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@Dr. Izzy Sealey this is very well organized and presented video, especially considering the amount of material covered. There’s one thing I can recommend, don’t eat your mic with a fork, spoons are much better to use (LOL) 😂
Yeğ / Yüğ = upper, superior Yeğ-mek > Yemek (to eat)= to add on oneself, to take it in one's essence Yeğ-im> Yem= provender, fodder > Yemiş= fruit Yüğ-le-mek > yeğlemek = to keep it on top of others, make it relatively superior, ~to prefer Yüğ-ka-yer-u > yukarı =(which side is on top) = Up Yüğ-ce > yüce = superior in level /sublime Yüğ-ce-al-mek > yücelmek = to achieve superiority in level Yüğ-sü-ek > yüksek = high Yüğ-sel > yüksel = exponential , superlative Yüğ-sü-al-mek> yükselmek = to rise to a high level, to ascend Yüğ-sük > yüzük =(ring)= jewelry worn on the finger top Yüğ-sü-en-mek > yüksünmek= to feel slighted / take offended Yüğ-ük > yük =(load)> carried on top, undertaken Yüğ-ün > yün =(wool)> the feathers that on sheep Yüğ-üt > yiğit =(valiant)> superior in character Yüğ-en > yüğen /yeğen =(nephew)> which is kept superior, held in high esteem, valued, precious (yüen > yen 元) Yüğ-en-cük > yüğençüğ > yinçi (inci) =(precious little thing)> pearl , 珍珠 Yüğengi >yengi> yeni =(new)> what's that coming on top , what's coming after Yüğenge > yenge =(brother's wife)> who's coming after, added to the family later (new bride) Yüğ-üne /Yeğ-ine > yine/ gene =again /over and over > yeniden = anew /once more Yüğ-en-mek> yenmek = to overcome, to cope with, to subdue Yüğ-en-el-mek > yenilmek= to be overcome, to be subdued, to show weakness Yüğengil > yengil =remains on top of, light, weak Şan= Glory, splendor 單于 > Şan-Yüğ =Exalted glorious Yormak=to tire= to arrive over someone (too many). (too much) to go onto (Yörmek)> Örmek=(to operate on something), to weave on top , to wrap around (Yörümek)> Yürümek= to go over something, to wander around (yöre=precincts) (yörük=nomad) Yürümek= to walk (yürü=go on) Yülümek=to go by slipping over something Yalamak= to lick >~to take swiping/ by scraping on something off Yolmak= to pluck=to pull by snatching off, tear off (~flatten the top) Yılmak=to throw down from the one's own top (~get bored), to hit the ground from above (yıldırım=lightning…yıldız=star) Yurmak= to pull onto, cover over (yur-ut>yurt=tabernacle) (yur-gan>yorgan=quilt) Yırmak=to bring it on top of, to take it off (yırışmak>yarışmak= to race> to overcome each other) (Yır-et-mak)>Yırtmak= to tear= to get it inside-out or bottom to top (by pulling from both sides) (~tide over, get rid of it) Yarmak= to split, to tear apart= go vertically from top to bottom, separate by cutting off Yermek=to pull down ,pull to the ground Germek=to tense= to pull it in all directions > Sermek= to spread it in all directions Yıkmak= to overthrow , take down from top to bottom, turn upside down Yığmak= to stack= put on top of each other, dump on top of each other (yığlamak=shed tears over and over, cry over) Yağmak=get rained on, get spilled on / to pour down from above Yakmak= to burn out=to purify matter by heating and removing mass , reduce its volume Yoğmak=make condensed=to tighten and purify, narrow by turning, get rid of own volume (~get dead) Yoğurmak= to knead=tighten and thicken , reduce volume, bring to consistency (Yogurt=thickened milk product) Yuğmak=to purify squeezing to clean (Yuğamak>yıkamak= to wash) Yiv = sharp, pointed (yivlemek= sharpen the tip) Yuvmak=to squeezing thin out, narrow (yuvka>yufka= thin dough) (yuvka>yuka=thin, shallow) (yuvuz>yavuz=thin, weak, delicate) Yuvarlamak=to round off=narrow by turning (yuva (smallest shelter)= nest) (yavru (smallest)= cub ) Yummak=to shut by squeezing, close tightly (Yumurmak=make it closes inward) (yumruk=fist) (yumurta= egg)
The names of some organs it's used as the suffix for nouns, “Ak”= ~each of both (Yan= side) Yan-ak= each of both sides (of the face) >Yanak= cheek (Gül= rose) Kül-ak = each of both the roses >Kulak= Ear (Şek=facet) Şek-ak = each of both sides (of forehead) >Şakak= temple (Dal=subsection, branch) Dal-ak=dalak= Spleen (Böbür=scarlet fleck) Böbür-ak=böbrek= Kidney = each of both red-spots / blodfleck Bağça-ak>(Paça-ak)>bacak= Leg (ankle) (Pati = paw) Batı-ak>pathiak>phatyak>hadyak>adyak)=Ayak= the foot > each of the feet (Taş=stone) Taş-ak=testicle Akciğer=(each of) both lungs Tül-karn-ak =that obscures/ shadowing each of both dark/ covert periods= Karanlık (batıni) çağların her birini örten tül Zhu'l-karn-eyn=the (shader) owner of each of both times Dhu'al-chorn-ein=double-horned-one=(the horned hunter)Herne the hunter> Cernunnos> Karneios it's used as the suffix for verbs, “Ak /ek“=a-qa ~which thing to / what’s to… Er-mek = to get / to reach Bar-mak (Varmak)= to arrive / to achieve Er-en-mek > erinmek / Bar-an-mak > barınmak =arrive at one's own Erin-ek / barın-ak = what’s there to arrive at oneself Ernek / Barnak > Parmak = Finger Çiğ=uncooked, raw Çiğne-mek =to chew Çiğne-ek>Çiğneh> Çene = Chin Tut-mak = to hold / to keep Tut-ak=Dudak= Lip Tara-mak = to comb/ ~to rake Tara-ak > Tarak =(what’s there to comb)> the comb Tara-en-mak > taranmak = to comb oneself Taran-ak > Tırnak =(what’s there to comb oneself)> fingernail
As a Chinese speaker, I think you pronunciation is really great and I have been learning English for over one decade.I hope you can make greater progress in learning Chinese.
One information I miss at 05:35 is that Japanese reading ist divided into kunyomi (the japanese way of reading it) and onyomi (the sino-japanese reading). So yeah, 水 would be みず (mizu) but the onyomi is すい (sui), which is close to the chinese shui. Mostly (but there are MANY exceptions) Kanji+Kanji=onyomi-reading while Kanji+Hiragana=kunyomi-reading.
i noticed this too! i picked up the onyomi version years ago from a tv show i watched, since it was part of the central antagonist's weapon name (kyouka suigetsu). the last part was translated as "water moon," so i thought it was odd she only mentioned that character could be read as mizu and not sui which is way closer to the chinese pronounciation.
Izzyさん、こんにちは。わたしは、日本人です。 Thank you very much for picking up our languages as the topic. I was amazed to learn how deep you know the differences of three languages such as cultural back ground or grammar which even I don’t know. I felt much closer to you now. ありがとうございました。
Glad to have chanced upon this video! I'm a Chinese Singaporean, learning Japanese and intending to hop onto learning Korean in a couple of years! It is like a family link btw these 3 languages!
A few corrections and additional comments Kanji was also simplified and is not equivalent to traditional Chinese hanzi 鉄 - kanji 铁 - simplified hanzi 鐵 - traditional hanzi There are, of course similarities, but not all of them are the same, and there are also characters created in Japan. Katakana and Hiragana are not alphabets, the are syllabaries. Katakana is not just for foreigner words, it is often used in signs, company names, onomatopoeia, traditional musical notations, or to empathize a word, similarly to italics. Complicate kanji words are sometimes mixed with katakana to make them easier to read, which is common in fields like medicine.
Hi Izzy, thanks for posting this fun and informative video! My wife is Vietnamese and I’m Japanese. She would blast Japanese as the craziest language because of all those Kanjis, and I would retort roasting Vietnamese as the nastiest language because of those six tones. We don’t get along in terms of languages but our little son speaks both languages with ease😆
Kanjis? Dude, apparently you don’t know anything about Vietnamese! It’s said that Vietnamese has nearly 70% of Sino-Viet vocabularies(which are borrowed Sinitic words like Japanese). The fun fact is that Vietnamese’s official written language used to be classical Chinese that ended in 1920. Further, in pronunciation, Vietnamese pronounced the Sino-Viet closer to middle Chinese than Japanese. I’ve yet to mention that ancients Chinese words are deeply entrenched in Vietnamese, that the natives think it’s part of Vietnamese and not Chinese… While it’s true that Vietnamese is a Mon-Khmer language, it uses the same percentage of Chinese loan words (Kanji in Japan) as Japanese… Maybe your wife should have taught you how to correctly pronounce those Kanji words 😂😂😂😂😂
Perhaps next time you may wish to remind her that Vietnamese historical texts were written in KANJI. HANOI is 河内, Vietnam is 越南, and Ho Chi-Minh is 胡志明 in KANJI. The phonetics of Vietnamese, however, is a different matter. Whether listening to Vietnamese or Cantonese...that is a challenge. I'm sure you know who 阿倍仲麻呂 is (and his famous poem in 百人一首). He served in the Tang Dynasty and later appointed to the Governor of Northern Vietnam and was stationed in Hanoi. His official title was 安南節度使.
@@sara.cbc92 Vietnamese grammar is very simple for an English speaker. But if a person can't handle the tones, which are harder for people as they get older, they won't be understood and will have trouble understanding. The same is true with Chinese. Japanese grammar is much different from English, but isn't as complex as people make it out to be. It takes longer to learn sentence structure, but it's easier to pronounce. There are more sounds that don't exist in English than the video mentions, but if you don't know the difference between the H, W, N and other sounds in English and the ones in Japanese that are represented by those letters in Romaji, you will still be understood.
@@verumverba5711 That's the point though. It would require being taught how to pronounce those Kanji words to get them right in Chinese, or to get those 70% of Vietnamese words to sound like their Chinese equivalent. If you wrote out the Chinese words with the Roman alphabet and compared then to written Vietnamese, it would be easy as an English speaker to recognize the similarities. But if you are a Chinese or Vietnamese speaker, they will more likely sound like different words despite having the same roots. The bottom line is that you can't look at Kanji from Japanese and figure out a Vietnamese word, and if it were possible, then Japanese speakers would pick up on a lot of Vietnamese words and vice versa. On the other hand, there's little need to teach people how to pronounce Japanese words once they know the sounds in Japanese for each syllable. There are a few things that English speakers have problems with, such as double vowels and consonants, but once they are learned, reading becomes easy.
I am Mexican and I am trying to learn these three languages. I would like to know how to learn efficiently since grammar is hard. As a Spanish speaker, I think that Asian languages in the future will be essential to be able to communicate.
