Has anyone here leveraged advanced knowledge of Chinese to learn Japanese?

32 comments

1. I’m doing what you’re doing in the opposite direction, leveraging Japanese to learn Chinese. Kanji radicals are pretty useful. Kanji readings resemble Chinese readings to a degree. You’ll have a head start. Curious about comments from more experienced Chinese learners (I just started).

2. So.. I had to learn Chinese as my mother tongue growing up as part of my education, didn’t do too well in it since I didn’t really like the subject/classes. However I know enough to be able to speak comfortably with other people, order food etc. and I only need a dictionary for the words I forgot. (Idk if that qualifies as “advanced” lol)

   Also my Japanese level is somewhere in the midst of N4, but I’ll share my experience anyway.

   Learning kanji wasn’t really an issue since I’ve had so many years of seeing Chinese hanzi. For quite a lot of the words, they shared the same meaning so it’s just a matter of learning the extra On/Kun readings (Even though onyomi is known as the Chinese reading, it may still differ slightly from the actual Chinese reading but they are similar enough).

   Most kanji still look similar to traditional Chinese characters, as opposed to simplified Chinese which is what I learned but they still didn’t pose much of an issue.

   There are however plenty of words and concepts that kept tripping me up since their usages/meanings differ from Chinese, which was what I was used to.

   eg.

   (CH) 步 -> 跑步 = run 走 -> 走路 = walk

   (JP) 步 -> 歩く = to walk 走 -> 走る = to run

   的 is a modifier used to indicate possession/attributes in Chinese, whereas in Japanese の is used for possession while adjectives are joined directly to nouns

   (EN) My handphone / Old chair

   (CH) 我的手机 / 旧的椅子

   (JP) 私の携帯 / 古い椅子

   For counting books, 本 is the Chinese counter while 冊 is the Japanese counter

   (CH) 三本书

   (JP) 三冊本

   书 is only in CH, for JP we only use 本 to say book

   And there are certain concepts that use completely different words

   (CH) 站 vs (JP) 駅 for saying station (as in train station)

   (CH) 漂亮 vs (JP) 綺麗 for saying pretty/beautiful

   Beyond the kanji however, there isn’t too many similarities between the 2 languages that give you too much else of an advantage. Word order is different (Chinese being mostly SVO like English while Japanese technically doesn’t have one, but is mainly SOV). Grammar, social conventions of speaking are both also quite different between the 2 languages. In my experience I use Chinese just as I would use English to speak to someone, whereas in Japanese you have to take into account polite/short forms for sentences based on who you talk to.

   eg.

   In a 1 on 1 scenario when we address the other person we use

   (EN) you

   (CH) 你 or 您

   However Japanese tends to avoid directness so rather than using あなた(you), it’s more common to use the other persons name instead

   So imo, Chinese does give you an advantage in learning Kanji (either the characters are the same, or you already have a good technique to learn them) but otherwise doesn’t help too much in the other parts of Japanese. Apart from that can’t really speak too much about using both languages professionally since I only use Chinese casually.

   Edited for some styling

3. I remember there was a thread that had the average numbers for learning Japanese from English and from Chinese from start to N1. It was something along the lines of 2800h with English vs 1700h for Chinese. I don’t remember the exact numbers, but it seemed that there was a significant advantage.

4. I have a friend whose native language is Hokkien, but she was educated in Mandarin/English. Though the readings are different between between Chinese and Japanese, the meanings of the kanji are often the same or very similar. Even though her Japanese reading level is overall quite low, she says she can get the gist of newspaper articles quite quickly.

   She really struggles with Japanese grammar though. There’s very few grammatical similarities between Japanese and Chinese. Overall I don’t think (outside of reading) her fluency in Chinese helped her too much with learning Japanese.

   So I guess it depends on your goals. If you’re just interested in reading (which seems to be the case for a lot of people on the internet) speaking Chinese will be a major boost. But if you’re interested in more than just reading, Chinese is much less helpful when it comes to spoken language or understanding Japanese grammar. So you’ll progress more quickly on reading, but be on pace with everyone else for everything else.

