Is Chinese more difficult than European languages

[sea-au-don]

Does Japanese really have tones? When I was taking Japanese for my undergraduate degree, my accent was constantly corrected by the teacher, who was white. She said Japanese didn’t have tones like Chinese did. Apparently she thought my native language influenced the way I spoke it. But then when I watch Japanese drama and anime, their Japanese seems to be tonal. Can anyone enlighten me on this?

[chrix]

Strictly speaking Japanese is not a tonal language, but a pitch-accent language, I've written about it here: http://www.chinese-forums.com/showpost.php?p=186748&postcount=11

So since this is usually not taught to foreigners, my theory is like this: learners whose mother tongue is not tonal in any way, like say English, don't pick up on this and don't learn it, learners whose mother tongue is tonal like Chinese, but in a way different from Japanese, can detect some kind of tone (namely the pitch-accent), but since they're not taught this correctly, they mangle it, producing a characteristic Chinese accent.

[Hofmann]

Like this?

吾は日˥˩ 本˧˥ 語˨˩˦ を話すことはありません。

[atitarev]

learners whose mother tongue is not tonal in any way, like say English, don't pick up on this and don't learn it

Extensive exposure helps to get the Japanese tones right, many patterns are not hard to pick up.

If you hear saYOONARA, SHINsetsu often enough, you will start imitating the tones and only this will sound natural to you.

It's true Japanese pitch accent is not taught specifically, as it usually doesn't hamper understanding with a small number of exception but picking the right pronunciation is advisable. The accent differs in different areas.

A bit more here on the Japanese pitch accent (高低アクセント kōtei akusento)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_pitch_accent

[sea-au-don]

Thanks mate. That contributes to my realisation that I was once ignorant enough to deem it possible to self-study the language merely from watching Japanese media content.

[atitarev]

Oh no, don't misunderstand me. Listening and mimicking is the key. Now that you realise there is the pitch accent, you can pay attention to it. However, I don't see how you can just watch and learn, you need some basic vocabulary, grammar to build on.

[chrix]

yes, I'm not necessarily bemoaning the fact that it's not taught, it's just how it is. There are some minimal pairs though which might be hard to pick up, but if you have an ear for it, it should work. There are also strategies the Japanese use themselves for unknown words, like a standard pitch pattern for foreign words etc., also pitch changes around in verb forms.

But it need not deter anybody from learning Japanese, Japanese roots are polysyllabic, so the function of the accent is mainly delimitative and getting them wrong will not terribly impede communication. Speakers with different dialect backgrounds will have different patterns, though some speakers from peripheral regions strive to adopt the patterns of the capital region.

[flameproof]

Personally, I'd say that Chinese is in essence a very easy language to learn (if not for the writing system that makes it 3 times harder to remember : )

Ok, ok, ok, but the characters can at least identify a word with some precision. Pinyin can't do that.

I agree that Mandarin is very easy when it comes to grammar. However, I find it difficult to remember the words since everything sounds sort of the same. Reminds me a bit on shepherds, that know every sheep in the herd by name even though they look all the same to the untrained eye.

The characters I find easier to learn then the listening. It's quite easy to build up character knowledge with the right method, and of course, time.

Japanese is not a tonal language

I think all spoken languages are tonal. Otherwise you can't hear them. Sign and body language are not tonal. But I know what you meant to say...... However, I don't really believe in tones.

[renzhe]

Japanese has tones, but they work differently than they do in Chinese (more like the tones in Swedish), but tones are never taught to foreign learners of Japanese... it leads to funny accents of people with Sinitic languages as their mother tongues though...

chrisx, thank you for your earlier discussion on pitch-accent languages. I had long suspected that my mother tongue (Croatian) had some kind of tones, and now I see that this is true.

I wonder if that made dealing with (hearing, imitating) Chines tones easier.

I don't know if Japanese is easier (it certainly seems to have many grammatical traps), but I've met many people who picked up (spoken!) Japanese from their Japanese partner, or in their spare time and virtually no people who managed to pick up spoken Chinese like that.

[chrix]

Renzhe, I remember discussions of Slovenian in the literature, but it's been a long time, so I don't remember Croatian. But you're the native speaker

flameproof, yes every language has pitch, they just use it differently. If they assign different pitch patterns to each syllable on a lexical level, that's usally called tone in linguistics.

[renzhe]

Apparently, modern standard Slovenian uses simple stress, though they are dialects which still use a pitch accent. Something I read while reading up on the topic on wikipedia. Croatian, Serbian and Bosnian are pitch-accented with four different "tones" assigned to complete words. The danger of mixing up words when using the wrong "tone" is rather low nowadays, though.

[chalimac]

They're nuts Japanese with no tones, and a complete phonetic "alphabet" that only uses pictographs for shortening words up (think writing in english, but drawing a picture every few words to replace long words) is far easier than a tonal language that is 100%

Having studied both I think Japanese is very hard, harder than Chinese. You have 3 writing systems, multiple politeness levels and then the duplicty of on'yomi / kun'yomi readings of the characters. However, if you are Chinese, Japanese might be the easiest language to pick, you already can understand about 40% of the words and the on'yomi can be derived, in many cases, from Chinese with some simple rules like:

先生 xiānsheng > sensei

天氣 tiānqì > tenki

[FadedStardust]

Having studied both I think Japanese is very hard, harder than Chinese. You have 3 writing systems, multiple politeness levels and then the duplicty of on'yomi / kun'yomi readings of the characters. However, if you are Chinese, Japanese might be the easiest language to pick, you already can understand about 40% of the words and the on'yomi can be derived, in many cases, from Chinese with some simple rules like:

先生 xiānsheng > sensei

天氣 tiānqì > tenki

I'm also studying both and very much agree that Japanese is the harder of the two, though at first glance it looks easier.