There are 808 Chinese characters that are shared between all 3 languages (old Korean hanja writing system). The pronunciations are often different so it is still difficult when learning simultaneously. The grammar structure is very similar so that definitely helps. For me it definitely helped to use resources that break the character down into radicals and showed the origin of the radical so you can mentally associate.
For German speakers, Korean could be easier for you. There are similar vowel sounds in Korean language. ä, ö, ü are all commonly used in Korean language. Also Koreans and Germans have similar dishes: "fermented vegetables" "love for pork recipes"
As someone whose first language was mandarin, and mastered English later, you’re spot on. This is also why being an interpreter is difficult at times. When expressions are used, meaning can be lost or true feeling is missing. I really admire interpreter who can do it fast in real time. I often like to hear press conferences when it’s done live. You may speak both languages fluently, but translation can be tough and tricky.
A few years ago, whilst living in Japan, I found studying kanji to be the aspect that glued the language together. Study 3 or 4 kanji at night, and next day on the subway, the ones you studied are jumping out at you from everywhere.
10:10 correction: German is in the Germanic language family (which also includes English, Dutch, Frisian, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Icelandic) this is only most of them Also the Japanese r sound I believe is present in American English Like the t in “water” is pronounced similarly/the same as the Japanese “r”
There’s a few languages I want to learn and with time the list will likely grow… I considered learning Spanish bc it’s the 2nd most spoken language in the US but somehow i fell in love with Korean. I sometimes get criticized for choosing Korean before learning Spanish (which is also on my list) but then i realize that if i follow what everyone else is saying instead of what i want-I’ll learn nothing. Never fully committing to any new language. Plus you never know where life may take you. I might need Korean someday. This video came at a perfect time. (Also this video has made me feel less afraid of wanting to learn all three of these languages. Actually my brother was a big inspiration bc he taught himself some Mandarin Chinese when we were younger) ❤
In my guess, this is a relative thing. Korean and Japanese have the same word sequence for each other. So learners don't need detailed hard grammar courses like English to speak fluently. But Chinese is a member of Indo-European in linguistic theories, thus, Korean and Japanese people might feel some harsh moments when they become Chinese learners. Therefore, many Chinese people can be the fastest English learners since the word sequences are the same as English. So we can see many Western people who can speak Chinese fluently. For instance, a current high official in the present Australian government showed that he speaks Chinese fluently in an interview.
As a native Chinese speaker, never thought of '好' as 'mother' and 'baby'. omg, similar to me trying to memorise english words by figuring out meanings behind it [TvT]. However, as the 'native ways of leaning Chinese', I think I learnt words during my 1st grade to around 3rd grade by memorising them straight away. Usually we were asked to copy these words, 4 times for each word and then had quiz on them the next day or so. I felt harsh while learning Chinese too, as a native...
Thank you for this wonderful video Dr Sealey. I'm also teaching myself Chinese (Mandarin) purely due to my love for Chinese history and my admiration for Buddhism and Daoism. As a British Indian, I relish the spiritual bonds China and India shared throughout history. I hope the two countries can grow side by side. I wish all those reading my comment peace and the best of luck with their studies.
As a Chinese, I also think there is no need for conflict between China and India. Both countries have their own great culture and long history. The government should do its best for the people's lives, not political attack.
Love this video! I’m Singaporean so I’ve been speaking English and Chinese since I was young. Personally as a native speaker, I remembered struggling a lot with memorising thousands of chinese characters despite already learning it from my parents ever since I was a baby. I think a non-native speaker will struggle with the vocabulary even more than I did. Secondly, as a person interested in learning a third language, I found korean to be slightly easier than japanese, mainly because i found kanji far too similar to chinese and struggled remembering the different meanings and pronunciation for the exact same character. On the other hand, the hangul is indeed extremely simple to understand and I’ve been finding it a joy to self-learn so far :)
I'm learning Mandarin then I'd like to learn Korean because it doesn't use characters (hanja is for very specific uses), since Korean and Japanese have a similar grammar that would help me then by knowing hanzi I can take advantage to learn kanji. Since I'm a Spanish speaker pronunciation shouldn't be much of a problem, but who knows.
Thank you for introducing Japanese, my first language. I watch your videos for English listening practice, motivating myself, or just for fun and now really happy to know you are interested in Japanese language as well as other South Asian languages!
I speak Japanese at near-native level and also speak conversational Korean. (Incidentally, I can also read and write both languages.) I can tell that Dr. Izzy speaks English (and probably Chinese) at a native level, but not Japanese. And Korean probably not at all because I didn’t hear her say anything in Korean throughout the video; however, in my experience (almost 30 years in Asia, mostly Tokyo) all her analysis is spot on. Japanese and Korean are amazingly similar grammatically with Japanese being far, far easier to pronounce. Korean grammar is a bit more difficult. In terms of reading and writing, you should be able to master hangul within a week. As for learning to read and write Japanese, it’s gonna take a while - you will never stop learning all the various readings of the thousand(s) of kanji you need to read the language. But if you wanna get conversational in any of these three languages, Japanese is easily the easiest. Especially if you know Korean.
I am an native Korean speaker and Japanese was very easy to learn because grammar is exactly the same and there are many similar words but it get harder as you dig deeper
absolutely agree with your last words ---- motivation is key. In order to learn something well, you have to : 1. understand it 2. find it useful 3. find it interesting If all three criteria are met, sky is the limit for you.
For Chinese speakers, it is difficult to infer meanings from Japanese kanji. The same holds true for Japanese as well. It's like reading German without knowing German. You might be able to guess a small portion of what they're saying, but it's a different language nonetheless.
我是越南人。高中毕业后，我移民到了美国。 我能说流利的越南语和英语。我也在网上自学中文多十年了。 I am Vietnamese. After I graduated from high school, I immigrated to the US. I can speak Vietnamese and English fluently. I have also self learned Mandarin on line for more than ten years. I like to share some information on Vietnamese language relating to Chinese language: Vietnamese spoken language is a mix of Vietnamese and Chinese, like Japanese and Korean languages. Up to a hundred years ago, Vietnam used Chinese writing (pronounced with a Chinese dialect) for official written language. Vietnamese had its own spoken language but the written language, which is derived from Chinese writing, only used by the intellectuals. Then at the beginning of 20th century, the French and other western peoples helped Vietnam to compile the romanization of Vietnamese language, similar to Pinyin. Now, not many Vietnam people can recognize Chinese writing or old Vietnamese writing any more. I would say the difficulty of learning spoken Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese language are the same for foreigners. I feel like it is easier for Vietnamese to pick up the sound of Cantonese dialect than that of Mandarin dialect because of geographic proximity. But learning reading Chinese characters (汉字- HànZì) take more time but it is not that too difficult if you have learned the basic spoken Chinese language through Pinyin. You have to memorize Han zi. If you keep reading and writing Han zi then you will remember the Han zi. If you never see a certain Han zi before, you cannot read it. Or if you know how to speak a Chinese word but never learn how to read that word in Han zi, you cannot read or write it.
On the other hand, reading Latin alphabetical Vietnamese writing is much easier after you have learned Vietnamese alphabets and tone marks (similar to the idea of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)). You can pronounce the Vietnamese word correctly when reading without even knowing the meaning of the it. If you know spoken Vietnamese and have a lot of vocabulary, learning to read Vietnamese is not that difficult. But one good benefit for China to keep Han zi is to allow all Chinese people with different dialects to communicate with one single writing system. It is like the symbol “1” can be understood by all of people in the world but pronounced differently. Having a same writing system have helped the unification of a very large country with different dialects. Any Chinese people can read the same Han zi, even pronounced differently.
I am holding back on a bunch of thoughts (my previous draft was lost too). However I do appreciate the conversation you foster with this video, with care. Just wanted to interject on water 水 : • shui3 (Mandarin) • すい ("sui"- Japanese) In this context, you're not comparing using "mizu", which is for drinking water. Kanji is a tricky game of knowing which pronounciation and character you're going to read/write because you memorized the contextual usage when you learned Japanese. Actually, that's the entire language -- knowing what to choose to properly speak or write a word or phrase, based on context and audience. Korean is similar too, like you mentioned (honorifics are stricter, IMO). There is an advantage in Kanji if you studied Chinese beforehand, but only for reading, and even that, you might not understand the context with the way the Han zi is being used in Japanese text. Kanji mixes traditional and simplified Chinese too, which is a really funny situation when someone who only studied Japanese of the three, reads and scratches their head at the traditional Han zi character you chose versus the simplified one you were supposed to in the Hiragana-Kanji hot mess you wrote (true story). Hangul is such a nice writing system for this (but I didn't study it long enough to be able to comment more on it). Also: • seoi2 in Cantonese (which, I'm terrible at, but I think it almost sounds exactly like if you couldn't decide between speaking Mandarin and Japanese, you decided to speak a combination of the two) -- A really nice comparison among the three languages is actually in "library" which I think is a beautiful summation of how the three countries highly value scholarly pursuits. • 圖書館 （tu2 shu1 guan3) - Mandarin • 図書館 (としょかん / toshokan) - Japanese • 도서관 (do seo gwan) - Korean
Indeed, Hangul is basically extremely easy to learn - IF You are lucky to find a good explanation of that system of arrangement of the basic graphemes. I had a book some 30 years ago that failed(!) to explain that (otherwise it was not that bad), so I stood in front of a mountain - because there was no internet 30 years ago. Then last year I found some nice and simple explanation of it, and I could not believe myself that it enabled me to learn Hangul literally in a few hours. It is so beautiful!
The trick is that Koreans are very precise with pronunciation of vowels and diphthongs, but sloppier with consonants. This is the opposite of English speakers, where often English dialects are characterized by differing vowel pronunciation. Some of the Korean vowels, especially the diphthongs, sound very much alike to me as an English speaker who's reasonably fluent in the language.
I only started learning chinese this last semester but it is too difficult, like I study some characters today and I end up forgetting them three days later, it makes go insane …
What were you expecting? Its absurd to retain every word you see only looking at them one time. The chinese is not hard because of forgetting words a couple of days later, actually this is the essence of learning a language in general. There is always something you will forget no matter how easy it seems. Give time to time. Don’t push yourself into unrealistic objectives. You will need a lot of time - a lot a lot a lot a lot - to acquire a word and to masterize a language i would say a whole life.
Hello Izzy, I am Korean-American been living in the US for 4 decades plus since I came here when I was a teenager. There’s much I could say about the Korean language. Yeah, your information is sufficient. I’ve been a subscriber since your last year at Cambridge University. Glad to see that you’re making much progress in different aspects of life.
