Which language out of those four is hardest to learn?

Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, or Chinese?



The Japanese Forum is not quite active like the Chinese, Korean, and Viet Forum.


We need to get this Japanese Forum up to speed.

Hey SoCal
Yeah Japanese chat has been pretty dead. There are some decent Japanese people around.

I'm guessing either Japanese or Chinese would be the hardest. It depends on which Chinese language(Mandarin,or Cantonese etc.) and what Japanese language variant. Japanese is a pretty difficult language to master. I'm just guessing on the top of my head head.

Henry


Let's work together to revive the Japanese Forum.

I would have to say Chinese. I've seen this Korean show where these celebrities were trying to learn chinese. And they were just going through the basics, and wow, it looked extremely difficult.

I speak Korean and i've studied Japanese before. Everything seemed to be pretty simple and straight forward. My cousin is fluent in japanese and told me it was extremely easy for him too. So when its down to Korean and Japanese, i see it as Korean being a little bit harder than Japanese.

I dont know anything about Vietnamese :/

Depends on the languages you speak.

For a native English speaker its supposed to be Japanese.

Chinese???

I am going to learn Japanese soon.

Japanese, very difficult to master.

my cousin lives in japan. my aunt is in very distress because he has stopped contacting her back in korea. no one knows why lol. last time anyone heard from him was he was going uni there and working. he's been there only 2 years too so it must be really easy for koreans to submerge to japanese language quicker i guess.

Personally, I find Korean extremely difficult to learn, and because I find it difficult, I want to learn it all the more.

I'm Chinese and Japanese is easier for me to learn because I already have some prior knowledge of kanji. But when it comes to Korean, I have no idea where to start.

Your joking right, if you can learn to speak Japanese, then Korean is alot more easiler.

I found Chinese r hardest language to learn, the easiest language is Persian.

I would say Vietnamese, then Japanese. Vietnamese because it has 5 different tones and the pronunciation is VERY difficult, because you don´t pronounce the words like they are written. And plus a lot of words have a french pronunciation like words with "nh", "qu",...etc. and I think all poeple know that the pronunciation of french is one of the hardest in the world.

I think Chinese has more advantage over the kanji when it comes to japanese, Kanji is what most people will have trouble on cuz theres so much to digest, but chinese will have no problem covering that section. And Koreans just have the advantage of the overall structure of japanese when it comes to sentences, grammars, and the way things are put together is almost identical.

I think it might have something to do with the fact that I've been learning Japanese formally in a classroom for 4 years now, but I've only started learning Korean a few months ago through books and tapes on my own time.

Please forgive me if I offend you when I say that I'm still having a tough time distinguishing the sounds in the Korean language. What messes me up even more is Korean sound-outs written in English, which is what's used in the books I'm learning from. It's just like romanized Japanese for me--unintelligible. I learn best through reading and writing the actual characters, listening to tapes, and participating in conversation. If I'm still struggling with Korean after a couple months, I'll consider signing up for formal classes.

Both Japanese and Korean are really easy cause they have an alphabet and a straight forward system for pronunciation. I'd have to say Chinese because it's got so many different tones and doesn't really have an alphabet, pinyin doesn't really count. I actually don't know Vietnamese, maybe that's pretty hard too?

not too familiar with vietnamese.
I'd have to say Chinese is the hardest ecause pronounciation is different from what my tongue is used to and too many characters to absorb.

Ive read that written chinese is harder to learn, not sure about vocal though.

Vietnamese should not be hard to learn since the romanize script became standardized for more than a century now. The Vietnamese equivalence of Korean Hanja and Japanese Kanji called Han or Nho (Chinese script) have not been popular amongst the general masses and the unique writing system called Nom (there is perhaps a subset of Nom that is kind of equivalence to the Korean Hangul or Japanese Hiragana/Katakana; but it also involve more cumbersome modifications and add-ons) were basically dead long ago (only about 100 or so scholar left who can read these). In short, it is not hard to learn Vietnamese; but if want to learn it to study historical records and things as such, then it not going to be easy.

