Which is easier: a Chinese person to learn Japanese, or for a Japanese to learn Chinese?

中国人学日语 VS 日本人学汉语，谁更容易？

以下是Quora网友的评论：

Mayumi Suzuki

I have yet to try my hand at studying Chinese, but one thing I can say for certain is: whilst I doubt that Japanese is part of the standard school curriculum in China, Chinese (or at least, ancient Chinese literature) is a must for Japanese students starting from middle school.

我还没下定决心学中文，但有一件事我可以肯定：虽然我怀疑日语并不是中国标准学校课程的一部分，但中文（最起码古文）是日本学生从中学开始就必修的课程内容。

This doesn’t mean that we learn to speak the language. However, we study the works of the great poets such as Du Fu and Li Bai, together with a system of annotating the original text to change the word order and add postpositional particles and auxliary verbs so that the sentences make sense in Japanese. Naturally, we use the Japanese readings of the relevant kanji, so we ignore pronunciation completely, although helpful teachers will explain how certain stanzas would have rhymed in the original Chinese. In high school, we move onto excerpts from Confucius, Lao Tzu and other philosophers. Entrance exams for top-ranked universities might have a paragraph of unmarked original text for the student to annotate before answering questions about its content.

不过这并不意味着我们要学会说这门语言。不过我们确实学习了杜甫、李白等大诗人的诗歌作品，并通过原文注释体系，改变了原有词序，添加了后置助词和助动词，把古汉语的句子转变为了我们读得懂的日语。当然，我们使用的是日本汉字的读本，所以我们完全忽略了中文发音，不过老师会解释中文原文中是如何押韵的。到了高中，我们开始学习孔子、老子和其他哲学家的语录。顶尖大学的入学考试可能就会给出一段没有注释的古文，让学生在回答有关问题之前进行注释。

So, theoretically, if you were really good at this, it would mean that by the time you entered university, you would have a decent understanding of sentence structure and word order in Chinese in addition to knowing a lot of the characters that are used.

In fact, a friend at university who had loved studying the works of Chinese philosophers as a high school student said that the intensive Chinese course (rumored to be one of the most difficult language choices available) was a breeze for him, except for the pronunciation!

所以，从理论上讲，如果你很擅长古文，这就意味着你升入大学时，除了认识很多汉字外，你还对汉语的句子结构和词序有不错的了解。

我一个大学朋友在高中时就喜欢学习中国哲学家的著作，他说，除了发音不行，不然强化中文课程（据说是最难的语言选择之一）对他来说都易如反掌！

Rex Ray

I grew up in China and have lived 10 years in Japan.

From what I have experienced, I will say a Chinese person to learn Japanese is easier than a Japanese to learn Chinese. Because,

我在中国长大，又在日本生活了10年。

以我的个人经历来看，我认为中国人学日语比日本人学汉语更容易。原因如下：

The most hard part of both languages is Kanji. Most of the Kanji (if not all) characters in Japanese are from Chinese.

There are many dialects used daily in China, many of which use same kanji with different pronunciations and meanings by situations.While most (if not all) kanji used in Japanese has a root in those dialects. So a Chinese person can get used to kanji pronunciations and uses in Japanese easier than vice versa.

这两种语言中最难的部分都是汉字。日语中的大部分汉字都来自汉语。

中国日常使用的方言有很多，其中许多方言使用相同的汉字，但根据情况不同，发音和含义都不同。而日语中使用的大多数汉字都源于这些方言。所以中国人更容易适应日语中的汉字发音和用法。

Personally I think the way Chinese studying a foreign language is better than Japanese. Because Chinese study Japanese as Japanese while Japanese study Chinese as Japanese too. (Actually in Japan schools tend to teach all foreign languages as Japanese.) A Chinese person study a foreign language will be taught to think the foreign way, pronounce the foreign way, because its a foreign language which has no business with Chinese language. While a Japanese will be taught to think the Japanese way, pronounce the Japanese way, because a Japanese can only think the Japanese way and pronounce Japanese pronunciations , by the teacher! (My English teacher at junior school in China warned me never learn a foreign language that way at my first English class, now I understand why she warn me that.)