I think you sometimes have to be careful though going from Chinese to Japanese on-yomi words. I'll use your 先生 example. In (Mandarin) Chinese it means "mister" "sir" or "husband" where as in Japanese (and in southern Chinese dialects such as Cantonese, from what I understand) it means "teacher". As I've studied Mandarin first, I have a very hard time writing this word when writing about my current Japanese teacher who is female, I feel like I'm somehow insulting her...

My point is that words introduced from China to Japan came many, many years ago and since those times both the languages in China and Japanese have continued to develop independently of each other so there will be times when you think you know what something is saying, only to find later that it is really VERY different. I think this is especially true of Northern Chinese who are mono-lingual Mandarin speakers, other Chinese people whose dialects have changed significantly, and foreign language learners who usually tend to only study Mandarin.

[Hofmann]

I would agree that Japanese is more difficult. If one only looks at the syllabaries, one might conclude that Japanese is easier, because one doesn't need to know Kanji to write whatever one wants to say, but there is more stuff one needs to learn in order to communicate effectively. For example, how to say something and when to say it. Kanji often have more than one reading. Words can have their own reading that is unpredictable from the on- or kun- reading of the individual characters (like 煙草).

[atitarev]

It's important to say that Japanese grammar is different, not difficult. I mean that you don't have to memorise a lot of tables of conjugation, declension like you would need with Russian or Arabic. The Japanese verbs do change a bit but not too much, the rules concerning verbs can be described on one page. What is confusing and different is why this or that form used and what pattern suits which situation. It may take a while to figure this out and become comfortable with different patterns but for a language like Japanese you need a slightly different approach - more exposure, good exercises. When you hear a pattern used in a context, then it becomes more natural.

In terms of time, understanding pattern or politeness levels doesn't take years to master. So, saying Japanese is harder because it has some politeness levels is not a good reason. I found that I had more problems with very casual Japanese, since I learned from textbooks where the polite Japanese was taught but when I tried to read manga I got stuck, since I didn't have resources explaining colloquial, informal Japanese. Like Renzhe said, you can learn Japanese by mixing with the Japanese.

People say, Chinese for Westerners is as difficult, as English fro Chinese. I wonder if there is some proof. Is there a research similar to FSI about how many academic hours is required for an adult Chinese person to become functional in English? I think many people will say that generally Chinese know English better that foreigners knowing Chinese. There are a lot of beginners in Chinese but not so many who have mastered it.

Edited May 25, 2009 at 03:29 AM by atitarev

[chrix]

What type of politeness are you talking about? There's levels of politeness they don't teach foreigners because even Japanese need to undergo training to correctly use them. We're not talking just about 丁寧語、　but the entire trifecta of 敬語...

[atitarev]

The basic 敬語 is not as hard - you need to remember a few special verbs, humble and honorific expressions and patterns, which are used to express extra politeness, the entire trifecta is not needed if you don't work in such a field where you need it. Anyway, I wouldn't exaggerate the difficulty of the language because of the polite speech. You may not be used to a different level if you use only one, like Japanese kids who learn overseas, then come back to Japan and use -masu, -desu with their peers, the plain Japanese uses more verb inflections.

[chrix]

well the actual words are not hard to remember. It's the usage that is difficult. Go into a Japanese bookstore and look at all the guide books on keigo for Japanese people who grew up in Japan. Look at the sociolinguistic statistics.

I'm also not sure what you mean by your desu masu comment, but I'll let it slip.

[atitarev]

I am not sure it is important to go into intricacies of a language in this rather casual discussion. English has the largest number of words compared to any languages, it doesn't mean that English language is the hardest language to communicate in, if all you need is communication. I am not fluent in Japanese but I find reading Japanese novels, articles, stories and movie dialogues are manageable, coming across difficult spots every time but I don't see it as an obstacle hard to overcome. Like people already said, difficult is Kanji and multiple readings, not the cultural or politeness difficulties.

We have covered different aspects of keigo (doing certificate IV, part-time in Japanese this year). Although they are different from many other languages, except for perhaps Korean, I find this part of Japanese interesting and not so offputting. I don't know why you're so negative and what you are trying to prove, Chrix. Perhaps, it's better we stop and let other people discuss their difficulties. I am off to Japan tomorrow, anyway, we'll be back in two weeks.

[chrix]

If you read my posts, you'll see that I didnt' really express any opinion on the difficulty of learning Japanese (I think there's too many subjective factors involved to answer this kind of question conclusively anyways). Full command of the politeness system is not necessarily important since it rarely impedes understanding on a propositional level, so I personally don't think that this needs to be a factor deterring people from learning it. I was merely pointing out that the Japanese system of polite speech is difficult to master for anyone (because it is part of the "high" formalised parts of language use), I don't see anything negative about it, and I don't think one should downplay it. A linguist friend of mine once called it "Kyoto court language foisted upon the entire nation".

Enjoy your time in Japan.