Are Chinese and Japanese similar? Which one is more difficult? (subtitles)
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 25 มิ.ย. 2024
- 00:00 Greeting and intro
03:17 Do Chinese and Japanese use the same alphabet?
04:58 Are Chinese and Japanese similar?
08:38 Chinese and Japanese, which language is more difficult?
In this video, we will give you an idea of the similarities and differences between Chinese and Japanese, for people who have no concept of these two languages and want to learn them.
As we say in the video, Miki and I are native speakers and we are learning each other's language, but we are not linguists and experts in the field, we just offer you some basics in a fun way and try to answer three common questions that people always ask us.
We hope this will clear up some questions in your mind. If you know more about this topic, feel free to share with others in the comments, all questions and comments are welcome.
⭐️Photography: Zoe
⭐️Editing: Zoe
⭐️Subtitles: Zoe
⭐️BGM: 木- LeeAlive / 水- LeeAlive
7:05 Please let korean🇰🇷 join!
Victory: 🇨🇳Sheng li 🇰🇷Seung li 🇯🇵Shori
Agree: 🇨🇳Tong yi 🇰🇷Dong eui 🇯🇵Doi
Zoo: 🇨🇳Dong wu yuan 🇰🇷Dong mul won 🇯🇵Dobutsuen
Library: 🇨🇳Tu shu guan 🇰🇷Do seo guan 🇯🇵Toshokan
Weather: 🇨🇳Tian qi 🇰🇷Nalssi (pure korean word) 🇯🇵Tenki
Time: 🇨🇳Shi jian 🇰🇷Shi gan 🇯🇵Jikan
Market: 🇨🇳Shi chang 🇰🇷Shi jang 🇯🇵Shijo
And in korean perspective, japanese is easy to begin but harder to master, while chinese is hard to begin but relatively easier to master.
Cantonese is one of the original dialects (by that i mean older than standard mandarin) of the Chinese language so the Cantonese way of pronunciation is much more similar to those of Korean and Japanese because it roots back.
@@Sam-du7cm Cantonese isn't the original dialect of china but more of closer to older chinese languages just like other southern chinese dialects
@@Haotheman You're right, Hokkien is. My point is Cantonese or older dialects of Chinese will have common roots with Japanese or Korean
@@Sam-du7cm Cantonese is closer to Middle Chinese - so Chinese used is medieval China. Old Chinese is actually similar to Tibetan.
I'll add Cantonese using custom phonetics. Is be interested in Shanghainese since that is supposedly closest to Japanese pronunciation while I think Cantonese is closest to Korean. Vietnamese would be interesting too.
Victory: Sing Lay
Agree: Tong Yi
Zoo: Dong Mut Yun (notice butsu adds the t at the end like in Cantonese and lots of m sounds become b sounds like bushido, etc)
Library: To Shu Gwoon
Weather: Teen Hay
Time: See Gan (very similar to Korean)
Market: See Cherng
Japanese grammar is so tricky and difficult to master. Chinese grammar is straightforward with no conjugations needed.
It’s amazing seeing Chinese and Japanese getting along! Even though the media always shows otherwise 🇯🇵❤️ 🇨🇳
@Zakaria Ali the current people in Japan have nothing to do with the events of of 1937-1945! They don't have to apologize for anything; they did nothing wrong. The people who did the wrong are long dead and probably in hell. If you want to talk about crimes, how about you Muslims slaughtering the Jews in your countries after the creation of Israel in 1948, and expelling the survivors without any of their money or possessions? Hypocrites....
nanjing nanking japanese did not know their history
I've been learning Chinese for the past few months and, to say the least, it's a real challenge. I'm fluent in English, French, and Haitian Creole (some Spanish and German), but none of those languages have anything close to similar in origin to Chinese.
Regardless, I love the language/culture and I've found it to be such a rewarding journey thus far.
Chinese is not easy! It is already admiring to choose this language, keep going !
Well the chinese basic sentence structure is similar to English, right? Compared to japanese
@@FDE-fw1hd Well, I'm not fluent in chinese but it isn't that similar to english in my experience. If you were to say "do you want to eat noodles today" in english, it becomes "today, you want not want eat noodles" in chinese (if you directly translate it). It's not very complicated, but even though I grew up hearing chinese I still struggle remembering the grammatical structure when I learn new modifiers (if thats the term). Take this all with a large grain of salt, I'm a native english speaker and my only other languages are a bit of spanish and chinese, so I don't have a ton of experience.