   While it is true that Chinese speakers can pass the JLPT much faster than non-Chinese speakers, this is mainly because the JLPT is mostly a reading test. You run into huge issue with Chinese speakers who zoom through the JLPT levels and pass the N1, but on the CEFR scale are only assessed at B1 level because their other language skills are so low level. So imo, it’s less that it’s easier for Chinese speakers to learn Japanese and more that it’s easier for Chinese speakers to game the JLPT

   Source: https://jfstandard.jp/pdf/jfs_jlpt_diagram2017(english).pdf

5. They are two completely different languages in structure, vocabulary, and grammar. But knowledge of characters, and character combinations can and will help, even though there are the obvious “false friends” (see all the examples from lolthe1st above). If you learned Chinese in mainland China, you will have learned simplified characters, and unless you spent some time with the original versions, it will take some getting used to. For example: the kanji for “book” used in Japanese for specific types of books like “textbook”, “schoolbook”, “manual” etc, in modern/simplified Chinese: 书, Japanese (and the original Chinese character): 書

   Having said that, I started with Chinese at university and added Japanese afterwards, and I found my knowledge of characters and classical Chinese to be a big help (one thing less to learn from scratch).

   You will also find that Japanese is much easier to pronounce (no tones, even though some here will reference intonation, so fine), and the grammar is structurally easier to comprehend I find than Chinese. (YMMV though)

   Anyway: go for it, it’s a great additional language to learn!

6. No offense, but you’re not exactly breaking new ground here. Both these languages have existed for thousands of years.

   Knowing Chinese will give you a leg up, sort of, in learning Japanese kanji. It won’t in any way help you learning vocab, grammar, sentence structure of Japanese since the languages (other than the writing system connection) are completely unrelated.

   Some of my Chinese classmates who thought they could get by on just their kanji knowledge without actually learning Japanese were some of the most incompetent students in my university’s Japanese program. They would guess at the meaning of sentences from their knowledge of kanji and be 99% wrong 99% of the time. Knowing Chinese is not something that instantly allows you to easy mode power through the Japanese language.

   If you want to learn Chinese, learn Chinese. If you want to learn Japanese, learn Japanese. If you want to learn both, learn both. Learning a certain language for the purpose of making it easier to learn a completely different one is one of the more pointless ways you could spend your time.

7. I haven’t done but I know my girlfriend who’s fluent Chinese did sorta. This was back when we still had free time as students. She said it was easier similar to the other comments. Of course different grammar structure and the different kanji readings had to be learned, but it helped that she was used to learning it.

   Also I remember reading in /r/languagelearning of some learners preferring to learn Japanese to Chinese and vice-versa over English to Japanese/Chinese because the resources were a lot better.

8. > to a solid intermediate level (vocabulary approx. = 25.000 words)

   You think 25.000 words is intermediate? I’m pretty sure some natives know less than that lol

9. It would help a lot, the fact that you would already know most of the kanji meanings really does make things a lot easier to understand. Personally though, my grammar is definitely a lot weaker since I don’t really spend as much time studying so my Japanese would come out as “yeah definitely not a native” after a bit of prolong conversation.

   There is definitely some guesswork at times when it comes to meaning of Kanji, but really, it’s probably like 95% of them being the same. u/lolthe1st made a good point on some of it with some of the examples, but as with most languages, you sort of get used to them as you go along the process. The other thing about Kanji is also that if you know how to read traditional Chinese, it makes a lot more sense when you read Japanese, rather than just basing it on from simplified Chinese (which I would assume that’s what you studied, though it’s not too difficult to read traditional Chinese).

10. It’s helpful in the beginning where Chinese will give you a lot of contextual clues to understand the semantics of phrases and help trigger your memory but after that, not so much.

    It is probably at best as helpful as Latin would be for learning French.

11. Have chinese as mother tongue and I would say It’s basically a cheat code for comprehension and kanji.

    I don’t need to memorise how to write and what it means(most of the time its the same meaning or close to its kanji origin), the only thing you need to do is learn pronunciation.

    Anedoctal but I took n2 with minimal preparation. Scored close to full marks on reading while barely passing listening and grammar. That’s how much easier it is.

