does knowing Chinese help with learning Japanese?

yes, as japanese has a subset of characters borrowed from da chinese many years ago called kanji.

no, as most kanji used in Japan have slightly different meaning than they do in Mandarin
they also combine differently

Knowing Hanzi/Kanji helps you understand Korean/Japanese writing language.

If you know Chinese that's half the battle right there!
You don't have to learn any writing except katakana and hiragana which is no sweat, especially if you know bopomofo. Plus, learning the On readings to the characters is easy since they are very similar to one or more of the Chinese languages, example:
天 = tiān/tian1 in Mandarin and the Japanese On reading of the character is ten. Pretty easy, neh?

I heard that knowing Chinese characters helps....I'm learning to write Chinese characters w/ Korean meanings. I think the Korean meanings and Chinese meanings are similar. I'm hoping that learning Chinese characters now will help me learn Japanese too ^^V

Yeah Korean has many similarities (especially older Korean words) to Chinese. Chinese word for farmer is 'Nung Ren' and I believe it is almost exactly the same for Korean as well.

Anyways I don't know a thing about the mdoern day Japanese language but I can still get a grasp of what a Japanese newspaper is talking about by reading only the Kanji.

May I ask? Why learn Japanese anywhere? I dont see it help anyone in earning money.

it's not that i want to make a profit off of it. It's just cool to learn another Oriental language. plus then i can watch anime without subtitles!

Oh! watch anime without subtitles. You must be an anime fan?

Learning Japanese for anime is a common reason for lots of people. I am half Japanese and Half Chinese so I think I should attempt to learn the language. I have a language program which I hope to learn lots of basic phrases from to help me get started. Anyone like Cowboy Bebop? I want to see more animes like that.

eh... I chart that shows Japanese to Korean...

http://triar.hihome.com/japlesson.html

But i think there's somethign wrong with it...

Hey nice~~! Now all I have to do is memorize those ^^ but something's wrong with it? What's wrong with it?? oO;;

the tables aren't aligned correctly with the characters - they need to be adjusted to the left three columns.

errr... i mean two columns. and only when the window is maximized, it seems fine when it's not. or maybe it's just my browser settings...

I'm studying Japanese with Australian classmates in this semester. They really think it is difficult when it comes to KANJI, which is not difficult at all to me. I think it's easy for Korean, Chinese and Japanese to learn each other's language 'cause we share Hanja/Hanji/Kanji. Modern Chinese characters are somewhat simpified, though.

krngrl, if you can read korean, then try web translators to read japanese websites. you'd be surprised at how accurately japanese translates into korean - very similar grammar. the web translators work so well that it would be nearly impossible to tell who's japanese on naver.com forums if it weren't for the red 日's next to their names.

http://kr.japan.yahoo.com
http://enjoyjapan.naver.com

heh... thats what i mean

the Korean charts are static, while the Japanese ones are centered
so it's not so much a matter of how many columns the charts are off
in you make your window narrower across, you can get the tables to line up

tee-hee I'm learning Japanese too...*high five*

Jesus man. Do you have to go around bashing my culture with your ignorance everywhere?

If you ever go to Europe, the major East Asian language in effect is Japanese. Not Pu tong hua. So yes, it will be benefical for people to learn Japanese.

As for ease of learning, I'd say it would help alot. Not only are kanji essentially subsets of Hanzi, but some of the actual phonetic words themselves are from Putonghua. For example, the word for telephone in Japanese is denwa as it is is in Putonghua.

^
Denwa? I think it's more like diànhuà.

Yes it should help somewhat. You would have more knowledge of some of the kanji then your other classmates or whereever you may be learning it from. I have a guy in my japanese II class who speak fluent chinese and of course knows kanji. Needless to say he is the best at kanji and happens to be very good with grammer and other things he has the highest grade in the class. Huaren you love to bash the japanese and call everyone Wapanese it seems Q(--Q)

And Hiroki is right telephone is japanese is denwa. Were you talking about chinese when you said dianhua ranmatatsumaru ?? (I haven't figured out how to add the accents and stuff to letters yet ^^; sorry)

Chinese grammar, imo isn't that much like Japanese grammar.

"Much like"? They are not alike at all. Chinese grammar is more like English.

Oh no there are some similarities with Chinese and Japanese, some etc..

Oh i'm sorry i didn't mean to say it like because he is fluent in chinese he is good at japanese grammer. I meant it to be like he is also very good at japanese grammer by coincidence not because of previously knowing chinese. The guy is just really smart in everything actually is what i was trying to get at. Sorry i worded that poorly.

Similarities overall or just grammar?

you could write dian4hua4, for the tones, if you don't use diacritics
and yeah, that'll be Mandarin (dian4hua4)

I was talking about Mandarin Chinese (Pŭtōnghuà)

Ok thanks. Sorry i don't know anything about any asian languages other then very little japanese. I feel dumb now.

^
It's O.K. No need to feel dumb.