@@icedrosetea it doesn't work like that lol
@@hayabusa1329 wait, which part? it's definitely "今天你要不要吃面条", no? unless it's a regional thing, my family is from the south
There is not an easy language. One only finds a language easy when he/she doesn't know it so well. The more you know the harder it gets.
Agreed
Very truthful comment. I just levelled up in French and realised how much I don't know. Excited to learn more 🙂
The two countries are great and it is very important that to learn both Chinese and Japanese.. Greetings from Syria
Greetings from Kyrgyzstan 🇰🇬
@@erturtemirbaev5207 Thank you so much 💐💐🇸🇾
Greetings from indo
From syria I think chinese is very important language to learn in our time
And I know a little bit of japanese From watching anime
Yout two are very cute 🇨🇳🇸🇾🇯🇵
As a person who was grown up with two languages (Persian and Turkish) and learning French and English for more than 40 years. I am a passionate of Japanese language. Since 2017 I began to learn that in Japanese Cultural Center in Montreal and in additional private course. I can aware it is one the most beautiful language in the world that I had chance to learn. Japanese is not as hard as language that people imagine. At least for me It became easy by effort of my teacher Koda Sensei and her own method.
Vous êtes incroyable 😩
Well, I think that Chinese is related to Japanese and Korean languages in the same way as Arabic to Persian and Turkish (especially by Atatürk's reforms when the Arabic alphabet was replaced by the Latin one adapted for Turkish), because both Chinese and Arabic were the languages of two multinational cultural spheres (Confucian-Buddhist and Islamic), so Japanese and Korean languages borrowed some Chinese elements (characters and words), and the similar was in Turkish and Persian that borrowed Arabic ones.
Japanese grammar is harder, but pronunciation is easier. Japanese writing is also easier, though there're 3 scripts. By learning Hiragana and katakana which are like alphabet, you can use them to substitute Kanji, making things a lot easier. Kanji is like a logo, each has to be memorized, and you'll need to know 2,000 to be literate. In Chinese writing, there's no substitute, everything is in Kanji.
There are such systems for Chinese ("romanizating" pinyin and "character-based" zhuyin, the last is like katakana and partly hiragana) but they are not official (zhuyin was the mentioned one in Taiwan but nowadays it is not).
@@user-tq4dq5lo5g zhuyin is not considered the same. hiragana and katakana are considered "real" japanese, because everyday japanese people use it. using pinyin and zhuyin is weird, those are only on fancy street signs, children's books, or like keyboards. chinese people will not write in that
@@user-tq4dq5lo5g Not the same. China and Taiwan don't write in Pinyin/Zhuyin, it's used for teaching phonetic and computer-input. Whereas Hiragana and katakana are proper script that are used as a substitute for Kanji.
For foreigner learners who don't know many Chinese characters, it's different, they only write in pinyin, then convert to Chinese characters. I'm sure you can relate.
japanese grammar isn't harder
Japanese has pitch accent btw. Also, chinese characters, imo, is easier.
Chinese seem like singing. Same character means different in high notes low notes. I'm just learning Japanese and now I'm curious about Chinese too.
Very informative. Thank you, ladies!
Thank you for this video.Its really interesting!!!
I studied Chinese when I was little, and it came easily to me then, because of my age. Now that I'm learning Japanese, I have forgotten the Chinese that I was almost conversationally fluent in when I was younger, and now the tones, writing system, vocabulary, and grammar of Chinese are so difficult for me, it's not even funny! It's crazy how age can affect your language learning!
Good job Zoe! Thanks for this video.
😊😊😊
Thank You so much for making another great inspirational video, i loved it! When you tried to guess each other's words in your corresponding native languages, it reminded me of John Searle's philosophical thought experiment The Chinese Room. With all this online stuff now, i think it's more difficult to learn languages, but you have inspired me more, so thank you so much for that? If you don't mind me asking, what are your thoughts on using artificial intelligence to learn a new language? (i have encountered this problem myself, and similar to the thought experiment The Chinese Room, like how you can you truly be sure how anything's pronounced, even english or for anyone their respective mother tongue.....)