12. Probably the main advantage comes from your ability to recognise the kanji characters, so you can guess meaning of words more easily, and once you learn to associate the Japanese reading of the characters (exceptions exist, of course, sadly…), will be able to pick new words up more quickly.

    The downside:

    * There are many many character combinations that exist in Chinese, but iehter don’t exist in Japanese (thus, you end up saying words that make no sense), or mean something completely different (大丈夫 comes to mind).
    My friends who speak Mandarin told me this is one of their biggest challenge once they’ve reached higher level classes where they are expected to engage in more free conversations with the teacher in class.
    * (Again, exception exists!) Generally, I found that Kanji is closer to traditional 繁体 than 简体. Even if the characters are ‘the same’, subtle differences exist, e.g 强 vs 強, so if writing is a concern, then you gotta be on the look-out for these
    * I’ve only encountered one girl with this issue – she had a lot of problem pronouncing some combination sound such as “un” (E.g ikun desu) because she’d say how it should be said in Mandarin.

    I’m actually doing the reverse of you. While ethnically Chinese, I’ve never learned Mandarin, though I do have some basic grasp of the language since we speak some version of dialect (it’s like a mixture of some Hokkien, Teochew, Malay, and everything in between!) at home. I decided to pick up Chinese calligraphy recently, and found that knowing Kanji has helped me a lot in picking up new Mandarin vocabulary.

13. Just took my N2 this July, and native speaker of Mandarin. Knowing Mandarin is like a cheat code in comprehension. Where speakers of other languages would stumble and confuse similar kanji, native speakers of Mandarin have far less of an issue. Knowing Mandarin helped propel my learning process in Japanese because I could access material way above my level and essentially immerse in grammar and sentence structure without worrying too much about the vocabulary. I self studied (aka watched anime and read manga) my way to N3 ish in 2 years before going for proper lessons to break my crippling addiction to Kanji and learn grammar points for N2 and above.

    That said, I still had to put in effort to consciously learn the language, and the false cognates and “similar but different” vocabulary really drove me crazy. The grammar is also very different, which means that you’re on your own for much of the grammar you learn at the start. Mandarin and Japanese sentence structure is almost like 2 ends of the spectrum between analytic and agglutinative languages. It only gets easier in grammar once you move into slightly more complicated and nuanced grammar, where Mandarin would have a phrase or word that fulfils almost exactly the same role, but English would not.

    Another point that native Mandarin speakers have trouble with is “unlearning” the 1 character 1 pronunciation rule-of-thumb in Mandarin. It is surprisingly difficult to learn to connect multiple pronunciations to a single kanji when you’ve only ever used the 1 or 2 pronunciations for all its meanings. For example, 生. In Mandarin, regardless of where in the word, or what meaning it carries, it is only ever read as shēng. In Japanese, this kanji has some of the most varied pronunciations, depending on where in the word it is used.

    Given that you learnt Mandarin later in life, it is hard to judge exactly how much Mandarin can help you. On one hand, modern Mandarin and Japanese only share a superficial similarity, that being kanji, and the topic-comment sentence structure. If you aren’t familiar with the Traditional character set, it can be disorienting as you relearn words with a different pronunciation, even though you technically already know the word in Mandarin. In addition, many of the similarities and relations between modern Mandarin and Japanese really come to light only when you have minimally a superficial understanding of 文言文, as this is where the meanings and sounds originated from. This is way beyond what you would be exposed to as an intermediate learner of Mandarin, which means that while Mandarin can help you, the challenges stated above can also hinder your leaning if you over rely on Mandarin and kanji as a crutch.

14. I’d think that the main advantage would be in reading, not speaking. Some words are cognate but not many. As I’m sure you know, Chinese is tonal while Japanese is not.

    If you want to see an American who was fluent in Chinese go from knowing basic Japanese to being more or less fluent, watch Oriental Pearl on YouTube.

15. Even just basic knowledge of Chinese (2 years of continuous classes) helped me a lot with learning Kanji. Knowing radicals, stroke orders which are the basics of Chinese, help tremendously.