I had a girlfriend from South Korea when I lived in US. To make a joke to her, once I said I knew a Korean word. The funny thing is, I told her a word only used by North Korea, so she was kind of mad haha
As a student of all three languages I would like to comment on this topic and give my insights to the studying experience. The Chinese language is rather simple grammatically but the pronunciation and the absenceof inflections in the language and grammar makes it rather difficult for learners to reshape their way of thinking so it becomes more Chinese linguistically. The reading is also the hardest out of the three languages since the chiense language contains an innumerable amount of Chinese characters which are combined to create a vast array of ideas and concepts that may not even exist in your own native language. The Japanese is an easier language phonetically but its grammar and inflections can be a daunting challenge for new learner and especially to those who are new to agglutinative languages. The reading and writing system is also rather challenging since it combines two Japanese "native" writing scripts with the Kanji (Chinese characters). Furthermore the Kanji has multiple readings since their pronunciation has been borrowed from different times during the development of the chinese language (this is what my Japanese professor told me so do not quote me on this bit of information). However despite its difficulty there is a method to this language's madness. The Korean language is rather similar to the Japanese language and as Dr izzy sealey said if you know one of them you know the other. however the catch is that while the idea might be the same they may also differ slightly from each other. The reading and writing is rather easy in comparison to the other two languages however the Korean language do have some vowels that is not present in the English language and it will take time for the learner to fully master it. Furthermore the reading aspect is slightly harder than just learning how to speak the language since the Korean written language has batchim/patchim to their syllable blocks. Eg. Korean students learn early on that the ㄱ symbol is supposed to be sounded as something between a soft g sound and a k sound however in the word 막내 the ㄱ symbol should be pronounced as a gn sound.) So which one is the easiest language to learn? I would say that it depends on what your native language is, what kind of other language learning experience you have and on your extra linguistic knowledge. For example, an English speaker may have an easier time with the grammar of the chinese language but is struggling with its pronunciation, or they may find that korean and/or Japanese pronunciation is easy but the onslaught of increasingly difficult and abstract grammar concepts might deter them from continuing their language studies. In other words, the easiest answer to this question is "it depends". However once you find patterns in the language it will become easier to study it and one day it will click for you like running water in a gentle stream.
I speak all these languages and they are difficult in their own ways. Chinese is easy in grammar but hard in writing; Japanese is simple in pronunciation but complicated in its writing system; Korean is more subtle than Japanese in grammar. Luckily, I know the Chinese characters.
I agree. As a Korean, I found Japanese easy to learn to speak, but the writing system is unnecessarily complicated imo. Kanji isn't necessary 90% of the time. Context can convey meaning just fine, if you wrote in hiragana.
I am from North East India near China and Myanmar. My language is a sub-family of sino- Tibetan language. And am learning Nihongo and Mandarin❤. Mandarin sounds familiar with my language 😂
The fun fact: Hangul was invented by Korean King Sejong in 1425. King Sejong was also a very brilliant scholar and sacrificed his whole life to the invention of Hangul. Owing to a very strong opposition to invention of new writing system by conservative party, King Sejong had to invent Hangul alone secretly without any aid by his servants.
Native English speaker here-I initially tried learning Japanese and found it a little too different for my brain, so switched to Korean. Since it’s so much easier to read hangeul, it’s made it a lot easier to learn the grammar, which in turn means that Japanese is much easier now that I’ve picked it up again (though I still get intimidated by the three different writing structures 😂).
I’m a Chinese living in Japan and I create TH-cam videos in Japanese and Mandarin. I speak three languages. This video is great!!!-I can tell you put a lot of effort into researching it!
I speak Japanee very well and know some Korean, so here i my opinion: Japanese is by far the easiest. There are a lot of English load workds like "conpyuta-" (computer), "sukuta-" (Skooter) and "Bata-" (Butter). Japanese do tend to truncate things, so "teribishon" (television) got shortened to "teribi" "pasonaru conpyuta-" turned into "pasocon". Even so, a lot of the loan words are recognizable. The pronunciation is way easier than Korean or Chinese. The ony really tricky thing is that some words have short vowel sounds and some words have longer ones with a different meaning. So "obasan" means "Aunt" but "Obaasan" (where the a is held a bit longer) means "Granny". Also some words change meaning based on stress like "HAshi" (first syllable stressed) is chopsticks, but "hashi" (no stress is Bridge. There are also a lot of synonyms. The hardest part of Japanese is reading and writing. The phonetic systems are not too hard to learn but the kanji are difficult because most kanji have a native Japanese reading AND a chinese reading. So the water kanji 水 can be read as mizu (Japanese reading) or sui (chinese reading). Also most kanji are part of two character words, which you need to learn individually, both for meaning and pronunciation. So even though only about 2000 kanji are used, you need to learn thousands of pairs also. Don't believe me? 会社 "kaisha" means corporation while 社会 "shakai" (the same two character flipped) means "society" or "community". So kanji is a bit of a bear, On the plus side, the characters do help to suggest the meanings, once you learn them. The grammer is very different from English, but, like most things in Japanese it's very logical. Unlike European languages, there are no genders, almost no noun conjugations and almost no irregular verbs. So you can learn it faster than you think. Korean has similar grammer to Japanese. But they use fewer English loan words and these are harder to recognize. For example, Coffee is kohi- in Japanese and kopi in Korean. Also Korean pronunciation is harder for English speakers. For example, they have a G sound and a K sound. But they also have a GG sound which is in-between the two and hard for English speakers to hear and make. Similarly there's a J, a CH and a midway sound. Hangul is very easy to learn, but unlike Japanese or Chinese, it doesn't give you any hints about the meaning of what you're reading. So I think that Korean is harder than Japanese. Chinee is hardest. They use very few English loan words and the writing system is a bear (although, in fairness, they don't have multiple character readings like Japanese does). But the worst part are tones. I just can't hear these and I think it would take a long time to get proficient in them. But, ultimately, I agree with the advice here. I love Japan and Japanese, so, even if it was hardest rather than easiest, I'd have chosen it. All of these require committment and interest, so choose what you Love and take the individual challenges of each language as just that--challenges to be overcome to your goal.
Maybe an unpopular opinion, but if you’re passionate about a certain language and have a strong reason for learning it, none of them will be “hard to learn”. I’m currently learning Korean using Pimsleur (2 lessons a day) and a couple Anki decks and so far it’s been constant dopamine hits getting things right that I thought I would forget immediately.
For speakers of languages related to Latin, Chinese Mandarin is a totally different system and it has a lot to do with its traditional culture. Chinese characters are“表意文字”while others are“表音文字”（not sure）. If people learn its traditional culture and ancient Chinese, it'll help a lot to learn Chinese Mandarin but that's not an easy way. If someone has knowledge about Mandarin, it'll be easier to understand Japanese language.
Not entirely correct. There are six categories of chinese characters. Pictogram is one of the six. However the majority is on the category of ideogram plus phonetic. Just an example of this major type. 評 means to comment. 言 is the pictogram part to denote things about talking, speech etc. 平 is the phoetic part.
I've been learning Japanese for over a year now and I like to watch videos like this. If I have more free time I would like to learn all of these languages cuz they sound so magnificent for me for some reason, and the culture and difference about each country also the thing that I really like. 日本語が大好きで、今年、N4レーブルをあるのが欲しいです。私は頑張りますよ。♡
I am self studying mandarin but I'm also in China Club at my school and they give chinese lessons lol I would've learned Japanese first but that China club has native speakers and is just such a huge resource that I won't have in a few years so I decided to start with Chinese first lol
I feel so much smarter just watching this, the fork microphone is genius. I would like to mention that the paper screen wears out the pen nibs really fast the company should totally start selling nibs too.
The mic on the fork 😂 I don't know about Chinese or Korean, but yes indeed Japanese grammar is a lot simpler compared to English or French and if you are indeed a native English speaker (especially if you speak the Queen's English) I feel Japanese pronunciation would feel quite naturally to you once you get into it.
@@rokko_fable Difficulty of Mandarin is not its grammar per se. However, you get several terms with seemingly the same meaning but a lot of subtle differences, using them correctly can get tricky. And then there are idioms - 成语, which add another level of difficulty :)
One point about Japanese Kanji. Kanji is not the same as traditional Chinese characters as Kanji also went trough a simplification process, however fewer characters were simplified and those who were simplified did not change as much as in Chinese (in general) . This means that there are characters that exists in three different versions, "Traditonal", "simplified mandarin", "simplified japanese kanji" example: teeth= 齒-齿-歯 group:= 團-团-団 picture= 圖-图-図,
I think the Korean writing system, Hangul, is the best and easiest alphabet system in the world, and also might be the only one alphabet system that we exactly know who, when, why and how made it.
Most of words for modern civilization have been made by Japanese since 17th century. And many by Catholic or protestant missionaries in China. All in Chinese characters. It was a very dangerous adventure for Koreans to adopt all-Korean writing in the 1960s. The same pronunciation with multiple meanings could have made Korean language garbage. But they were lucky. First, computers and the Internet make research so easy, especially with Korean alphabets. Second, the absolute dominance of English words, which Korean alphabets are so good at writing, as they sound.
I'm fluent in Chinese with a huge interest in self learning Korean. Yes, I almost completely agree with everything that's said! Just that maybe because I know Mandarin but not Japanese, I find Japanese incredibly difficult because many words and phrases do not have similarities with Mandarin or English unlike Korean and that Japanese has such a complicated writing system. But from this video, it's easy to see that you have got quite an in depth grasp of Mandarin having just learnt it.
Hello, I loved your video because students ask me all the time "Which language is more difficult?" I am American (Dallas, TX) and I teach English and Spanish. My wife is Filipina. She lived in Hong Kong for eight years and we lived in rural Korea for 5 years. I use the visual that Philippine culture and language is like a boat from Mexico crashed in to a boat from China...and there is where modern culture and language was born. I use Tagalog as much as I can. I have been casually learning Mandarin Chinese but I think I will begin a level of commitment that the language requires. Salamat Po and 고맙습니다!!!
I’m a Chinese (mandarin) native speaker studying in Sydney. Really love your passion in languages! If anyone who sees this wish to have casual mandarin conversations to improve their skills, I’m more than happy to have a chat (like a language exchange?)❤
Japanese is a language that is very easy for beginners to learn. However, when it comes to intermediate courses, it becomes very difficult. The reason is that there are kanji, honorifics, difficult expressions, and slang. However, if you want to enjoy a trip to Japan, the beginner's course is sufficient.
As an American Chinese citizen, my family immigrated to California in the late 1800’s from Guangzhou China. Cantonese was the language spoken in the home and as children we were required to attend Chinese School everyday after attending a traditional American school. Through the decades there were few of us that were still able to converse in Cantonese as it seemed that the language was dying out in our family. As more and more Chinese Nationals immigrated to the U.S., Mandarin has become the dominant Chinese language. Over time I’ve attend language schools to learn Japanese, Korean, and Mandarin. Through my experience I feel that Mandarin has been the most difficult language due to the 4 tones and use of proper enunciation of the words. I still struggle with pronouncing words written in pinyin.
