To the Japanese learners who are Chinese (mandarin/cantonese) who can read characters fluently, how long did it take for you to be somewhat fluent both in reading and speaking? And how much time do you spend a day to study to get there?
I understand knowing all the characters already is a massive head start, but even with this ability I still feel like it’s taking me longer than some people. I understand circumstances make things different but I’m just curious.
Edit: I myself have been learning casually for past 3 years, and I’d say I’m somewhere in the early N3 stage although I’m also learning alot of N2+ words. I don’t find them all that difficult due to the advantage, but it does still seem like some people (chinese) do it in much less time than me.
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If we take N1, which is more or less a decent level, it takes ~2k hours for people who know kanji and 3-4k+ for people who don’t. If we talk about entry level, like ability to use content, then I think the difference is much smaller, because it primarily depends on grammar learning and here only grammar similarity between Japanese and known languages plays a role.
I am native Chinese speaker. I started learning after new year and now at n2. I follow Japanese native content on YouTube now.
I know Chinese people who have passed N1 after 1.5 years of study.
Native Cantonese speaker here. I started reading novels after studying for no more than 3 hours a week for 6 months, so less than 70 hours of study? But I use Chinese resources to learn Japanese, which I have found them to be much better than English resources
Btw, I wrote this post awhile ago on Chinese resources: [Chinese resources for learning Japanese](https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/13gy3ym/chinese_resources_for_learning_japanese/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1).
I highly recommend the books on my recommendation list to learn Japanese. The first 4 books should take about 20 hours in total to read and you should be able to read novels after that (I started reading novels before reading the 4th one) and are willing to look up every unknown words, which can be made easier if you read digitally.
I have read about 60 novels in the last 2 years and a half. I’m not interested in speaking Japanese but when I go to Japan, I have no problem getting around, like asking for directions, ordering in restaurants, etc, or any other tourist things.
3 years of off n on study. Max maybe 1 hour per day. watch netflix japanese stuff now. Helped a lot for sure
I am not a Chinese-speaker, but I have taught beginning Japanese classes which included Chinese speakers from different areas. It was interesting to see how certain people had problems with pronouncing Japanese sounds, and a more experienced teacher guessed that the problem was due to a regional Chinese dialect.
This was one of many reminders for me to think of China as a group of similar but separate countries (like Italy and Spain) where neighbors sound similar but are clearly not the same.
It was also funny to take the JLPT and see “traps for Chinese people”, where a kanji I had never seen before would show up as a decoy answer.
I’m a native English & Cantonese speaker, and also took Mandarin lessons for 12 years in school.
Knowing the kanji definitely helps in reading and vocabulary, but it sometimes hinders me in remembering the Japanese pronunciation. It’s like I have to overwrite the mandarin pronunciation in my brain which pops up automatically.
In terms of speed, I started learning Japanese a year ago. Studying time averages 5 – 10 hours a week, and I do a lot of immersion as well because I love anime. I watch at least 1 to 2 hours of anime everyday. With Japanese subtitles I can understand maybe half or a bit more of the anime, especially easier SoL ones. Without subtitles I can understand the shorter sentences. I’m around N3 level now going by the content of the videos and material I’ve covered, but I haven’t taken any formal JLPT.
I got bored with graded readers and started with Satori Reader recently. Also reading some raw manga but I’m having to check words frequently.
Learning Japanese is my main hobby right now so I spend a lot of time on it. My weakness is speaking due to a lack of practice and not having anyone to speak Japanese to. I’m too shy to go on discord and join voice channels.
English is my main language but I speak Mandarin fluently because I learnt it in school. After a year of proper classroom learning, I would say I’m n3-n2 level. In terms of speaking I’m conversational with most Japanese speakers (I live in Japan.)
Conversely I have a friend who’s a native Mandarin speaker and learnt the same time as me. He’s definitely more familiar with kanji compared to me, but our speaking is totally worlds apart. I speak more fluidly and can use more complicated grammar while he struggles with accents and sentence structure. Even native Japanese speakers struggle to understand his words.
Comprehension and speaking are totally different for different people. Don’t sweat it. Also consider your learning techniques. I learn best thru immersion and speaking while some others (like my wife) learn through books and constant studying.