen.")

這 is used for the word for "crawl" in Japanese, but usually "this" in Mandarin (or is used in "here"), and 是 can be used for "this" in Japanese, but most usually in 是非 (zehi), where it has a meaning of "right; correct; proper". In Mandarin it's used a lot for "to be", but has other grammatical uses as well as the same uses as in Japanese. Then there's the obvious difference in "pen", which is a transliteration in Japanese but a translation in Mandarin.

There are, obviously, some similarities between the two. They share a lot of vocabulary (even though it sounds different, e.g., jing1ji4 vs. keizai; she4hui4 vs. shakai; san4bu4 vs. sanpo; etc.). They share (for the most part) the characters. They even share some phonetic similarities (xin and shin are pretty much the same sound, for instance). But there are some pretty stark differences as well.

If you want to try both at once, go for it. It may work for you. I'd be curious to know if it does, actually. I just don't think it'll be as efficient as learning one well then starting on the other.

[Glenski]

You are NOT going to learn to speak "relatively fluently" from any summer course. Never. Can't be done in any language.

I was just under the assumption that because Japanese was influenced by Chinese that it would've been more similar to it

And, English is based on German, French, Spanish, Latin, and Greek, among other languages. Would learning them be helpful in learning English? Nope.

Drawing the kanji and recognizing the similarity in meanings with Chinese and Japanese is somewhat helpful. Somewhat. If you want to learn Japanese, study Japanese. You'll need the hiragana and katakana fillers for Japanese anyway.