Interesting, had no idea of so many similarities between the two languages 🤔🤗
Hi Zoe, You are really awesome! I am Chinese living in NY, I was living in Japan 6.5 year. Of course three languages are not enough if you want to travel all over the world. I am learning Francise right now, by your encourage I will start to learn Spanish. You will be very successful soon. will introduce to everyone I know your channel. Thanks for full energy young lady!
Thank you for your support! 法语和西班牙语加油哦！
❤️ Very lovely I'm learning Japanese as half German half Serbian I speak both of this languages fluently but I also love Chinese. 大好き
I speak neither but am fascinanted. Amazing content 😍😍😍
私は少し日本語が話せます。日本語は私の好きな言語ですよー、🌸
我的爱中文💖
Hey Zoe! I just discovered your videos and was completely entranced by your effort and devotion to language learning! I am Greek and apart from my native language I speak English, German and I have been studying Japanese for a year and a half. However, the teaching approach sometimes used by my teacher feels a little confining. Do you have any recommendations when it comes to podcasts or apps? I already watch a lot of anime and listen to Japanese songs daily but I would love to enrich my experience. Thank you!!
You both are so cute. Thank you for educating us.
انتظرت الفيديو الخاص بك لمدة جميل ان تلتقي بأناس يتحدثون اكثر من لغة ♥️
Keep doing the good job 👍👍
awww your arabic is very cute you are right arabic and persian use the same alphabet but deferent grammar but we can understand a lot of phrases ana ahebek!!❤️❤️❤️
It was one of the things ı really wonder ! Thank you sooo much :)
☺️☺️☺️
Zoe, what do you think about the "similarity" between chinese and turkish? for me they sound different; I speak some words in turkish and doesn't sound at all as in chinese.
hi Zoe recently discovered your channel and I am really enjoying your content. I am Turkish and I can speak Turkish English and currently learning Korean. I really wanna learn both Japanese and Chinese but I don't wanna drown myself and get sick of it as i am also a university student. I recently started studying hanja to get a better grasp of Korean so I think learning chinese would be easier as they would flow naturally together anyways i wanted to ask if you know any sources to learn Chinese like internet sites etc.
Check the new video😜
Really nice video and very interesting to notice some similarities between the two languages. The chinese tones are hard to get used to 😥 but let's not give up, it's a very cool language.
brda= لە ڤر
turkish borda= لە ڤیر .لێرە
The passion for Japanese pop culture gives a certain incentive to learn Japanese, even though it is not something easy, I mean, many people who like anime (like me) want to watch these productions without having to read the subtitles, so, We do our best to try to learn this language.
What a cute video! That difficulty with correctly pronouncing the Mandarin tones is really scary to me, I definitely don't want to say breast hair instead of panda lol.
🤣🤣🤣🤣
But don't worry, people will usually understand you based on the context.☺
台湾叫：猫熊🐼😄😋
Wow, thanks for this analysis or comparison. It seems like Chinese would be hard for me. I want to learn Japanese though; I am really interested in Japanese. I am from Jamaica- I don't think I struggle pronouncing Japanese words, I am also good at pronouncing French. This channel motivates me to put effort into learning the languages I want to, but I can't help but wonder if I can.
Hi Zoe! Given your experience in Arabic, what do you think the difficulties would be for an Arabic native speaker while learning Chinese?
good question, I will try to make more videos about Chinese for Arabic speakers
@@zoe.languages oh I can hardly wait⚡
@@zoe.languages
Thank you, my love, for your trouble.