If you leaned a bit of Cantonese, you will notice some Japanese or Korean words pronunciation are closer to Cantonese than to Mandarin, because a lot of sino-japanese and sino-korean pronunciation came from middle-chinese, and Cantonese retain more sounds from middle-chinese, compared to mandarin which diverge due to northern foreign influences. 👍
Actually Korean and Japanese are closer to Minnan (Fujian language) than Cantonese or Mandarin, I speak all three fluently since I was a kid in Singapore.
Japanese is the hardest, no doubt. I've been learning it for 7 years now and there's still so much new stuff I encounter everyday. Don't get me wrong, I love Japan and the Japanese language, but maaaan the difficulty is just insane. I used to think it was easy during the first year or so, but the more I learn, the harder and harder it gets. Sure, the pronunciation is considered to be "easy", but even then there's pitch accent, which arguably makes pronunciation even harder to master than Chinese or Korean. And don't even get me started on the writing, grammar, vocabulary, and honorifics! I'm not denying the other languages have challenges, but I can't even imagine a language being harder than Japanese. It's completely different from English in literally every way possible. At least Chinese has fairly similar grammar to English and Korean has one of the most logical writing systems in the world.
@@AthanasiosJapan This is exactly the reason so many Japanese learners speak with a thick foreign tongue. Correct pronunciation of ANY language is the most important aspect and it's a shame so many ppl don't think so. Using another language as an example, if you can read/write/listen/speak Chinese at a native comprehension level, BUT your pronunciation is slightly off, compared to someone who can speak it with a native pronunciation but maybe doesn't know nearly as many words, the second person will be viewed as having a native grasp of the language and the first person will forever be perceived as someone who merely studies the language.
@@oliver_peng Japanese people from different areas of Japan have different pitch accents. So, if you have friends from various areas and naturally learn from them, inevitablly you will end up having a messed pitch accent. And that's completly fine.
@@AthanasiosJapan That's like saying if a person mixes Australian accent, American accent, British accent, Irish accents it'll sound normal. Except, that's not even what actually happens. The reality of foreign Japanese speakers is more akin to a person who speaks English with a heavy Chinese accent. It's understandable and passable, but really grating to listen to and screams that they're a non-native speaker. People will start speaking slower to you and dumbing down their words because they assume your Japanese level isn't very good.
@@oliver_peng Japanese speak to me exactly at the same speed they speak to other Japanese. I live in Japan for 20 and never noticed any trouble in communucation. Actually, what I have noticed is that Japanese can easily understand foreigners who speak Japanese with heavy foreign accent.
Another fun fact about Korea; Korea has had a tradition that King should study and work hard and have to obey the law. The prince had to also study very hard and the pressure is so hard that some of prince became mad due to the stress. The name of main building in Korean Kyungbokgung palace is Geunjeongjun(근정전), which means that King must work diligently for the people.
Wow this video came out while I was learning Japanese . I already have some prior knowledge on Korean and am partially fluent in it . I’ve also always wanted to learn Chinese . So thank you Izzy for the video
Loved this video as a learner of all three languages! One point you made about the word for “telephone”… it’s one of the few loan words that Chinese takes from Japanese.
As a native Chinese speaker, I have one thing to add as the easy part for learning mandarin compared to learning English, there is only only one standard pronunciation while it doesn’t exist in English. It’s much harder to understand various accents even watch the official news in English, but in Chinese learning once you learned the standard pronunciation, you will hear that standard pronunciation everywhere in all medias which make it easier to understand
@@IzzySealey that is misleading to say the least. Chinese have a great deal of accents. The reason he made that claim was he was just immersed in state media.
It’s been well known to westerners that Chinese is indeed the most difficult East Asian language to learn. From the enormous amounts of characters to the different types of pronunciations, compared to Japanese and Korean. And that’s not all, there are also more than a hundred different dialects spoken in China. It is indeed one of the hardest languages to learn!
Those hundred-plus dialects span different languages. There are many languages spoken in China; there is not a single unifying language called "Chinese" (For example, Cantonese and Mandarin are completely different languages, not dialects of a single language). If two things aren't mutually intelligible they're not dialects, they're languages.
@@TheBilly As been pointed out, the Chinese dialects use almost the same character set, although there are occasional differences in syntax (characters can be in different order in different dialects), and wide differences in pronunciation. It's over stating it to say Cantonese and Mandarin are completely different languages.
Japanese and Korean vocabulary and pronunciation are easier than Chinese, but it’s grammar is very hard, only Chinese grammar is much easier and similar to English/european language, yes Chinese characters are hard to memorize, so are japanese Kanji (Han characters), Korea no longer use Chinese characters, they created their unique alphabets made its language very easy to remember 8:25
People say modern katakana is used for foreign words but it’s actually more like it’s used for transliteration. Onomatopoeia is often written in Katakana too
Animals, plants and fishes are usually written in katakana too (particularly in science books). Although every fish has a unique kanji they're very rare and not listed as one of the 2,200+ official kanjis that are considered essential in Japanese.
As a Chinese, I think the most difficult Western languages to learn are German and French, and the most difficult Eastern language to learn is Japanese. Japanese borrows a lot from Chinese, but it has many unique features. Japanese is easy first and then difficult. After learning Japanese and English, I still think English is the easiest and most useful foreign language to learn. 😂🤣
Dr. Izzy, I am a Chinese, watching your channel several years. It does have strong relationship between these three languages. Now, I also study in England as a PhD. You help me know that PhD's life can be also interesting, you give me a positive lifestyle. Thank you!
The information about hangul (한글) is mostly correct! It should be noted though that the han in hangul is pronounced with an "ah" sound, the way she pronounced it would be more like 헨글. Also, the "sub-parts" of the letters are in fact the letters themselves, they're simply grouped into syllables. 한글 actually has six letters, ㅎㅏ ㄴ ㄱ ㅡ ㄹ. Finally, while hangul is very easy compared to most writing systems, it does have a few challenges, like 받침 (batchim, final consonants).
Everything languages have their own culture background and history which might take time to be fully understand. The chinese grammar is called '白話文' or simply plain chinese, which was introduced one hundred year ago when republic of China been established. It is very similar to western practice. The original chinese system is character based. The context of a sentence (combination of several chinese words as a phase), might be termed as ancient chinese, In Qing dynasty, the common chinese style is called '八股文' those sentences were more concise and phaese are much shorter. At that time, Chinese sentence have no punctuation .
as a filipino-chinese, my chinese great grandfather made us take cantonese classes when we were little, theres nothing that can make me cry more than memorizing hundreds of characters as a 9yr old kid T - T
I’m Malaysia Chinese , currently learning Japanese and live in Japan , soon finish my Language School , next I will learn Korean while I here . How lucky I am born in Malaysia , Multiple languages country, is very effective to understand what meaning of Grammar and Vocabulary.
apart from chinese because of kanji, your proficiencies in the other languages like english and i presume malay offers no real advantages when it comes to learning japanese..
@@lyhthegreat and? being able to speak/understand multiple languages is a skill on it's own. not many people have this/exercise this skill often, or every person on the planet would know 3+ languages.
Thank you for the video! I studied Japanese for three years, and now I am learning Korean and Thai. I have a passion for Asian culture in general. Despite the challenges (given that my native language is Spanish and most information is geared towards English speakers O_O), I have come to love the process of learning (if that makes any sense haha). That being said, Chinese is on another level, and I'm not sure if I'll delve into that language. Nonetheless, I always appreciate your tips and experiences!
Thanks so much to Paperlike for sponsoring this video! Check out the new Paperlike 2.1 with my link paperlike.com/izzy and transform your iPad experience.
Interested in hearing more about resources for self-studying Mandarin? Sign up here: www.izzysealey.com/mandarin-email
Hi. lzzy my dear. Chinese beautiful girl friend how. are. you.
Read the Quran.
@Dr. Izzy Sealey this is very well organized and presented video, especially considering the amount of material covered. There’s one thing I can recommend, don’t eat your mic with a fork, spoons are much better to use (LOL) 😂
Yeğ / Yüğ = upper, superior
Yeğ-mek > Yemek (to eat)= to add on oneself, to take it in one's essence
Yeğ-im> Yem= provender, fodder > Yemiş= fruit
Yüğ-le-mek > yeğlemek = to keep it on top of others, make it relatively superior, ~to prefer
Yüğ-ka-yer-u > yukarı =(which side is on top) = Up
Yüğ-ce > yüce = superior in level /sublime
Yüğ-ce-al-mek > yücelmek = to achieve superiority in level
Yüğ-sü-ek > yüksek = high
Yüğ-sel > yüksel = exponential , superlative
Yüğ-sü-al-mek> yükselmek = to rise to a high level, to ascend
Yüğ-sük > yüzük =(ring)= jewelry worn on the finger top
Yüğ-sü-en-mek > yüksünmek= to feel slighted / take offended
Yüğ-ük > yük =(load)> carried on top, undertaken
Yüğ-ün > yün =(wool)> the feathers that on sheep
Yüğ-üt > yiğit =(valiant)> superior in character
Yüğ-en > yüğen /yeğen =(nephew)> which is kept superior, held in high esteem, valued, precious (yüen > yen 元)
Yüğ-en-cük > yüğençüğ > yinçi (inci) =(precious little thing)> pearl , 珍珠
Yüğengi >yengi> yeni =(new)> what's that coming on top , what's coming after
Yüğenge > yenge =(brother's wife)> who's coming after, added to the family later (new bride)
Yüğ-üne /Yeğ-ine > yine/ gene =again /over and over > yeniden = anew /once more
Yüğ-en-mek> yenmek = to overcome, to cope with, to subdue
Yüğ-en-el-mek > yenilmek= to be overcome, to be subdued, to show weakness
Yüğengil > yengil =remains on top of, light, weak
Şan= Glory, splendor 單于 > Şan-Yüğ =Exalted glorious
Yormak=to tire= to arrive over someone (too many). (too much) to go onto
(Yörmek)> Örmek=(to operate on something), to weave on top , to wrap around
(Yörümek)> Yürümek= to go over something, to wander around
(yöre=precincts) (yörük=nomad)
Yürümek= to walk (yürü=go on)
Yülümek=to go by slipping over something
Yalamak= to lick >~to take swiping/ by scraping on something off
Yolmak= to pluck=to pull by snatching off, tear off (~flatten the top)
Yılmak=to throw down from the one's own top (~get bored), to hit the ground from above (yıldırım=lightning…yıldız=star)
Yurmak= to pull onto, cover over (yur-ut>yurt=tabernacle) (yur-gan>yorgan=quilt)
Yırmak=to bring it on top of, to take it off (yırışmak>yarışmak= to race> to overcome each other)
(Yır-et-mak)>Yırtmak= to tear= to get it inside-out or bottom to top (by pulling from both sides) (~tide over, get rid of it)
Yarmak= to split, to tear apart= go vertically from top to bottom, separate by cutting off
Yermek=to pull down ,pull to the ground
Germek=to tense= to pull it in all directions > Sermek= to spread it in all directions
Yıkmak= to overthrow , take down from top to bottom, turn upside down
Yığmak= to stack= put on top of each other, dump on top of each other (yığlamak=shed tears over and over, cry over)
Yağmak=get rained on, get spilled on / to pour down from above
Yakmak= to burn out=to purify matter by heating and removing mass , reduce its volume
Yoğmak=make condensed=to tighten and purify, narrow by turning, get rid of own volume (~get dead)
Yoğurmak= to knead=tighten and thicken , reduce volume, bring to consistency
(Yogurt=thickened milk product)
Yuğmak=to purify squeezing to clean (Yuğamak>yıkamak= to wash)
Yiv = sharp, pointed (yivlemek= sharpen the tip)
Yuvmak=to squeezing thin out, narrow (yuvka>yufka= thin dough) (yuvka>yuka=thin, shallow) (yuvuz>yavuz=thin, weak, delicate)
Yuvarlamak=to round off=narrow by turning (yuva (smallest shelter)= nest) (yavru (smallest)= cub )
Yummak=to shut by squeezing, close tightly (Yumurmak=make it closes inward) (yumruk=fist) (yumurta= egg)
The names of some organs
it's used as the suffix for nouns, “Ak”= ~each of both
(Yan= side)
Yan-ak= each of both sides (of the face) >Yanak= cheek
(Gül= rose)
Kül-ak = each of both the roses >Kulak= Ear
(Şek=facet)
Şek-ak = each of both sides (of forehead) >Şakak= temple
(Dal=subsection, branch)
Dal-ak=dalak= Spleen
(Böbür=scarlet fleck)
Böbür-ak=böbrek= Kidney = each of both red-spots / blodfleck
Bağça-ak>(Paça-ak)>bacak= Leg (ankle)
(Pati = paw)
Batı-ak>pathiak>phatyak>hadyak>adyak)=Ayak= the foot > each of the feet
(Taş=stone)
Taş-ak=testicle
Akciğer=(each of) both lungs
Tül-karn-ak =that obscures/ shadowing each of both dark/ covert periods= Karanlık (batıni) çağların her birini örten tül
Zhu'l-karn-eyn=the (shader) owner of each of both times
Dhu'al-chorn-ein=double-horned-one=(the horned hunter)Herne the hunter> Cernunnos> Karneios
it's used as the suffix for verbs, “Ak /ek“=a-qa ~which thing to / what’s to…
Er-mek = to get / to reach
Bar-mak (Varmak)= to arrive / to achieve
Er-en-mek > erinmek / Bar-an-mak > barınmak =arrive at one's own
Erin-ek / barın-ak = what’s there to arrive at oneself
Ernek / Barnak > Parmak = Finger
Çiğ=uncooked, raw
Çiğne-mek =to chew
Çiğne-ek>Çiğneh> Çene = Chin
Tut-mak = to hold / to keep
Tut-ak=Dudak= Lip
Tara-mak = to comb/ ~to rake
Tara-ak > Tarak =(what’s there to comb)> the comb
Tara-en-mak > taranmak = to comb oneself
Taran-ak > Tırnak =(what’s there to comb oneself)> fingernail
Omg I love the fork microphone.
