Just note that apparently Korean in the south and north is quite a bit different. As South Korean contains some 50-70% (i've seen different figures) of chinese origin vocabulary and the North korean government has apparently gone and removed all foreign origin words from their language. I can't confirm this as I have never met a North Korean or know a South Korean who has either.


As someone who has also tried my hand at all 3 languages and will continue doing so until i reach fluency in 2 if not 3 of them i'll give my 2 cents.

Pronunciation: Japanese is the winner. Almost all sounds in the Japanese language are very easy to get a english language tongue around. There may be difficulties with the Japanese 'r'. Chinese is a tonal language and depending on which dialect you wish to learn there is more complexity. there are many dialects, my favourite is probably Wuhanese (武汉话) because it is a flater language, easier to pronounce. Tones are hard to get around coming from a non-tonal language like English but more than duable ^^ The there is Korean, not as difficult as Chinese but harder than Japanese. There are sounds in Korean not familiar to English speakers and it can be tough to get your tongue around it and pronounce those few sounds but generally much of the sounds in korean are not too difficult.

Gramatically: Chinese is the winner. Korean and Japanese grammar are the most removed in terms of similarity to English grammar but fortunately, as MMM mentioned they are grammatically similar to each other which might be a bonus if you plan to learn both. Chinese does indeed have grammar but it is a lot simpler to learn. Also Japanese and Korean have honourific language which complicates the matter further.

Writing and Reading:, Korean is the winner. Korean consists of 24 characters and a further 27 that are groups of the same character together. e.g. ㄱ and ㄲ which of course form different sounds. so in this way it is similar to the english system. while it may look like their language is very complex to someone who hasn't looked into the language it is really just an arrangement of their alphabet. just like the english words im typing now group together our letters. eg the letters of 한 in 한굴 (han gul) are 한=ㅎ & ㅏ & ㄴ Can you get my meaning?
Yes South Korea uses chinese characters but this is more for things such as certificates, signage etc. The use is not that common. Despite the fact they are taught chinese characters in school having asked korean friends about their personal knowledge of chinese characters, it is very minimal. I guess through lack of regular use you are not going to retain them.

Chinese has two writing systems, simplified and traditional. Basically they are just as they sound, simplified are simplified versions of the traditional characters. eg

Apparently too many character.. so continued on.

Chinese has two writing systems, simplified and traditional. Basically they are just as they sound, simplified are simplified versions of the traditional characters. eg 乐 (simplified) 樂 (traditional) same meaning, for all intents and purposes same character. However there are some differences between the meanings of Traditional and Simplified but lets not dive into that. Simplified is used in Peoples Republic of China (China), Traditional is used in Republic of China (Taiwan) and the Cantonese regions of the Peoples Republic of China. To have a decent reading and writing ability you should be able to read and write around 3000-4000 with more being understood in the higher educated and those involved in scholarly pursuits.

Japanese has 3 scripts. one is known as kanji and is essentially Traditional Chinese characters with some characters having been simplified and others are Japanese created characters. There are 1945 official general use characters, all of which you should learn. Of course there are some 50,000 characters as there is in Chinese but there is no need to learn this many. the highest test in Japanese for kanji is around 6000 i think. the other 2 scripts are phonetical scripts and are quite easy to learn

i would say that japanese is the easiest beacuse you dont HAVE to learn the kanji just the katakana and hiragana. my friend told me that learning korean is extremely difficult and i have never been able to understand the "alphabet" myself. chinese is difficult because o fthe hundreds of symbols that you have to memorize . im not sure about them all on speaking terms, however.

I learned the Korean alphabet quickly. It was the usage, with all the different levels and styles of honorifics, that made me put that language on the back burner.

I used to learn Korean, it was quites easy actually, think of Japanese (and maybe chinese, i haven't learnt a word of chinese except 'happy new year') there are loads of characters, you have hiragana, katakana and then you have to learn some kanji as well as them, japanese may be easier to speak but it's one of the hardest to write

I am native Cantonese/Mandarin speaker, I must say Cantonese might be the hardest language for foreigner to master. And probably the hardest of Chinese dialect, I am not sure, not really get to know other dialects. Good thing about Chinese is that , we dont have tense for verb , and plural for nouns. And the logic of word order is very close to english. No " I fish eat " kind of Japanese grammar, XD. We use today, xxx ago, yesterday to indicate tense, so no need to modify verb or anything. The writing is not really hard, if you dont write in traditional.