Are there any cons that native Chinese speakers have when learning Japanese?

5 comments

1. Most of what I’ll say is 100% anecdotal since I’m not Chinese, but here are two things I’ve noticed in a classroom setting:

   Chinese speakers who are beginners to Japanese tend to be the worst at pronouncing things.

   Prior knowledge of kanji can make Chinese natives a bit too lax when learning new vocabulary. Say someone knew what 手 and 紙 were separately. And hey, 手紙 is a legitimate word in Chinese. But guess what? They do not mean the same thing in Japanese and Chinese. Another one that comes to mind is 叶 being completely unrelated to 葉 in Japanese whereas in Chinese the former is the simplified version of the latter.

   Another thing my Japanese teacher mentioned was her hesitance to correct certain kanji when doing handwritten exercises and composition assignments since the character forms can be slightly different for some kanji with the same meaning. For example, the thing on top of 虫 in 強 should be a 厶 according to how Japanese education teaches it (as well as regions outside of mainland China, which still use traditional characters), but in simplified Chinese it’s 口, as in 强. On one hand, this is a moot point since writing by hand isn’t a thing many people do in any language anyway. But on the other hand, if browsing torrent sites have taught me anything, it’s that Chinese uploaders can and will occasionally intermingle Chinese character forms in sentences that are otherwise in Japanese.

2. Mostly pronunciation, specially between N and R sounds. Pronunciation in general. Confusing 音読み.

   Source: my Chinese girlfriend who has a masters in Japanese

3. Some of us have difficult time writing kanji, they are usually written a bit different than the Chinese form, and to some people like me, it can be difficult to remember what’s the proper kanji writing form when the Chinese form is heavily embeded in your mind

4. Heard they have more trouble with katakana words. Kinda like the opposite problem to what English speakers have I guess

5. Chinese learners were shocked to learn the word 勉強 for the first time, again.