where to get the fork microphone? Amazon?
@@weidongli954 probably DIY
it just ordinary fork with mic clip on it
你让啥发生
As a Chinese speaker, I think you pronunciation is really great and I have been learning English for over one decade.I hope you can make greater progress in learning Chinese.
她是中国人。。
@@JasonG761她是美国人。 华语是自学的。 太聪明了。
@@ignatiuschua5268 她一看就是混血长相 家里至少一位会讲中文的
@@JasonG761 我家也有人会讲华语，但孩子们都讲的超烂。 我自己也好的不怎么样。
油管式评论真是够无聊的，
One information I miss at 05:35 is that Japanese reading ist divided into kunyomi (the japanese way of reading it) and onyomi (the sino-japanese reading). So yeah, 水 would be みず (mizu) but the onyomi is すい (sui), which is close to the chinese shui. Mostly (but there are MANY exceptions) Kanji+Kanji=onyomi-reading while Kanji+Hiragana=kunyomi-reading.
i noticed this too! i picked up the onyomi version years ago from a tv show i watched, since it was part of the central antagonist's weapon name (kyouka suigetsu). the last part was translated as "water moon," so i thought it was odd she only mentioned that character could be read as mizu and not sui which is way closer to the chinese pronounciation.
very good catch!
hiragana that follows kanji is called okurigana btw. just a fun fact 😅😅
ありがとうございます！ this actually confuses me a lot but thanks lol
Very informative video! Katakana and hirakana in Japanese were also developed from Chinese writing, They are more like radicals in Chinese characters.
*hiragana
I'm learning Korean right now, and I love it. This was a great video and helped a lot with the understanding with what each entails. Thank you!
Izzyさん、こんにちは。わたしは、日本人です。 Thank you very much for picking up our languages as the topic. I was amazed to learn how deep you know the differences of three languages such as cultural back ground or grammar which even I don’t know. I felt much closer to you now.
ありがとうございました。
As a native Japanese speaker I’m glad you introduced our language briefly but correctly!
I agree with you completely as a Japanese girl;)
それな！😎
Have you read about unit 731?
@@andresmattos7541 What does that have to do with the Japanese language?
@@andresmattos7541 What? 天安门事件？
Glad to have chanced upon this video! I'm a Chinese Singaporean, learning Japanese and intending to hop onto learning Korean in a couple of years! It is like a family link btw these 3 languages!
A few corrections and additional comments
Kanji was also simplified and is not equivalent to traditional Chinese hanzi
鉄 - kanji
铁 - simplified hanzi
鐵 - traditional hanzi
There are, of course similarities, but not all of them are the same, and there are also characters created in Japan.
Katakana and Hiragana are not alphabets, the are syllabaries.
Katakana is not just for foreigner words, it is often used in signs, company names, onomatopoeia, traditional musical notations, or to empathize a word, similarly to italics. Complicate kanji words are sometimes mixed with katakana to make them easier to read, which is common in fields like medicine.
Hi Izzy, thanks for posting this fun and informative video!
My wife is Vietnamese and I’m Japanese. She would blast Japanese as the craziest language because of all those Kanjis, and I would retort roasting Vietnamese as the nastiest language because of those six tones. We don’t get along in terms of languages but our little son speaks both languages with ease😆
Vietnamese....is the most elegant language let's put it that way
Kanjis? Dude, apparently you don’t know anything about Vietnamese! It’s said that Vietnamese has nearly 70% of Sino-Viet vocabularies(which are borrowed Sinitic words like Japanese). The fun fact is that Vietnamese’s official written language used to be classical Chinese that ended in 1920. Further, in pronunciation, Vietnamese pronounced the Sino-Viet closer to middle Chinese than Japanese. I’ve yet to mention that ancients Chinese words are deeply entrenched in Vietnamese, that the natives think it’s part of Vietnamese and not Chinese… While it’s true that Vietnamese is a Mon-Khmer language, it uses the same percentage of Chinese loan words (Kanji in Japan) as Japanese… Maybe your wife should have taught you how to correctly pronounce those Kanji words 😂😂😂😂😂
Perhaps next time you may wish to remind her that Vietnamese historical texts were written in KANJI. HANOI is 河内, Vietnam is 越南, and Ho Chi-Minh is 胡志明 in KANJI. The phonetics of Vietnamese, however, is a different matter. Whether listening to Vietnamese or Cantonese...that is a challenge.
I'm sure you know who 阿倍仲麻呂 is (and his famous poem in 百人一首). He served in the Tang Dynasty and later appointed to the Governor of Northern Vietnam and was stationed in Hanoi. His official title was 安南節度使.
@@sara.cbc92 Vietnamese grammar is very simple for an English speaker. But if a person can't handle the tones, which are harder for people as they get older, they won't be understood and will have trouble understanding. The same is true with Chinese. Japanese grammar is much different from English, but isn't as complex as people make it out to be. It takes longer to learn sentence structure, but it's easier to pronounce. There are more sounds that don't exist in English than the video mentions, but if you don't know the difference between the H, W, N and other sounds in English and the ones in Japanese that are represented by those letters in Romaji, you will still be understood.
@@verumverba5711 That's the point though. It would require being taught how to pronounce those Kanji words to get them right in Chinese, or to get those 70% of Vietnamese words to sound like their Chinese equivalent. If you wrote out the Chinese words with the Roman alphabet and compared then to written Vietnamese, it would be easy as an English speaker to recognize the similarities. But if you are a Chinese or Vietnamese speaker, they will more likely sound like different words despite having the same roots. The bottom line is that you can't look at Kanji from Japanese and figure out a Vietnamese word, and if it were possible, then Japanese speakers would pick up on a lot of Vietnamese words and vice versa.
On the other hand, there's little need to teach people how to pronounce Japanese words once they know the sounds in Japanese for each syllable. There are a few things that English speakers have problems with, such as double vowels and consonants, but once they are learned, reading becomes easy.
I am Mexican and I am trying to learn these three languages. I would like to know how to learn efficiently since grammar is hard. As a Spanish speaker, I think that Asian languages in the future will be essential to be able to communicate.
There are 808 Chinese characters that are shared between all 3 languages (old Korean hanja writing system). The pronunciations are often different so it is still difficult when learning simultaneously. The grammar structure is very similar so that definitely helps. For me it definitely helped to use resources that break the character down into radicals and showed the origin of the radical so you can mentally associate.
¿Hay algún recurso para saber el origen de esos radicales?@@ChrisP978
I'm so proud of your Fork microphone.
For German speakers, Korean could be easier for you. There are similar vowel sounds in Korean language. ä, ö, ü are all commonly used in Korean language. Also Koreans and Germans have similar dishes: "fermented vegetables" "love for pork recipes"
As someone whose first language was mandarin, and mastered English later, you’re spot on. This is also why being an interpreter is difficult at times. When expressions are used, meaning can be lost or true feeling is missing. I really admire interpreter who can do it fast in real time. I often like to hear press conferences when it’s done live. You may speak both languages fluently, but translation can be tough and tricky.
A few years ago, whilst living in Japan, I found studying kanji to be the aspect that glued the language together. Study 3 or 4 kanji at night, and next day on the subway, the ones you studied are jumping out at you from everywhere.
10:10 correction: German is in the Germanic language family (which also includes English, Dutch, Frisian, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Icelandic) this is only most of them
Also the Japanese r sound I believe is present in American English
Like the t in “water” is pronounced similarly/the same as the Japanese “r”
There’s a few languages I want to learn and with time the list will likely grow… I considered learning Spanish bc it’s the 2nd most spoken language in the US but somehow i fell in love with Korean. I sometimes get criticized for choosing Korean before learning Spanish (which is also on my list) but then i realize that if i follow what everyone else is saying instead of what i want-I’ll learn nothing. Never fully committing to any new language. Plus you never know where life may take you. I might need Korean someday. This video came at a perfect time.