@@zoe.languages 🇮🇶Arap ülkelerinden Irak'tan seni seviyorum
@@zoe.languages I look forward to it! 😊😊
We love watching you.. thanks
im a year late but these are my honest opinions on the two languages:
i started learning chinese in school when i was like 13 in 2018 but by the time i was 14 i had found the language too hard and tried to spoke to teachers to switch me into the japanese class (also my chinese teacher was kinda scary). i had to cover a year and half's worth of content for japanese in a couple months which i somehow managed to do this so at the start i found japaense pretty easy - much easier than chinese. the main reason for this was there being an 'alphabet' in japanese and the pronunciation is much easier since japanese has a simpler phonetic system than chinese and the grammar is easy to wrap your head around at the start
however even though japanese starts off easy at the beginning, later on you'll find a much much steeper learning curve and jaapense becomes a lot more difficult. especially since you need to learn so much kanji in which most of them have more than one way of saying it. for example the kanji character 日 (meaning day or sun) can be read as 'hi', 'bi', 'nichi', or can be read as 'kyou' when its put together with 今 in the word 今日 meaning today. and the character 今 can be read as 'ima' on its own, and characters like 大 can be read as 'dai', 'tai' or even 'oo' and all these pronunciations can get really overwhelming and confusing
in regards to chinese, of course i found it really difficult back in 2018 hence why i swtiched to japanese in the first place, but i was always interested in the chinese langauge still so when looking back at it, i realise how it can still be difficult but also not be that bad at the same time. of course one thing to note about chinese is the tones which can be difficult to grasp at first but generally chiense people will understand the context of the word even if you say the wrong tone. unlike japanese, each chinese hanzi character is pronounced in only one way (with minor exceptions like 大, which can be read as da or dai) like for example the character 学 is always read as 'xue' in all contexts, unlike in japanese where it can be read as 'gaku' or 'gakk' (as in 学校 'gakkou') or even 'mana' as in 学ぶ 'manabu'.
as of now, i can say that japanese starts of really easy but has a very steep learning curve over time and gets really challenging pretty quickly. furthermore, the japanese word order is SOV (subject verb object), which can be confusing for english speakers since english's word order is SVO. chinese on the other hand starts off really difficult when u have to learn tones and everything but as you progress further, it gets a lot easier when u learn the language more - theyre basically opposites in difficulty. additionally, the chinese grammar is a lot similar to that of english (SVO) and jus makes sense so english speakers will find the grammar easy. but even if the internet tells you otherwise, from personal experience i can say that japanese is harder than chinese to master. as of now, im 17 years old and am at a level N5 in japanese at school and continuing japanese at higher level for the IB diploma so obviously i wanna get to at least N3. i also plan to come back to chinese and try learning again at uni next year
Totally agree. People who say Japanese is easy are clearly beginners. The more you try to understand vocabulary, grammar, and phrasing appropriately correctly, the more you'll find that it's incredibly difficult.
The best youtube channel
I am learning Japanese and tried a little Chinese.
I agree that it really think that depends on your native language/the languages you speak, your learning ability, and what is new to you. I found pronouncing Chinese extremely difficult, but the grammar and reading it was very easy for me. I started with Japanese, so the characters were very similar to me already. Meanwhile, in Japanese the grammar and honorifics were slightly more difficult to me, but the pronunciation was easier and I could understand the speaking (it took less time to pull words and phrases to translate in Japanese) easier than Chinese. But it's different for most people.
As a native Spanish speaker Japanese is difficult in terms of grammar and concept because it is very different from the way we think in Indoeuropean languages.
Chinese has similar grammar to Indoeuropean languages but the tones are challenge. I think you need a lot of exposure train your ears and brain.
加油！
Thank you.
Super vidéo ! C'est trop cool que tu fasse des vidéo avec des gens qui parlent des langages que tu ne parle pas ! Continue tu gère :)
Thank you ❤
I agree. Grammar is more difficult in Japanese. Pronunciation is harder in Chinese for an Italian native.
5'ten fazla dil bilenleri acayip kıskanıyorum nedense, hayata 10-0 önden başlamış gibi. Bizde, Türkiye vatandaşı olarak; TR simülasyonunda sürünelim.
أحبك كثييييرا 💕💕💕 صديقتك من الجزائر🇩🇿
Love ur channel from Ankara, Turkey
I just arrived at Ankara airport for transit 🤣
@@zoe.languages OMG!!! Damn school for missing this post XD
Hi !
Thank you for this interesting video !
I’m French and would like to learn Chinese, but it looks so challenging, do you think as a French you could plenty learn this language ?
Of course you can !
Hi Zoe, can you make a video on how to learn Chinese most effectively, meaning which books / apps / channels, etc would you recommend? Thank you for the great videos, cimer ^^
I am editing this video 😉
Very interessant!