我个人认为中国人学习外语的方法比日本人好。因为中国人把日语当作日语来学习，而日本人把汉语也当作日语来学习。(事实上，日本的学校会用日语教授所有的外语)。学习外语的中国人会用外国的方式思考，用外国的方式发音，因为他们认为那是一门与汉语无关的外语。但日本人会以日本人的方式思考，用日本人的方式发音，因为老师就是这么教的！(我在中国上初中的时候，我的英语老师在我的第一堂英语课上就警告我不要用这种方式学习外语，现在我明白她为什么要这么警告我了。)

Chandler Bing

A good question.

As a Chinese who has learned Japanese for about one year, I would say it's not easy to study Japanese at all.

To be honest, I thought it would be easier for a Chinese to learn Japanese because they use many Kanji. And at the begng, it seems really easy because the pronunciation is easy to get.

这是个好问题。

作为一个学了一年日语的中国人，我想说学习日语一点也不简单。

说实话，我曾经以为中国人学日语会更容易，因为日语中有很多汉字。一开始是真的很容易，因为我很快就学会了发音。

And we share a lot of similarities in writing, I don't know whether it would be considered as great. Any Japanese could give me comments?

However, the grammar in Japanese is so so so complicated, I always doubt about that why they make so much trouble for themselves, and it's really killing me. I have to spend a lot of time to remember numberous visions of one verb word.

我们在写作上也有很多相似之处，我不知道大家是不是觉得太棒了。日本人可以来留言评论一下。

但是日语的语法太复杂了，我一直在想他们为什么非要自找麻烦，我真的要疯了。我得花很多时间才能记住一个动词的无数变形。

Peiyuan Zhu

It depends on the results you want from learning.

As a Chinese,I learned Japanese for just about 2 years, and lived in Japan for a half of an year.

Hardly ever a Japanese could recognize that I am a Chinese before a long talk.

However, I’ve seen some Japanese learning Chinese for 2 or 3 years,even some reporters who had spent several years in China,I could recognize that they are Japanese at the first sentence they spoke.

这取决于你想从学习中得到什么结果。

作为一个中国人，我只学了两年日语，又在日本生活了半年。

除非进行长篇谈话，不然日本人都听不出我是个中国人。

但是，我见过一些已经学了两三年中文的日本人，甚至一些在中国呆过几年的记者，他们一开口我就能认出他们是日本人。

To communicate with native speakers, probably Chinese is easier, since there is just a very simple Grammar in Chinese, and Japanese can understand most of the “Hanzi”(kanji) in daily life.

However, a Chinese and a Janpanese can even communicate with written scripts in fact, even without language learning.

However, to speak it as native speakers, both in pronounciation and fluency, Chinese may be a hard language.

和母语人士交流的话，也许中文更容易一些，因为中文的语法非常简单，日本人在日常生活中可以看懂大部分“汉字”（日本汉字）。

中国人和日本人也许都不需要学习对方的语言，就能通过书面文字交流。

但想要达到母语水平，无论是发音还是流利程度，中文都是一门难度极高的语言。

For Chinese who are going to learn Japanese, this problem does not exst since the Japanese words are often longer than Chinese, they get enough time to think about it.

As for pronouciation, since Japanese pronuncing system is much simpler, which causes them a barrier to learn foreign languages, and Chinese pronuncing system may be a very hard one to learn with the tones.

对于想要学习日语的中国人来说，这个问题并不存在，因为日语单词通常比汉语长，他们有足够的时间去思考。

在发音方面，日语的发音系统很简单，所以日本人学习外语就存在障碍，中文有多个声调，所以发音系统很难学。

But the most important things of learning a language are not the difficulties of learning it, but your determination to get over them.

For most Japanese students, learning a foreign language is just like a hobby. However, for most Chinese students, a foreign language means a profession.

但是学习一门语言最重要的不在于难不难，而是克服困难的决心大不大。

对大多数日本学生来说，学习外语只是一种爱好。但对大多数中国学生来说，一门外语意味着一份职业。

Kathie Z

This is based on my own experience learning Chinese and Japanese as a native English speaker, and knowing Chinese people who learned Japanese and vice versa.