(Also this video has made me feel less afraid of wanting to learn all three of these languages. Actually my brother was a big inspiration bc he taught himself some Mandarin Chinese when we were younger)
❤
In my guess, this is a relative thing. Korean and Japanese have the same word sequence for each other. So learners don't need detailed hard grammar courses like English to speak fluently. But Chinese is a member of Indo-European in linguistic theories, thus, Korean and Japanese people might feel some harsh moments when they become Chinese learners. Therefore, many Chinese people can be the fastest English learners since the word sequences are the same as English. So we can see many Western people who can speak Chinese fluently. For instance, a current high official in the present Australian government showed that he speaks Chinese fluently in an interview.
You arrived at the perfect moment. This year that is coming I have planned to learn Korean :)!
As a native Chinese speaker, never thought of '好' as 'mother' and 'baby'. omg, similar to me trying to memorise english words by figuring out meanings behind it [TvT]. However, as the 'native ways of leaning Chinese', I think I learnt words during my 1st grade to around 3rd grade by memorising them straight away. Usually we were asked to copy these words, 4 times for each word and then had quiz on them the next day or so. I felt harsh while learning Chinese too, as a native...
Thank you for this wonderful video Dr Sealey. I'm also teaching myself Chinese (Mandarin) purely due to my love for Chinese history and my admiration for Buddhism and Daoism. As a British Indian, I relish the spiritual bonds China and India shared throughout history. I hope the two countries can grow side by side. I wish all those reading my comment peace and the best of luck with their studies.
谢谢你的喜爱
As a Chinese, I also think there is no need for conflict between China and India. Both countries have their own great culture and long history. The government should do its best for the people's lives, not political attack.
Well said 👏
very well said, can't agree more.
Hope both India and China are not being used by imperialists!
Love this video! I’m Singaporean so I’ve been speaking English and Chinese since I was young. Personally as a native speaker, I remembered struggling a lot with memorising thousands of chinese characters despite already learning it from my parents ever since I was a baby. I think a non-native speaker will struggle with the vocabulary even more than I did.
Secondly, as a person interested in learning a third language, I found korean to be slightly easier than japanese, mainly because i found kanji far too similar to chinese and struggled remembering the different meanings and pronunciation for the exact same character.
On the other hand, the hangul is indeed extremely simple to understand and I’ve been finding it a joy to self-learn so far :)
You are Chinese? I have started learning Chinese recently and I would like more interaction with the locals.
I'm learning Mandarin then I'd like to learn Korean because it doesn't use characters (hanja is for very specific uses), since Korean and Japanese have a similar grammar that would help me then by knowing hanzi I can take advantage to learn kanji. Since I'm a Spanish speaker pronunciation shouldn't be much of a problem, but who knows.
I'm Chinese, I'm learning English by myself,but it is difficult for me,can you teach me English,and i can teach you Chinese😅
@@maklam3935 whom are you asking ?
i am talking to you,and i gald to see your reply,thanks,good luck
Thank you for introducing Japanese, my first language.
I watch your videos for English listening practice, motivating myself, or just for fun and now really happy to know you are interested in Japanese language as well as other South Asian languages!
Yes,, I learn English, Chinese, Korean and now, Japanese. Your video is very interesting. My mother tongue is Cantonese. Thanks so much for sharing!
I speak Japanese at near-native level and also speak conversational Korean. (Incidentally, I can also read and write both languages.) I can tell that Dr. Izzy speaks English (and probably Chinese) at a native level, but not Japanese. And Korean probably not at all because I didn’t hear her say anything in Korean throughout the video; however, in my experience (almost 30 years in Asia, mostly Tokyo) all her analysis is spot on. Japanese and Korean are amazingly similar grammatically with Japanese being far, far easier to pronounce. Korean grammar is a bit more difficult. In terms of reading and writing, you should be able to master hangul within a week. As for learning to read and write Japanese, it’s gonna take a while - you will never stop learning all the various readings of the thousand(s) of kanji you need to read the language. But if you wanna get conversational in any of these three languages, Japanese is easily the easiest. Especially if you know Korean.
I am an native Korean speaker and Japanese was very easy to learn because grammar is exactly the same and there are many similar words but it get harder as you dig deeper
absolutely agree with your last words ---- motivation is key. In order to learn something well, you have to :
1. understand it
2. find it useful
3. find it interesting
If all three criteria are met, sky is the limit for you.
日本語のことを取り上げてくれてありがとうございます。😊
For Chinese speakers, it is difficult to infer meanings from Japanese kanji. The same holds true for Japanese as well. It's like reading German without knowing German. You might be able to guess a small portion of what they're saying, but it's a different language nonetheless.
こんにちは、Dr. Izzy. I'm Japanese and I'm learning English. English is very difficult for Japanese people.
我是越南人。高中毕业后，我移民到了美国。
我能说流利的越南语和英语。我也在网上自学中文多十年了。
I am Vietnamese. After I graduated from high school, I immigrated to the US. I can speak Vietnamese and English fluently. I have also self learned Mandarin on line for more than ten years.
I like to share some information on Vietnamese language relating to Chinese language:
Vietnamese spoken language is a mix of Vietnamese and Chinese, like Japanese and Korean languages.
Up to a hundred years ago, Vietnam used Chinese writing (pronounced with a Chinese dialect) for official written language.
Vietnamese had its own spoken language but the written language, which is derived from Chinese writing, only used by the intellectuals.
Then at the beginning of 20th century, the French and other western peoples helped Vietnam to compile the romanization of Vietnamese language, similar to Pinyin. Now, not many Vietnam people can recognize Chinese writing or old Vietnamese writing any more.
I would say the difficulty of learning spoken Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese language are the same for foreigners.
I feel like it is easier for Vietnamese to pick up the sound of Cantonese dialect than that of Mandarin dialect because of geographic proximity.
But learning reading Chinese characters (汉字- HànZì) take more time but it is not that too difficult if you have learned the basic spoken Chinese language through Pinyin. You have to memorize Han zi.
If you keep reading and writing Han zi then you will remember the Han zi. If you never see a certain Han zi before, you cannot read it. Or if you know how to speak a Chinese word but never learn how to read that word in Han zi, you cannot read or write it.
On the other hand, reading Latin alphabetical Vietnamese writing is much easier after you have learned Vietnamese alphabets and tone marks (similar to the idea of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)). You can pronounce the Vietnamese word correctly when reading without even knowing the meaning of the it. If you know spoken Vietnamese and have a lot of vocabulary, learning to read Vietnamese is not that difficult.
But one good benefit for China to keep Han zi is to allow all Chinese people with different dialects to communicate with one single writing system. It is like the symbol “1” can be understood by all of people in the world but pronounced differently.
Having a same writing system have helped the unification of a very large country with different dialects. Any Chinese people can read the same Han zi, even pronounced differently.
我在自学越南语，发现有很多单词跟中文很像，越学学越感兴趣 哈哈
You are a versatile and hard-working person.
I am holding back on a bunch of thoughts (my previous draft was lost too). However I do appreciate the conversation you foster with this video, with care.
Just wanted to interject on water 水 :
• shui3 (Mandarin)
• すい ("sui"- Japanese)
In this context, you're not comparing using "mizu", which is for drinking water.
Kanji is a tricky game of knowing which pronounciation and character you're going to read/write because you memorized the contextual usage when you learned Japanese. Actually, that's the entire language -- knowing what to choose to properly speak or write a word or phrase, based on context and audience. Korean is similar too, like you mentioned (honorifics are stricter, IMO). There is an advantage in Kanji if you studied Chinese beforehand, but only for reading, and even that, you might not understand the context with the way the Han zi is being used in Japanese text. Kanji mixes traditional and simplified Chinese too, which is a really funny situation when someone who only studied Japanese of the three, reads and scratches their head at the traditional Han zi character you chose versus the simplified one you were supposed to in the Hiragana-Kanji hot mess you wrote (true story). Hangul is such a nice writing system for this (but I didn't study it long enough to be able to comment more on it).
Also:
• seoi2 in Cantonese (which, I'm terrible at, but I think it almost sounds exactly like if you couldn't decide between speaking Mandarin and Japanese, you decided to speak a combination of the two)
--
A really nice comparison among the three languages is actually in "library" which I think is a beautiful summation of how the three countries highly value scholarly pursuits.
• 圖書館 （tu2 shu1 guan3) - Mandarin
• 図書館 (としょかん / toshokan) - Japanese
• 도서관 (do seo gwan) - Korean
Good supplement. Thanks.
有些人就是很有语言天赋，真羡慕能同时掌握3种语言以上的人。
Indeed, Hangul is basically extremely easy to learn - IF You are lucky to find a good explanation of that system of arrangement of the basic graphemes. I had a book some 30 years ago that failed(!) to explain that (otherwise it was not that bad), so I stood in front of a mountain - because there was no internet 30 years ago.
Then last year I found some nice and simple explanation of it, and I could not believe myself that it enabled me to learn Hangul literally in a few hours. It is so beautiful!
The trick is that Koreans are very precise with pronunciation of vowels and diphthongs, but sloppier with consonants. This is the opposite of English speakers, where often English dialects are characterized by differing vowel pronunciation. Some of the Korean vowels, especially the diphthongs, sound very much alike to me as an English speaker who's reasonably fluent in the language.
Japanese writing system originated from Hakka language in Song Dynasty and developed after the Meiji Restoration
I only started learning chinese this last semester but it is too difficult, like I study some characters today and I end up forgetting them three days later, it makes go insane …
You have to be writing the hanzi over and over to be able to write them correctly 😭😭😭😭 and it has to be periodically
Try using an SRS (Spaced Repetition System).
I see writing hanzi not as a chore but as a meditative activity, when I start to write them I solely focus on it and I get relaxed.
What were you expecting? Its absurd to retain every word you see only looking at them one time. The chinese is not hard because of forgetting words a couple of days later, actually this is the essence of learning a language in general. There is always something you will forget no matter how easy it seems. Give time to time. Don’t push yourself into unrealistic objectives.
You will need a lot of time - a lot a lot a lot a lot - to acquire a word and to masterize a language i would say a whole life.
It happened on me when i was six
Why are you so smart. you make the world more better, thank you.
Hello Izzy, I am Korean-American been living in the US for 4 decades plus since I came here when I was a teenager. There’s much I could say about the Korean language. Yeah, your information is sufficient. I’ve been a subscriber since your last year at Cambridge University. Glad to see that you’re making much progress in different aspects of life.
I had a girlfriend from South Korea when I lived in US. To make a joke to her, once I said I knew a Korean word. The funny thing is, I told her a word only used by North Korea, so she was kind of mad haha
ㅋㅋㅋㅋ @@denalisiomontpellier4064
As a student of all three languages I would like to comment on this topic and give my insights to the studying experience. The Chinese language is rather simple grammatically but the pronunciation and the absenceof inflections in the language and grammar makes it rather difficult for learners to reshape their way of thinking so it becomes more Chinese linguistically. The reading is also the hardest out of the three languages since the chiense language contains an innumerable amount of Chinese characters which are combined to create a vast array of ideas and concepts that may not even exist in your own native language.