Very nice and amazing keep going 🥀🦋
I am learning Japanese and Chinese like you guys
Its interesting-خیلی ممنون برای زیرنویس-thanks for Persian subtitle. I'm eager for more videos. 💙💜❤🧡💚💛
This is true, although I am Chinese, when I travel to Japan, there is no obstacle, because I can read Japanese writing, such as newspapers, signs, menus, but I can't talk to Japanese people😄
Lol, I know a lot of characters japanese and Chinese people mix up.
I speak korean and some of the words are similar with chinese and japanese, like the word 'agree', 'library', etc I think with east asian language, even tho they're different you still can guess the meaning of it by the pronunciation sometimes or if you can read hanzi it makes it even easier to guess.
I love Zoe and her next to her and hala
As an Arab, I respect China and Japan. Good luck! The Japanese manga is very wonderful 😅
Nah u simp for the anime chacters
how can you be an arab. you family name is sy.
@@leydimendieng865
This is the motto of my country, Syria, which we put for distinction only
@@ScizzoringGirlz
The anime and manga are great. I follow Japanese works
@@haitham1439 no wonder u have an anime pfp
Chinese characters are difficult to remember, and the tones are hard to pronounce, how ever Chinese grammar is very easy, similar to English, and much easier than most languages.
I don't think tones are hard. Chinese characters you can kind of guess their pronunciation. I think the hardest part of chinese is the grammar, not necessarily like putting together words, but certain grammar points. Japanese has pitch accent. It's just me though. I think I'm just lucky
6:25 Bunu daha önceden bir çok defa düşündüm. Benim için oldukça faydalı bir video oldu.
今まで日本語よりも発音が簡単な言語に出会ったことがないけど、漢字の読み方の種類が多い、中国語の漢字も二つ以上の読み方があるものもあるけどそんなに多くない、例えば「生」は読み方100種類ぐらいあるから地獄
Actually is not the same. Both are hard to learn but I think everyone can learn any language if give the right attention. I can speak English, German (my native language), Japanese (it took me 4-5 years to learn), Chinese (8 years to learn), Greek (also my native language) and Korean (2 years to learn). Now I’m thinking about to start learning Russian 😅
Hi, I am about to learn japanese, please give me a sort of structure/things to focus on so that I can learn it quicker.
wow, you are so amazing!
انا حقا احببت قناتك المسلية 💗💗
Hi zoe, which resource did you use for Arabic. Nice videos
Which dialect or standard Arabic ?
Also, Japanese kanji tends to be closer to and or the same as traditional hanzi. Usually Japanese kanji that was simplified using the 新字体 system isn’t as simplified as simplified Chinese. Though of course there are exceptions.
Sugoi😁🎊🎉
Une vidéo pour apprendre le mandarin et le japonais pour débutant sa serait top 😆😆
mumkin aishtirak fi alqanaa
Moi aussi je ne parle pas aussi bien japonais et mandarin mais faut que j'apprenne
@@ludovicgirard5863 mumkin aishtarak fi alqanaa
I am Syrian, I learn Chinese but it is very difficult especially the tones and I spent a lot of time learning ringtones. But I love Chinese so much, and I hope I master it like its speakers. And I can speak some Japanese words by watching arabic-translated anime. I hope to master chinese well and travel to it.
😉check the new video about how to learn Chinese, hope it will be helpful!!
Out of context but zoe looks extra pretty in this video 😍
As a native speaker of Mandarin and Teochew (a dialect of Hokkien), it is easy to learn the onyomi word (Chinese words in Japanese), and I can guess most onyomi of kanji.
But for Japanese kunyomi words we need to memorize from scratch. And it is really difficult to learn keigo.
فيديوهاتك جميلة بالتوفيق زُوي 🌹😊🇪🇬
انا بعرف احكي ياباني متل الانمي بس الصيني صعب النطق فا اعرف ٣ كلمات وهي مرحبا ومرحبا ما؟ وشكرا 🌸🖤🥲
Love zoe
有難う、谢谢
Hi from Turkey! You are so cute ❣️
11:39 in my language (italian) we have single and plural for man\woman ahah :'D
I like so much this video :)
Your channel encourages me to learn languages I love you so much keep it up💗💖💖💖
چشم=چاو
گوێ=گوش
Miki's voice is really very very cute voice. Reallly!! 🙂😇😍😌
When the Japanese girl talked about Senegal, I got so happy knowing people were interested in my native country. I thought people didn’t really know about it and it just made my day knowing she had friends there 😄
Thank you for information. It seems Chinese can read and understand 'some' written japanese, but what about vice versa? how many percent can japanese read and understand written chinese and know what it means regardless of pronunciation if they visit china without learning their langauge?
same as chinese,50%
1:43 The lady next to you actually pronounced "merhaba" better. hahahahah :)
i think both can easily learn each other langauge very easily .