16. Knowing Chinese will save you a lot of brutal memorisation. Plus give you a massive head-start in “reading”. I have met Asian N2 passers (and some N1 passers) that speak at a beginner level.

    One of my neighbours from the US lived in China for several years; his fluency was near-native. He said he could generally understand Japanese reading from day one, so the hanzi was a big help there. I would not say he had an “accelerated” trajectory in Japanese speaking-listening, however.

    In my Tokyo language school, the Chinese & Korean students generally were faster learners than westerners at the beginner and intermediate levels. I think that Chinese had the Kanji and some similar vocabulary. The Koreans had some similar grammar and pronunciation (while hanzi is still used I was told Korean schools have generally reduced study).

    – Other important factors might be memorization skills taught in China & Korea, self-motivation to enter Japanese University/trade-school, prior study of Japanese.

17. Massively,

    aside from the obvious stuff let me give you some more advanced knowledge that might help you on a more technical level, if you’re interested.

    You can use patterns of On-readings compared to mandarin readings to GUESS how certain words are read.

    Example:

    A lot of words containing r in mandarin used to start with the consonant N or J, this is preserved in a lot of Japanese words for their ONYOMI (Sino-Japanese) readings

    二 and 贰 which are both er4, are both ni in Japanese (compare 腻 which is ni4 in mandarin, a preservation of the older prounciation from middle chinese)

    人 ren2 is jin or nin in Japanese

    日 ri4 is jitsu or nichi

    忍 ren3 is nin in Japanese

    There is other examples, like the Q consonant in Mandarin turning into the K consonant in Japanese like in 气，期 etc… and a bunch of other stuff that you’ll realize is similar once you get into it.

    Since Japanese doesn’t have tones(only pitch accent) you don’t have to worry about remembering a tone either, so guessing Japanese pronunciation for Kango, that is originally Chinese compound words (which make up a large portion of Japanese vocabulary) is super possible.

18. Im fluent in Korean and conversational in Mandarin, and that makes my learning process for Japanese considerably easier. Half the time, I can guess the meaning from the Kanji from Chinese, and guess the pronunciation of the Kanji from Korean, and use Korean grammar structures for Japanese grammar structures.

    The basic understanding of Chinese characters that I had helped me a lot with recognition and recall.

19. Like most people have commented, knowing Chinese helps in reading and writing. But it doesn’t help much in grammar, listening and speaking Japanese.

    I just started learning Japanese and it struck me how hard is it to able to memorise the different pronunciations, especially when each character may have multiple sounds to them unlike in Chinese.

20. Chinese is your go-to for really advanced level of Japanese. Almost all of the most difficult words and 四字熟語 come from Classical Chinese. For example, 肯綮　嚆矢　塞翁が馬　and such all come from texts in Ancient China.

21. Everyone in my first Japanese group lesson in Japan.

22. My Chinese teacher said that despite not knowing Japanese he can still read the headlines of newspapers in japan. And learning Japanese myself I find that I know Japanese words from Chinese and vice versa. Some cases they are even pronounced similarly like library (tushuguan and toshokan). The only issue is that Japanese uses traditional characters and other uncommon words. Like night in Japanese uses a character that is rarely used in Chinese (I might be wrong though). Another issue I find is that I often mix up readings like “not” (bu and fu) and half (Ban and han). But my advice is dude take on the challenge english helps with your Japanese pronunciation and Chinese helps with your reading. You’re as prepared as you’ll ever be take on a category 5 language!

23. Although I can’t comment on the topic, I am curious as to what this language classification system you mentioned is?

24. So basically there’s something called kanji and although pronounced different the meaning is the same as it is in mandarin and kanji hardest part of Japanese

25. From a purely linguistic standpoint, Japanese and Chinese are nowhere near related. In fact, Japanese comes from the Japonic language family: spoken exclusively on Japan and some surrounding islands (and maybe parts of the Korean Peninsula but they are all extinct). So, as far as grammar, vocabulary, and the like are concerned, your knowledge of Chinese will have little benefit.