The Japanese is an easier language phonetically but its grammar and inflections can be a daunting challenge for new learner and especially to those who are new to agglutinative languages. The reading and writing system is also rather challenging since it combines two Japanese "native" writing scripts with the Kanji (Chinese characters). Furthermore the Kanji has multiple readings since their pronunciation has been borrowed from different times during the development of the chinese language (this is what my Japanese professor told me so do not quote me on this bit of information). However despite its difficulty there is a method to this language's madness.
The Korean language is rather similar to the Japanese language and as Dr izzy sealey said if you know one of them you know the other. however the catch is that while the idea might be the same they may also differ slightly from each other. The reading and writing is rather easy in comparison to the other two languages however the Korean language do have some vowels that is not present in the English language and it will take time for the learner to fully master it. Furthermore the reading aspect is slightly harder than just learning how to speak the language since the Korean written language has batchim/patchim to their syllable blocks. Eg. Korean students learn early on that the ㄱ symbol is supposed to be sounded as something between a soft g sound and a k sound however in the word 막내 the ㄱ symbol should be pronounced as a gn sound.)
So which one is the easiest language to learn? I would say that it depends on what your native language is, what kind of other language learning experience you have and on your extra linguistic knowledge. For example, an English speaker may have an easier time with the grammar of the chinese language but is struggling with its pronunciation, or they may find that korean and/or Japanese pronunciation is easy but the onslaught of increasingly difficult and abstract grammar concepts might deter them from continuing their language studies. In other words, the easiest answer to this question is "it depends". However once you find patterns in the language it will become easier to study it and one day it will click for you like running water in a gentle stream.
I speak all these languages and they are difficult in their own ways. Chinese is easy in grammar but hard in writing; Japanese is simple in pronunciation but complicated in its writing system; Korean is more subtle than Japanese in grammar. Luckily, I know the Chinese characters.
I agree. As a Korean, I found Japanese easy to learn to speak, but the writing system is unnecessarily complicated imo. Kanji isn't necessary 90% of the time. Context can convey meaning just fine, if you wrote in hiragana.
I am from North East India near China and Myanmar. My language is a sub-family of sino- Tibetan language. And am learning Nihongo and Mandarin❤. Mandarin sounds familiar with my language 😂
The fun fact: Hangul was invented by Korean King Sejong in 1425. King Sejong was also a very brilliant scholar and sacrificed his whole life to the invention of Hangul. Owing to a very strong opposition to invention of new writing system by conservative party, King Sejong had to invent Hangul alone secretly without any aid by his servants.
Why have i just read in my basic korean book that Kim had many scholars helping him in that duty?
Native English speaker here-I initially tried learning Japanese and found it a little too different for my brain, so switched to Korean. Since it’s so much easier to read hangeul, it’s made it a lot easier to learn the grammar, which in turn means that Japanese is much easier now that I’ve picked it up again (though I still get intimidated by the three different writing structures 😂).
I also love the fork microphone....plus the content of course!
I’m a Chinese living in Japan and I create TH-cam videos in Japanese and Mandarin. I speak three languages. This video is great!!!-I can tell you put a lot of effort into researching it!
Japanese and Korean have similarities in pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, and sentence structure, whereas Chinese is quite different.
I speak Japanee very well and know some Korean, so here i my opinion:
Japanese is by far the easiest. There are a lot of English load workds like "conpyuta-" (computer), "sukuta-" (Skooter) and "Bata-" (Butter). Japanese do tend to truncate things, so "teribishon" (television) got shortened to "teribi" "pasonaru conpyuta-" turned into "pasocon". Even so, a lot of the loan words are recognizable. The pronunciation is way easier than Korean or Chinese. The ony really tricky thing is that some words have short vowel sounds and some words have longer ones with a different meaning. So "obasan" means "Aunt" but "Obaasan" (where the a is held a bit longer) means "Granny". Also some words change meaning based on stress like "HAshi" (first syllable stressed) is chopsticks, but "hashi" (no stress is Bridge. There are also a lot of synonyms.
The hardest part of Japanese is reading and writing. The phonetic systems are not too hard to learn but the kanji are difficult because most kanji have a native Japanese reading AND a chinese reading. So the water kanji 水 can be read as mizu (Japanese reading) or sui (chinese reading). Also most kanji are part of two character words, which you need to learn individually, both for meaning and pronunciation. So even though only about 2000 kanji are used, you need to learn thousands of pairs also. Don't believe me? 会社 "kaisha" means corporation while 社会 "shakai" (the same two character flipped) means "society" or "community". So kanji is a bit of a bear, On the plus side, the characters do help to suggest the meanings, once you learn them.
The grammer is very different from English, but, like most things in Japanese it's very logical. Unlike European languages, there are no genders, almost no noun conjugations and almost no irregular verbs. So you can learn it faster than you think.
Korean has similar grammer to Japanese. But they use fewer English loan words and these are harder to recognize. For example, Coffee is kohi- in Japanese and kopi in Korean. Also Korean pronunciation is harder for English speakers. For example, they have a G sound and a K sound. But they also have a GG sound which is in-between the two and hard for English speakers to hear and make. Similarly there's a J, a CH and a midway sound. Hangul is very easy to learn, but unlike Japanese or Chinese, it doesn't give you any hints about the meaning of what you're reading. So I think that Korean is harder than Japanese.
Chinee is hardest. They use very few English loan words and the writing system is a bear (although, in fairness, they don't have multiple character readings like Japanese does). But the worst part are tones. I just can't hear these and I think it would take a long time to get proficient in them.
But, ultimately, I agree with the advice here. I love Japan and Japanese, so, even if it was hardest rather than easiest, I'd have chosen it. All of these require committment and interest, so choose what you Love and take the individual challenges of each language as just that--challenges to be overcome to your goal.
I am Chinese and I can assure you that your mandarin chinese pronunciation is correct. You are really linguistic.
It is very comprehensive explanation for three languages.
This is great, korean is the second language I wanted to learn besides french
Hi !! i wanna learn french
Maybe an unpopular opinion, but if you’re passionate about a certain language and have a strong reason for learning it, none of them will be “hard to learn”. I’m currently learning Korean using Pimsleur (2 lessons a day) and a couple Anki decks and so far it’s been constant dopamine hits getting things right that I thought I would forget immediately.
For speakers of languages related to Latin, Chinese Mandarin is a totally different system and it has a lot to do with its traditional culture. Chinese characters are“表意文字”while others are“表音文字”（not sure）. If people learn its traditional culture and ancient Chinese, it'll help a lot to learn Chinese Mandarin but that's not an easy way. If someone has knowledge about Mandarin, it'll be easier to understand Japanese language.
Not entirely correct. There are six categories of chinese characters. Pictogram is one of the six. However the majority is on the category of ideogram plus phonetic. Just an example of this major type. 評 means to comment. 言 is the pictogram part to denote things about talking, speech etc. 平 is the phoetic part.
Fork as mic handle is next-level creative I've seen so far
I've been learning Japanese for over a year now and I like to watch videos like this. If I have more free time I would like to learn all of these languages cuz they sound so magnificent for me for some reason, and the culture and difference about each country also the thing that I really like. 日本語が大好きで、今年、N4レーブルをあるのが欲しいです。私は頑張りますよ。♡
私も一年間日本語を勉強してあなたの言ったことが全部分かりました。よろしくお願いします🙏🏻
I am self studying mandarin but I'm also in China Club at my school and they give chinese lessons lol
I would've learned Japanese first but that China club has native speakers and is just such a huge resource that I won't have in a few years so I decided to start with Chinese first lol
But why are you using a fork to hold your mic?
I just noticed it 😂 Probably used as a stick to hold it more comfortably?
She’s so diy I love it
you have amazing attention to detail, because i certainly didn't notice it. but then again i was too focused on her.
😂😂😂
So she could eat the mic after filming as a snack.
I feel so much smarter just watching this, the fork microphone is genius. I would like to mention that the paper screen wears out the pen nibs really fast the company should totally start selling nibs too.
The mic on the fork 😂
I don't know about Chinese or Korean, but yes indeed Japanese grammar is a lot simpler compared to English or French and if you are indeed a native English speaker (especially if you speak the Queen's English) I feel Japanese pronunciation would feel quite naturally to you once you get into it.
Korean and Japanese have almost identical grammar. Chinese has the easiest grammar by far.
Use chopsticks 🥢
@@rokko_fable Difficulty of Mandarin is not its grammar per se. However, you get several terms with seemingly the same meaning but a lot of subtle differences, using them correctly can get tricky. And then there are idioms - 成语, which add another level of difficulty :)
One point about Japanese Kanji. Kanji is not the same as traditional Chinese characters as Kanji also went trough a simplification process, however fewer characters were simplified and those who were simplified did not change as much as in Chinese (in general) . This means that there are characters that exists in three different versions, "Traditonal", "simplified mandarin", "simplified japanese kanji"
example:
teeth= 齒-齿-歯
group:= 團-团-団
picture= 圖-图-図,
竜 dragon is another one too...
I think the Korean writing system, Hangul, is the best and easiest alphabet system in the world, and also might be the only one alphabet system that we exactly know who, when, why and how made it.
if you are Koeran, do not make this kind of writing, because it looks like being prisoned in yourself
@@johnteya8327 prison???????????? What do you mean by that? Could you elaborate?
Most of words for modern civilization have been made by Japanese since 17th century. And many by Catholic or protestant missionaries in China. All in Chinese characters.
It was a very dangerous adventure for Koreans to adopt all-Korean writing in the 1960s. The same pronunciation with multiple meanings could have made Korean language garbage.
But they were lucky. First, computers and the Internet make research so easy, especially with Korean alphabets. Second, the absolute dominance of English words, which Korean alphabets are so good at writing, as they sound.
I'm fluent in Chinese with a huge interest in self learning Korean. Yes, I almost completely agree with everything that's said!
Just that maybe because I know Mandarin but not Japanese, I find Japanese incredibly difficult because many words and phrases do not have similarities with Mandarin or English unlike Korean and that Japanese has such a complicated writing system.
But from this video, it's easy to see that you have got quite an in depth grasp of Mandarin having just learnt it.
Hello, I loved your video because students ask me all the time "Which language is more difficult?" I am American (Dallas, TX) and I teach English and Spanish. My wife is Filipina. She lived in Hong Kong for eight years and we lived in rural Korea for 5 years. I use the visual that Philippine culture and language is like a boat from Mexico crashed in to a boat from China...and there is where modern culture and language was born. I use Tagalog as much as I can. I have been casually learning Mandarin Chinese but I think I will begin a level of commitment that the language requires. Salamat Po and 고맙습니다!!!
I’m a Chinese (mandarin) native speaker studying in Sydney. Really love your passion in languages! If anyone who sees this wish to have casual mandarin conversations to improve their skills, I’m more than happy to have a chat (like a language exchange?)❤
That would be great, maybe a discord channel?
Japanese is a language that is very easy for beginners to learn.