I think Wiki is ok here for reference,

Han script: link
Nom script: link

I think it depends on how similar/different it is from your native language

Wow! The topic by SoCal is really kicking up! I'm glad people are talking to each other rather than fighting.

1. Gotta diffrentiate between written and spoken language.
2. When learning spoken languages, tonal languages are more difficult for English speakers. Far more if they have 6 tones like Vietnamese and Cantonese. Cantonese has and additional three rarely used tones. Some say Vietnamese has two more (I think).
3. For english speakers, learning pictograms would be far more difficult than say the romanized alphabet which Vietnam now uses. Since the Chinese writing system has the most characters, it would be most difficult.

Thus perhaps Cantonese with its 6/9 tones and the Chinese pictograms might be the most difficult.

I have a friend who is a scholar in Mandarin. A white guy. He says that Chinese and Vietnamese are most difficult for Westerners. Though I think he means only spoken Vietnamese.

On a different note, to my ears the accents of Japanese and Koreans sound very similiar when they speak (choppy) english.

i think chinese mandarin is so easy, jsut like english, but only the writing memorising what words look like, pronouncing words etc you know, the basic stuff. however writing essays, interpreting stuff would be very hard i reckon.

also listening and singing karaoke chinese songs is the best way to learn mandarin fast.

writing essays is hard on every languages.

If you known kanji, then understanding japanese be alot easier, but i think Korean is completely different as they have their onw alphabet, and I notice many foreigners having problems with Korean alphabets, but once you have mastered Korean writing skills then learning will be far more easier than many asian languages that don't use alphabets.

Henry


Maybe this Forum is more relaxed than the other forums.

I'm learning Japanese at the moment, and I have some encounters with Korean and Chinese. I dunno anything about Vietnamese, sorry...

My vote would be for Chinese. Mainly because it's tonal. I immediately got stressed out after the first minutes being taught Putonghua (or Standard Mandarin) because of the tones. It got more difficult with Cantonese, they say But maybe for people who are used to tonal languages (such as Vietnamese and Thai), it'd be easier.

After learning both languages, I was surprised to find out that Japanese and Korean are actually are quite similar in grammar. Both of them are not tonal either, so it's easier for me.

If you can differentiate tones and can emulate them Chinese and Vietnamese would be easier to speak especially since grammar isn't that difficult. To write, however, Chinese and Japanese would be hardest if you are not good with symbols. The most complex grammar would be Japanese and Korean (in my opinion), but once you get Korean or Japanese, then learning the other is not that difficult because they are similar in grammar. To me, Japanese is hardest because grammar is more complex, it uses symbols, and there are various intonations though not anything like tonal languages.

I'm learning Bahasa Indonesian right now and some Thai.

As far as pronounciation, I say Vietnamese, but as far as writing its Chinese, though Japanese definitely has the hardest grammar. Korean is a pretty easy language.

well.. I'm not an language expert so I can not generalise.

I think its depends on 'which language you can speak'. If you don't know any of the asian language but only know English, vietnamese might be the easiest since alphabet is used. but if you know any of the j,k,c language, the others come quite easily as there are some similarities between them.

Anyway, why are you asking this??

Wow! Good luck learning Bahasa Indonesia and Phasa Thai!

i agree, mandarin is so hard because it's tonal. japanese is easier, especially when you love reading manga and watching anime, hahaha...

Spoken, Vietnamese and Cantonese definetly. However I was told by a friend that if one speaks Cantonese learning Vietnamese is easy, vice versa. Since both languages have similar tones, monosyllabic (is this even a word?) and have the same sounds in words.

cjk have romanizations which is easier to understand than vietnamese writing. like someone said, some vietnamese letters is not pronounced like you think it may be.

arent all language equally hard to learn?

^ it Depends on your motivation and your desire to learn the language, Korean and Japanese are easiest for Western Speaks/Asians raised in western countries because their non-tonal languages.

mandarin is easy to learn, on some cases, but chinese in general isnt...

