What is "easier" to learn?
 

Okay. So I want to learn different languages. And I'm really interested in Japanese, Chinese, and the Korean langueage. Which is the "easier" to learn? I know it isn't easy so which is better to learn first?

i know a little of those but for me korean is the most easiest since i know some koreans... i find it hard to read chinese i only know the numbers ^^ japanese is not that easy to learn i also find it hard to read their characters especially the mixed ones...

Korean and Japanese are similar grammatically. Korean uses less kanji, so it might be easier to learn the writing systems than Japanese.

I have friends who studied Korean and they say it is difficult to get Korean people to talk to them in Korean, where Japanese love speaking in Japanese to foriegners.

I think Chinese would be the easiest to learn how to speak.

Chinese,it is indeed a little hard to learn.
But if you like challenge,why not try it?

I've heard a lot of people say that learning any variant of Chinese first helps grealty with the other two that you mentioned. The universal reason is: you learn how to read Hanzi straight away, so learning Kanji and Hanja are very easy. Also, because Korean and Japanese have a lot of Sino-inspired vocabulary, you get a lot of cognates that make it easier to "decode" the other two languages.

It's sort of like learning Latin before learning Spanish and French. Sort of...

If you want easy... I can only guess, really, but I'd say Korean because if you go into N. Korea, you won't need to know any hanja at all and in S. Korea their usage of it is limited. Hangeul is all you need to survive :) . For speaking, I couldn't say.

I'm a Chinese and used to learn Jap language.. I realized knowing Chinese beforehand is really useful when learning Jap language cos Jap language does involve some Chinese characters... Since i didn't learn Korean language before, so i am not able to compare the 2 with Korean language.

For an english speaker, I don't think that could be any further away from the truth... Japanese would be the easiest to speak, then Korean and Chinese are pretty difficult.

I don't think there is a real answer to this question... MMM said that Japanese and Korean, grammatically are similar, where as Chinese (Mandarin), doesn't have much grammar, but you can't take that as Chinese being easier. The best way to find out which is easier, is take a course in all of them... The one you get a hold of quickly is most likely the easiest for you.

it's more like learning latin before you learn english. Even though english received most of her vocabulary from latin, she didn't spawn from latin. whats more, is the grammars are completely different. the same can be said about japanese and chinese (i guess korean too). Anyway, it might help you on the SAT, but it other than that...
i think each language has it's own difficult points. for example, as an english speaker, the grammar of chinese is more intuitive, but at the same time, the pronunciation is a nightmare- where as, the opposite seems to be true for japanese.

i agree, for an english speaker japanese is probably easiest..

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.