واخيرا كنت انتضر احبكي من العراق 🇮🇶💓
我是個台灣人, 在學校學過兩年日文選修課, 中文和日文差距很大的. 少數單字的發音類似, 那是因為這些單字是從中國傳到日本, 屬於日文中的中文外來語, 只是千年以前就注入到日文中. 所以日本人不覺得是外來語. by the way, Miki 的英文口音還是很典型的日式英文口音
what would be benefit of learning chinese?
That ma ma ma ma part is the same in Japanese. The word kite/kitte/kiite based on tone can mean stamp, to listen, to cut or to summon.
Not the same. Those are not Tones. Those are syllable length and glottal stop in Japanese.
اليابانية جميلة ماشا لله
I love anime cartoons so much 😭😻
And I just love all asian old and rich culture
I want one day to learn Japani and Chinese ✌️😇❤️
Tu as dit que des conjugaisons de l'Arabe était le plus difficile, mais le français a beaucoup de conjugaisons aussi. Donc est lui similaire à l'Arabe avec les conjugaisons ou a l'Arabe beaucoup que le Français? Merci, et beaucoup de l'amour de la Canada!
哇! 今天成为更好了!
这个一般，还有更好的
I am German and I have tried Chinese but gave up pretty quickly. Now I am studying Japanese and it is way easier to remember.
日本の方が出てくれるとは！うれしいです😄
Zoe when did you learn arabic
I really enjoyed the video since I'm Irainian and I'm interested in Chinese Japanese and Korean and I'm learning these languages
دمت گرم! خیلی مثال خوبی زدی
منم خیلی مقایسه زبون ها رو دوست دارم
موفق باشی*-*
مرسی عزیزم، موفق باشی ❤️
you're perfect
رائع أعجبني الفيديو 🇲🇦♥️ تحيا من المغرب
شكرا ❤️🇲🇦
For pinyin isn't there a 5th or neutral tone, ü?
All the best
mumkin aishtirak fi alqanaa
Ana dili Türkçe olan biri için Japonca öğrenmek diğer dillere göre çok daha kolay (＾∇＾)ﾉ♪
I'm from Brazil and make me happy to see Chinese and Japanese togheter. I'd be happier with an Korean presence too.
I love japanese words
Question 1: Do Chinese and Japanese use the same alphabet? Answer: There's alphabet in Japanese, or syllabary to be more precise (hiragana and katakana), whereas there's no alphabet or syllabary in Chinese (pinyin was only invented in the 20th century, based on the Latin alphabet).
Question 2: Are Chinese and Japanese similar? I would say no. They belong to different families and are only similar superficially in that Japanese borrowed some loanwords from Middle Chinese (which sounded different from modern Mandarin). However, the grammar, syntax, and word order are all very different, and the native Japanese vocabulary also doesn't show much similarity to Chinese.
Question 3: Chinese and Japanese, which language is more difficult? I would say that largely depends on what your native language is, but generally I would say Chinese grammar is much easier but writing is hard, whereas Japanese grammar is much harder but writing could be easier.
You are right. For the comparison of Chinese and Japanese language, I also recommend the video by langfocus, he makes very good videos about the background, historical development and comparison of languages on TH-cam.
67%的覆盖率：
中文，仅仅需要300个汉字！
80%的覆盖率：
中文，仅仅需要600个汉字！
英文，需要2000个单词！
90%的覆盖率：
中文，仅仅需要1000个汉字❗️👍😋
英文，需要6000个单词！
99%的覆盖率：
中文，仅仅需要2500个汉字❗️👍👍👍😋
英文，需要恐怖😱的50000个单词以上😱😱😱🤪
Hi Zoe! when did you learn arabic
3 years ago☺️
I want to learn both of them but I want to know which one is simple