However, when it comes to intermediate courses, it becomes very difficult.
The reason is that there are kanji, honorifics, difficult expressions, and slang.
However, if you want to enjoy a trip to Japan, the beginner's course is sufficient.
love how you're using a fork as a mic handle, awesome video promoting asian language btw :)
As an American Chinese citizen, my family immigrated to California in the late 1800’s from Guangzhou China. Cantonese was the language spoken in the home and as children we were required to attend Chinese School everyday after attending a traditional American school.
Through the decades there were few of us that were still able to converse in Cantonese as it seemed that the language was dying out in our family. As more and more Chinese Nationals immigrated to the U.S., Mandarin has become the dominant Chinese language. Over time I’ve attend language schools to learn Japanese, Korean, and Mandarin. Through my experience I feel that Mandarin has been the most difficult language due to the 4 tones and use of proper enunciation of the words. I still struggle with pronouncing words written in pinyin.
If you leaned a bit of Cantonese, you will notice some Japanese or Korean words pronunciation are closer to Cantonese than to Mandarin, because a lot of sino-japanese and sino-korean pronunciation came from middle-chinese, and Cantonese retain more sounds from middle-chinese, compared to mandarin which diverge due to northern foreign influences. 👍
Yesss it’s so cool!
So true but it has 9 different tones!
Actually Korean and Japanese are closer to Minnan (Fujian language) than Cantonese or Mandarin, I speak all three fluently since I was a kid in Singapore.
@@vincentyip1118 oh I didn't know it, that's cool !
FYI, the Vietnamese language also has much influence by the Cantonese words.
Your pronouciation of Chinese is super perfect!!!!
Japanese is the hardest, no doubt. I've been learning it for 7 years now and there's still so much new stuff I encounter everyday. Don't get me wrong, I love Japan and the Japanese language, but maaaan the difficulty is just insane. I used to think it was easy during the first year or so, but the more I learn, the harder and harder it gets. Sure, the pronunciation is considered to be "easy", but even then there's pitch accent, which arguably makes pronunciation even harder to master than Chinese or Korean. And don't even get me started on the writing, grammar, vocabulary, and honorifics! I'm not denying the other languages have challenges, but I can't even imagine a language being harder than Japanese. It's completely different from English in literally every way possible. At least Chinese has fairly similar grammar to English and Korean has one of the most logical writing systems in the world.
I can't find any important reason invest time in pitch accent.
@@AthanasiosJapan This is exactly the reason so many Japanese learners speak with a thick foreign tongue. Correct pronunciation of ANY language is the most important aspect and it's a shame so many ppl don't think so. Using another language as an example, if you can read/write/listen/speak Chinese at a native comprehension level, BUT your pronunciation is slightly off, compared to someone who can speak it with a native pronunciation but maybe doesn't know nearly as many words, the second person will be viewed as having a native grasp of the language and the first person will forever be perceived as someone who merely studies the language.
@@oliver_peng
Japanese people from different areas of Japan have different pitch accents. So, if you have friends from various areas and naturally learn from them, inevitablly you will end up having a messed pitch accent. And that's completly fine.
@@AthanasiosJapan That's like saying if a person mixes Australian accent, American accent, British accent, Irish accents it'll sound normal.
Except, that's not even what actually happens. The reality of foreign Japanese speakers is more akin to a person who speaks English with a heavy Chinese accent. It's understandable and passable, but really grating to listen to and screams that they're a non-native speaker. People will start speaking slower to you and dumbing down their words because they assume your Japanese level isn't very good.
@@oliver_peng
Japanese speak to me exactly at the same speed they speak to other Japanese. I live in Japan for 20 and never noticed any trouble in communucation. Actually, what I have noticed is that Japanese can easily understand foreigners who speak Japanese with heavy foreign accent.
Another fun fact about Korea; Korea has had a tradition that King should study and work hard and have to obey the law. The prince had to also study very hard and the pressure is so hard that some of prince became mad due to the stress. The name of main building in Korean Kyungbokgung palace is Geunjeongjun(근정전), which means that King must work diligently for the people.
Wow this video came out while I was learning Japanese . I already have some prior knowledge on Korean and am partially fluent in it . I’ve also always wanted to learn Chinese .
So thank you Izzy for the video
Loved this video as a learner of all three languages! One point you made about the word for “telephone”… it’s one of the few loan words that Chinese takes from Japanese.
中国从日本明治维新后借用了大量日本汉字，如警察，公安，革命，电话，共产党很多很多
As a native Chinese speaker, I have one thing to add as the easy part for learning mandarin compared to learning English, there is only only one standard pronunciation while it doesn’t exist in English. It’s much harder to understand various accents even watch the official news in English, but in Chinese learning once you learned the standard pronunciation, you will hear that standard pronunciation everywhere in all medias which make it easier to understand
Oooh great point!! :)
@@IzzySealey that is misleading to say the least. Chinese have a great deal of accents. The reason he made that claim was he was just immersed in state media.
@@freemanc6258agree, even in dramas you can hear a variety of accents.
The 🦆 is this comment?
Currently learning Japanese and I love the process but I wish I knew more people who are fluent so I could practice conversations.
It’s been well known to westerners that Chinese is indeed the most difficult East Asian language to learn. From the enormous amounts of characters to the different types of pronunciations, compared to Japanese and Korean. And that’s not all, there are also more than a hundred different dialects spoken in China. It is indeed one of the hardest languages to learn!
Those hundred-plus dialects span different languages. There are many languages spoken in China; there is not a single unifying language called "Chinese" (For example, Cantonese and Mandarin are completely different languages, not dialects of a single language). If two things aren't mutually intelligible they're not dialects, they're languages.
not dialects but language groups, which all fall under the Sino-Tibetan language family.
@@TheBillybut they have the same written language.
@@TheBilly As been pointed out, the Chinese dialects use almost the same character set, although there are occasional differences in syntax (characters can be in different order in different dialects), and wide differences in pronunciation. It's over stating it to say Cantonese and Mandarin are completely different languages.
Japanese and Korean vocabulary and pronunciation are easier than Chinese, but it’s grammar is very hard, only Chinese grammar is much easier and similar to English/european language, yes Chinese characters are hard to memorize, so are japanese Kanji (Han characters), Korea no longer use Chinese characters, they created their unique alphabets made its language very easy to remember 8:25
Your accent is amazing 😍I hope to become as fluent as you 😢
I like the way attached your mic to the fork :)))) Thank you for the video! Feel so lucky to find your channel! Have a nice week 🌺
Wow thank you!! You too 🥰
Love your channel and would love to learn all three of them.
I love your voice your kindness your face and everything about u 🐧❤
I'm studying Japanese for almost 2 years and still trying to make slow progress ✨️
progress is progress no matter the speed, keep going, you got this!
The answer is "yes." lol I truly appreciate this lovely content. Thanks, doc.
无论学哪门语言，都祝大家早日成功！
People say modern katakana is used for foreign words but it’s actually more like it’s used for transliteration. Onomatopoeia is often written in Katakana too
Animals, plants and fishes are usually written in katakana too (particularly in science books). Although every fish has a unique kanji they're very rare and not listed as one of the 2,200+ official kanjis that are considered essential in Japanese.
As a Chinese, I think the most difficult Western languages to learn are German and French, and the most difficult Eastern language to learn is Japanese. Japanese borrows a lot from Chinese, but it has many unique features. Japanese is easy first and then difficult. After learning Japanese and English, I still think English is the easiest and most useful foreign language to learn.
😂🤣
I really do appreciate the fork mic.
Dr. Izzy, I am a Chinese, watching your channel several years. It does have strong relationship between these three languages. Now, I also study in England as a PhD. You help me know that PhD's life can be also interesting, you give me a positive lifestyle. Thank you!
呜呜呜,I also want to study in UK
Hi! Thanks for your advice 🙏🙏 I'm french and I learn English, Korean and Now Chinese !
the fork😭
🤭🤭
Correction for 9:50
Everyday Korean doesnt exceed 20-30% for words "similar" to Chinese. Im assuming she meant Chinese origin words
Thanks, Izzy! That was super insightful; but I'm curious about your choice of silverware.
The information about hangul (한글) is mostly correct! It should be noted though that the han in hangul is pronounced with an "ah" sound, the way she pronounced it would be more like 헨글. Also, the "sub-parts" of the letters are in fact the letters themselves, they're simply grouped into syllables. 한글 actually has six letters, ㅎㅏ ㄴ ㄱ ㅡ ㄹ.
Finally, while hangul is very easy compared to most writing systems, it does have a few challenges, like 받침 (batchim, final consonants).
Chinese tone is very similar to Vietnamese as the tone can dictate the meaning of word despite having the same spelling
thai language is the same too
Everything languages have their own culture background and history which might take time to be fully understand. The chinese grammar is called '白話文' or simply plain chinese, which was introduced one hundred year ago when republic of China been established. It is very similar to western practice. The original chinese system is character based. The context of a sentence (combination of several chinese words as a phase), might be termed as ancient chinese, In Qing dynasty, the common chinese style is called '八股文' those sentences were more concise and phaese are much shorter. At that time, Chinese sentence have no punctuation .
세 언어의 차이를 잘 설명하고 있네요. 어휘상으로 60~70%의 유사성이 있으니 이들 세 언어는 서로간에 배우기가 쉽죠.
그렇죠. 베트남인으로 한국어를 재밌있게 쉽게 했어요 많은 공통점 때문이거든요
@@hieulecong6725 공통점 없어요, 베트남 = 동남아 , 한국 = 동북아
@@amitta5145공통점이 없다고 왜 단언하노. 베트남도 한국처럼 중국어 단어를 차용하고있는거 모르나.
@@Unknown-lq8qw
베트남 = 동남아 인종
as a filipino-chinese, my chinese great grandfather made us take cantonese classes when we were little, theres nothing that can make me cry more than memorizing hundreds of characters as a 9yr old kid T - T
love the "FORK" language
👀👀
i came for the ads, stayed for dr. izzy :)
Izzy and Japanese topic, nice combination and must watch😂
I’m Malaysia Chinese , currently learning Japanese and live in Japan , soon finish my Language School , next I will learn Korean while I here . How lucky I am born in Malaysia , Multiple languages country, is very effective to understand what meaning of Grammar and Vocabulary.
apart from chinese because of kanji, your proficiencies in the other languages like english and i presume malay offers no real advantages when it comes to learning japanese..
@@lyhthegreat and? being able to speak/understand multiple languages is a skill on it's own. not many people have this/exercise this skill often, or every person on the planet would know 3+ languages.
Thank you for the video! I studied Japanese for three years, and now I am learning Korean and Thai. I have a passion for Asian culture in general. Despite the challenges (given that my native language is Spanish and most information is geared towards English speakers O_O), I have come to love the process of learning (if that makes any sense haha). That being said, Chinese is on another level, and I'm not sure if I'll delve into that language. Nonetheless, I always appreciate your tips and experiences!