In general, I would say that Japanese people are able to master Chinese more easily than Chinese people are able to master Japanese. When I saw “master”, I mean not only being able to write or speak it, but also understanding more complex areas of the language like whether the language changes based on gender or formality.

我可以谈谈自己作为一个英语母语者学习汉语和日语的经验，我还认识一些学习日语的中国人和学习汉语的日本人。

总的来说，我认为日本人精通汉语比中国人精通日语更容易一些。对于“精通”一词，我的意思是不仅能写能说，还能理解语言中更复杂的地方，比如语言会不会因为性别或正式与否而发生变化。

Chinese is intimidating because you need to remember a lot of characters and also have very clear pronunciation (less you call your mom a horse) in order to differentiate between homonyms. But the grammar is relatively simple and structured in ways that are easy to remember, especially if you are a native English speaker. Even if you couldn’t read a character, you could still gain an idea of what it means or how it could be pronounced based on how it’s written, and know that it’s always pronounced one way.

中文令人望而生畏，因为需要记忆的汉字太多了，还都有非常清晰的发音区别，可以区分同音异义词。但如果你是英语母语人士，中文的语法相对简单，结构也很容易记住。就算你不认识汉字，你也可以根据汉字的部首结构了解它的意思和发音。

While there are a lot less kanji to remember in Japanese, you should remember that almost all kanji have at least two different pronunciations (on-yomi and kun-yomi), with some having as much as SIX! There’s also changes in language depending on your formality level or gender or even age. Japanese is also a very suggestive language, in that a lot of things are not always directly stated, which can make it difficult for a non-native speaker to understand what’s going on (especially in novels).

虽然日语中要记住的汉字少很多，但你要记住几乎所有的汉字都至少有两种不同的发音，有些甚至有六种之多！根据场合的正式程度、性别甚至年龄的不同，需要使用不同的变形。日语也是一种非常含蓄的语言，很多事情都不直说，非母语人士很难真的理解(小说里尤为如此)。

However, while a Japanese person may have an easier time mastering Chinese, the difficulties they’ll have pronouncing things properly can really hinder communication. I’ve listened to a Japanese person speak in perfect Chinese, but because of their pronunciation I honestly thought they were speaking a different language at first.

不过虽然日本人可能更容易掌握汉语，但他们在发音方面的困难确实会阻碍交流。我听过一个日本人说的一口流利的中文，但因为他们的发音，我一开始还以为他们说的是另一种语言呢。

Joe Sun

It’s easier for a Japanese person to learn Chinese than the other way around except for the pronounciation.

Modern Japanese is actually part Chinese already. Native Japanese shares almost zero common traits with Chinese, it’s not even in the same language group. But due to heavy influence of the Chinese writing system on Japanese, many features of Chinese integrated itself with Japanese. These even include the SVO grammatical structure in some words such as 読書 (書を読む) 贖罪 (罪を贖う) etc.

除了发音，日本人学汉语要比中国人学日语容易。

现代日语其实已经包含了一部分汉语了。本土日语和汉语几乎没有共同之处，甚至都不在同一个语言群组中。但由于汉语文字系统对日语的影响很大，汉语的许多特征与日语融合在一起，甚至包括一些主谓宾语法结构，例如:“読書 (書を読む) 贖罪 (罪を贖う)”等。

Not only that, Classical Chinese is actually 1 of 3 important part of Japanese language curriculum (国古漢). There is so much Chinese in Japanese, there is a recent phenomena of fake Chinese movement (偽中国語) where young people would drop kana script and use only Chinese characters just for fun (makes them look like they are speaking Chinese) and people in China could actually understand most of it.

不仅如此，古汉语还是日语课程的三个重要组成部分之一。日语中有很多中文，最近出现了一种汉语运动，年轻人为了好玩放弃日语字母，只使用汉字(看起来就像在说汉语)，而中国人可以理解其中的大部分内容。

The reverse is not true. There is no Japanese elements in Chinese at all. Kana script is foreign and is a major hurtle for Chinese learners.

反之则不然。中文里根本没有日语元素。日语字母就是一种外国文字，对中国学习者来说是一个主要的障碍。