Try saying Nguyen with VN accent

"Nguyen" pronounced "wing"

My point was, if a language is foreign to you learning it would generally be hard. That goes for any language, because you have to learn the words, the way it is pronounced, the right tone for the right instances, the way it should be used in sentences etc. But of course if your language is sort of close to the language you are trying to learn then that would be to your advantage, but I dont see how one language is "easier" over another. Its all up to the individual.

Which is what im saying I just made a generalization but my personal experiance and other westeners who say Korean and Japanese are easier then Chinese. As it is im taking Mandarin and I'm hating it. XD

Lol sorry but thats completely wrong. No where close wing.

well i'm vietnamese and when i took a mandarin course i found it really easy pronunciation-wise, even with all those tones, in fact i was told that i had perfect pronunciation, and my grammar was okay. you really just need to correct yourself and learn a lot of vocabulary if you want to keep up. korean and japanese don't seem too hard to learn either.

Vietnamese with northern dialect can pronounce with 6 or 7 different tones whereas the central region can only muster with only 5.
Southern dialect has only 4 tones although some southerners may dispute they can pronounce with up to 5

Actually Vietnamese do pronounce as it is written if you can figure out how the consonants are pronounced in Portuguese like
"nh", "ng", etc... then it is pronounced as it is written. It's a common misconception that the enunciation is related to French. The Romanized script was first used by the Portuguese Roman Catholic priests to spread Christianity, hence, the bulk of the representation is Portuguese influenced. However, The Vietnamese language does not change the way it is pronounced as you think, just that Romanized script is used to represent how it is supposed to pronounce in the native tongue.


"ng" and "nh" are some of the pairing consonants that modify the original constant n, g, h etc...there are just representations of how
to solve certain difficult pronounciation of Vietnam native tongue. Again, if you know Portuguese, then you should have no problem.
For instance, Brazilian soccer star Ronaldinho. If you can say his name correctly, then the "nh" is exactly how it is pronounced in Vietnamese. I can't find an example for "ng" just yet or other pairing consonants.


On a general note, I guess every languages has its own difficulty relatively depending on your background. Westerners who familiar with Latin or Roman alphabet should have no problem with the written aspect of Vietnamese language than say Chinese, or Korean or Japanese.
People who background is non tonal will find it hard to learn how to pronounce in Vietnamese. With regard to Vietnamese grammar, you have to try real hard in order to get it wrong. Another word, you can't go wrong with the grammar structure. The only side effect to that is the interpretation and connotation of a sentence can change if you arrange the words with respect to each other. That's the only tough part but a fun part of learning Vietnamese.

Sorry, can't comment on the other 3 since I know nothing about Chinese, Korean, or Japanese. In fact I couldn't tell a person if he speaks Japanese or Korean. I couldn't differentiate Chinese characters from Japanese. However, I can figure out Japanese characters from Korean one. I notice Korean written language has alot of zeros and tend to be rounded. Just an observation.

japanese is easy peasy

Learning a new lang depends on what your irst language is.

wow i think this is all subjective and there really isn't a point to debating this....

like, im korean and i find korean easiest to learn (obviously)

and also, japanese is similar in grammatical structure to korean so being able to speak koreans should help me learn japanese, also.

see? but english/chinese grammar is totally different from korean/japanese, so it all depends on which grammatical style you were exposed to as a native.

i dont think there is a non-objective way to discuss which language is the hardest/easiest....

true, i think it really depends on how hard you try to learn the language and also how smart you are.

yeah its difiicult, in that it has no alphabetical system and also each word you pronounce needs different tones or it may mean another word

i'm learning chinese right now, and i hate learning the teaching of confucius, i have to memorise them, and they are awfully hard to memorise.

Im portguese i think it depends about the alphabet, chinese and japanese is hard for me i don't know any symbol

fd

Japanese or Korean,

i hate poly-syllabic languages.. so hard.. monosyllabic is much
easier.

4 words mean one thing. WOW.. forexample..

just forexample..

cat = yakitsuki

LIKE WOW... yeah, im just playing..

i don't know what cat is in japanese.. CATO? GATO? MIMI?