I can remember some hiragana and katakana characters. If the two languages are similar enough, maybe I could learn Chinese easier…
I can remember some hiragana and katakana characters. If the two languages are similar enough, maybe I could learn Chinese easier…
No it doesn’t help much at all, just to an extent of recognizing some Kanjis (but also misunderstanding some).
The similarity in Japanese and Chinese ends at Kanji characters and even though the meaning of a kanji is often close in both languages, the pronunciation? pretty rarely.
Japanese didn’t have a writing system and loaned characters from Chinese to record the spoken language. This lead to a mix of vocabulary from both languages as they started using multiple words for the same meaning, one coming from the spoken Japanese and others loaned from the Chinese.
The structure of these two languages bears no similarity at all.
Source: I asked this same question to my native Japanese teacher who knew a bit of Chinese.
you think the pronunciations of kanji are not simular because you are always learning simple words. When you read a Japanese political news you will find almost all the kanji’s pronunciations are simular to chinese
You are right, I haven’t learned complex words and thought it works the same way, thanks for correcting me! But I’m curious, wouldn’t the tonal nature of Chinese be a barrier for the pronunciation to be understandable?
Japanese has simple tones, for example 愛=a↑i↓ 哀=a↑i↑, if I take the tones as Chinese, いいえ=i2e1, 家=i3e1. Of course tones in japanese are not as useful as it in chinese, so sometimes it makes misunderstandings. but you can know what they are talking about depend on the topic. In fact many Chinese people can not pronounce tones well, I met some workers from a small western city ,they asked me for help about the registeration of COVID test, their tones were completely wrong but I still understood despite some difficulties
Really interesting! The accent may sound funny but it would be understandable. The importance and simplicity of comprehension with context as I try learning new languages is all the more evident.
some english words have more than one meaning, i think it’s the same as the situation that "same pronunciations, different meanings"in chinese and japanese. but english is a pronunciation based language so you don’t realize that
It’s less likely to have homophones in English(or most Latin origin languages) just because of the high average number of syllables per word.
Interesting read
some are different spellings, same pronunciations, different meanings for example allowed and aloud, blew and blue. some are same spelling, same pronunciation but different meanings for example ground can mean reason or earth. It’s just my thinking
maybe it wasnt accent, it’s their local lanugage
That’s more probable, might be an odd dialect.
I saw their ID cards, they were not han chinese
when you are hearing a political news and hear そうとう you wont think it’s 相当 双頭 or something else