    Now we acknowledge the history of kanji. Kanji is a sort of “first cousin once removed” to traditional Chinese and “second cousin” to simplified Chinese. So, there are some similarities (particularly in the more pictographic kanji) but a lot of kanji came to Japanese by copying the sounds they made in Chinese and often disregarding the original Chinese meaning, not to mention the fact that Japanese overloaded the Chinese characters (to the point that 生 has 13 readings).

    So, while your knowledge of Chinese will certainly help with recognizing, distinguishing, and writing Japanese, it probably won’t be a world of difference

26. What you’d be leveraging is actually two things:

    1. your knowledge of Chinese characters, which are used to write Japanese, and represent the most significant hurdle for westerners trying to learn Japanese
    2. your experience in language acquisition

27. My mother learned Japanese within a year or two (Zero knowledge to N1) when she moved for work from China to Japan. She is super smart/hardworking so this may not be for everyone- but she leveraged her knowledge of Chinese characters not just to learn Japanese kanji but also for vocab. Reading kanji that she already knew the meaning of with hiragana/katakana on top allowed her to match the meaning to the term and basically just reinforced her knowledge of vocabulary and grammatical structures.

28. It is a huge advantage. I came to Japan after getting a degree in Chinese Lang and Lit. Kanji has almost never challenged me. Japanese grammar and general languaculture however is nothing like Chinese.

29. Knowing Chinese is a cheat code for Japanese indeed. The other commenters are absolutely on point about it. However, I do want to point out that Japanese is *not free* just because you know mandarin. The grammar is drastically different.

    And there are Kanjis that can surprise you. As a very primitive example, if you know Chinese and see 下手 you would be a little confused, and chances are you won’t be able to guess its meaning on the first try. There’s also words that only appear in kana, stuff like ほとんど, かなり、おいしい, which, although if you see them in their kanji form you could probably (?) guess their meaning, you just won’t see them in kanji that much. Oh, let’s not forget those onomatopoeias.

    You probably don’t have to spend as much hours as someone who doesn’t know Chinese, but you definitely do have to put in some hours still.

30. As a Cantonese speaker I can definitely say that Chinese has helped in Japanese

    First of all there’s the Kanji. Basically skips the whole learning Kanji part for the most part because I already know Hanzi. Also I can guess what words that I’ve never seen before mean (though sometimes there’s a big difference between Japanese and Chinese meaning like 勉強) And there are still a few kokuji to learn.

    I think the most helpful thing is being able to guess the onyomi of kanji (to some degree) using Cantonese. I have a Japanese book that
    actually teaches using Cantonese to guess onyomi using a few patterns
    Here’s a few examples (jyutping → romaji)
    大学 daaihok daigaku
    影響 jinghoeng eikyou
    特別 dakbit tokubetsu

    The patterns aren’t obvious at first but you get used to them

    But as for grammar and hiragana words I’ve had to learn them for scratch like anyone else

    N3, have been learning on and off for years now

31. Of course. Because you just need to assign a new meaning to a character that you already recognize. I’m Chinese, and learning Kanji has been a breeze honestly. It’s almost like cheating. I can’t even imagine learning Kanji from scratch as an adult.

32. My native tongue is Chinese and I will say, it made learning Japanese easier.

    The first hurdle is to learn hiragana and katana. After that, reading a lot and watching shows with Chinese subtitles helps a lot.

    Essentially, it’s easier to pick up Kanji because…well, it’s literally Chinese characters. I learned Traditional characters so that helped a lot since Japanese is almost in between Simplified and Traditional characters (they do have a few unique characters here and there but not that much). You start with easier books to read with furigana so you learn how to pronounce Kanji characters but the Kanji essentially helps you guess the meaning through context.

    With subtitles while watching shows, again, it helps a lot because a lot of Japanese words actually sound pretty similar to Mandarin and so a lot of times, while watching the shows, I can piece what I hear to the subtitles I’m reading. And through a lot of exposure, you also start to grasp the grammar structure.

    I’m mostly self-taught and passed N2 years ago – my Japanese skills have dropped a lot since due to not using it for a while but yeah. Knowing Chinese definitely helps is all I’m going to say.