Japanese and Chinese Trouble

[solemnclockwork]

I can tell the difference between Korean characters and Japan/China ones. I'm a little at a lost on how to tell apart Japan and China written system. I know that Japan and China do share an alphabet (Heragana?). Can you tell by just the symbols used, or does it have more to do with the sentence structure?

[alanX]

Originally Posted by solemnclockwork

I can tell the difference between Korean characters and Japan/China ones. I'm a little at a lost on how to tell apart Japan and China written system. I know that Japan and China do share an alphabet (Heragana?). Can you tell by just the symbols used, or does it have more to do with the sentence structure?

Chinese looks like this: 他是愚蠢的。

Japanese looks like this: ばかだよ

Korean looks like this: 당신은 바보 예요.

[RadioKid]

Chinese people use over 50,000 of chinese characters (or Kanji/Hanji).
Recently, They use simplified Kanji in Main-land China while Original Kanji are used in Taiwan.

Korean people use Hangle Characters which they created. Total combination of Hangle could be over 10,000. And Original Kanji characters are still used in Korea.

Japanese people use around 50 of Hirakana, almost same number of Katakana and around 5,000 of Kanji which are not simplified.

Hirakara/Katanaka are actually simplefied Kanji to express Japanese sound in written form. There should have been many assignment set of Kanji to sound and only two sets servived.

Note that Chinese people have no sound oriented characters like as Hangle in Korea or Hirakana/katakana in Japan. Instead, they use alphabetical expression "Pinyin" to express sound.

[jesselt]

That was extremely helpful, alanX, great job.


Japanese uses Hiragana and Katakana characters in addition to Kanji (borrowed Chinese characters.) Because the Kanji were taken directly from the Chinese language, if you just saw some Kanji you wouldn't really be able to tell if it was Japanese or Chinese unless you spoke one of the languages. Kanji in Japanese has the same pronunciation as the Chinese plus one or several more pronunciations from Japanese.

[solemnclockwork]

Sorry,

I should of stressed I don't really know much about the three languages. I was flipping through my language selection on my xbox ( I had to fix the time) and noticed the three and couldn't make out which one was Japanese or Chinese.

Anyways besides that, this was something I wanted to know but only brought it up (reasons above). It's always good to know about the background on a language that you might learn. Thanks.

[kirakira]

Originally Posted by RadioKid

Chinese people use over 50,000 of chinese characters (or Kanji/Hanji).

大漢和辞典 has 50,000 characters and that I swear is a Japanese dictionary.

This is a total misconception. The equiv to 常用漢字 is around 2600 for Chinese, only around 500 more than the Japanese but you can subtract 100 from that since there is no kana and most characters only has 1 reading.

Technically, Japanese has more characters than Chinese because the Japanese created some new ones of their own which is never used in Chinese like 畑、峠、躾 etc.

Also Japanese is probably the most complicated way to be introduced to Chinese characters thanks to the limitless Kun readings assigned to those things.

[kirakira]

Originally Posted by solemnclockwork

Sorry,

I should of stressed I don't really know much about the three languages. I was flipping through my language selection on my xbox ( I had to fix the time) and noticed the three and couldn't make out which one was Japanese or Chinese.

If it is just a word, you might not able to tell whether it is Korean, Chinese or Japanese like 教育改革, it could be either of the 3 languages (even if you are native). But when you are trying to express an sentence, then

- the one that is still all chinese characters is Chinese
- the one that has hiragana and katakana in addition to Kanji is Japanese
- the one with Hangul and limited Chinese characters would be Korean

[AxBattler]

Originally Posted by kirakira

Also Japanese is probably the most complicated way to be introduced to Chinese characters thanks to the limitless Kun readings assigned to those things.

Someone should've told me that before I started studying Japanese lol.

I took Japanese for personal interest, but also thinking that it would help me pick up Chinese characters which I intended to learn in the future. I thought that since Japanese has a Kana system, and do not use Kanji for everything, that it would be easier than learning Chinese characters from taking Chinese classes.

How badly mistaken I was

[shooon]

Only Japan uses Hiragana and Katakana.
So if there are Hiragana or Katakana letters, it must be Japanese.
Korea uses almost only Hangeul.
So if there are Hangeul letters(+ few Kanjis), it must be Korean.

But there is another way to know which lanuage is used.
It is to distinguish Kanji(Chinese character).

There are 3(4) types of Kanji in the world.
Kanji in China, Taiwan(and Hongkong), Japan(, and Korea).

At worst, one kanji is written in three different ways.
For example,

China:乐
Japan:楽
Taiwan：樂

At best, the three countries use the same letter.
教,育,改,and 革 are examples (as kirakiraさん said above.)

China invented new kanji style in 1960s.
In order to make writing kanji easier and faster.
On the other hand, Taiwan has been using the most traditional (and complicated) kanji.
Japan is halfway.Some kanjis were changed and others were not.
Korea usually doesn't use kanji today. But when used, their kanjis are similar to Japanese or Taiwanese kanjis.

Other examples:
China:对
Japan:対
Taiwan:對

China:卖
Japan:売
Taiwan:賣

So if you can(?) tell which kanji is used, you can tell which language is used.

[RadioKid]

Originally Posted by kirakira

大漢和辞典 has 50,000 characters and that I swear is a Japanese dictionary.

This is a total misconception. The equiv to 常用漢字 is around 2600 for Chinese, only around 500 more than the Japanese but you can subtract 100 from that since there is no kana and most characters only has 1 reading.

Technically, Japanese has more characters than Chinese because the Japanese created some new ones of their own which is never used in Chinese like 畑、峠、躾 etc.

Also Japanese is probably the most complicated way to be introduced to Chinese characters thanks to the limitless Kun readings assigned to those things.

大漢和辞典 is for Japanese people to study ALL Kanji (including Chinese) characters. It does not mean Japanese people use 50,000 Kanji characters.

大漢和辞典 - Wikipedia