I think Japanese would be a better fit, because they still use Chinese characters (kanji), and as you said yourself, you consume more Japanese media.
As for Hanja, the resources in English aren’t that many, because the modern language uses Hangul. And while neither Korean nor Japanese have tones, Korean has tricky pronunciation, whereas Japanese has similarities to Spanish.
that’s surprising for me to hear. i feel like the pitches just come naturally to me when i’m speaking japanese, maybe because the pitches aren’t being shoved down your throat like they are when learning chinese lol.
I mean, in Chinese each character has a tone. There’s rules on tones, too. Makes it pretty easy. That and you just copy what native speakers say.
Probably the same with Japanese, but if I say ha^shi vs ha_shi there’s a difference.
In reality, I think you could probably in both Chinese and Japanese tell what people are saying via context alone. No need for tones or pitch.
Certainly I can in songs, anyways.
i know each character has a tone in chinese, i am chinese lol. it’s just pitches are easier to understanding than tones because it’s not considered a priority when you learn japanese.
Tones shouldn’t be considered a priority either, to be honest. They vary from region to region. As long as you generally pronounce the right syllable (even ignoring the tone) you’ll probably be understood unless someone is trying to not understand you.
Source: I’m a foreigner in Southern China. Know many people who have a lot worse pronunciation than I do, they get understood (majority of the time).
exactly lol. even when i could speak a little chinese, my family could still understand me even though i never used tones. it’s easier to just learn that that’s the pronunciation of the word than to learn the individual tones.
But, how else will I know if I should drive across a bridge or chopsticks to cross a river? This isn't really a tone thing, though, but a rising or falling pitch, that can happen has complex rules on when it would happen in a sentence, and the pitch change various by dialect (akin to how baka and aho switch meanings between Tokyo-ben and Kansai-ben)
Point is, it's not a controversial take, and absolutely true that you shouldn't worry about tackling it until you can ace N1 of the JLPT.
The standard Korean (mainly spoken in the greater Seoul area) doesn't have tones. If OP chooses to only learn the standard Korean, there would be no problem. Dialects do have different accents but this is nowhere near the tones of Mandarin.
Chinese tones =/= musical tones. If you can hear the difference between “What do you want to do?” where the tone at the end rises, and “Stop that!” where the tone falls then you can definitely hear tones. Distinguishing them reliably just takes a variable amount of practice. Grammatically and vocab-wise I’ve found Mandarin Chinese much simpler than Korean too.
Try the Dong Chinese tone trainer (free), and keep practicing. Listen loads to natural speech too (I like podcasts for the car and I watch a *lot* of dramas!)
You don’t have to understand spoken Chinese to read or write Chinese characters. That’s kind of the whole point of characters. Until around the turn of the 20th century, educated people throughout China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam would correspond in written 漢文 (Classical Chinese) despite not necessarily knowing each other’s colloquial languages. People would write using Classical Chinese vocabulary and grammar, and each recipient would pronounce it according to their own language’s sounds. So a Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, and Japanese reader would pronounce 學 as *xue, hok, hak,* and *gaku,* respectively, but they would all understand the meaning to be “learn”.
That said, learning to understand and speak Korean would be *a lot* of work if you just want to read and write Chinese characters. Even though something like 60% of all Korean words (including most of the fancy ones) come from Classical Chinese, the core of the Korean language is not related to Chinese at all and has a completely different grammar and overall “vibe”. Indigenous Korean words are never represented using Chinese characters, and people hardly use any Chinese characters to write Chinese-based words in modern everyday writing. Chinese characters are still important in Korean culture and can be extremely useful to help *learn* Korean (I think they are actually more useful to foreign learners than they are to Korean people, who are already good at Korean), but there aren’t many good resources intended for foreign learners. Most hanja resources are meant for Korean teens and adults who are trying to pass a hanja class or want to read Classical Chinese and historical Korean texts.
If you’re interested in exploring Korean culture (It’s pretty cool! There are many elements shared with China and Japan, but also it is its own thing), you are welcome to study Korean. There is a lot of support for learners, and the scene doesn’t attract as many weirdos as Japanese does. But if you’re really just interested in reading and writing characters, you’ll have much better results using resources meant for English-speaking learners of Chinese. Learning Korean is a long road. The US government’s diplomat school puts it in the same “super hard” category for English speakers as Japanese and Chinese, and hanja are just one part of the puzzle.
FWIW, I thought I was deaf to Chinese tones too, but I kept working on them because if it were actually possible to be tone deaf, there'd be millions of such people in China, not able to use their own language. This can't be true.
But it sounds like you're more interested in Korean or Japanese anyway.
As someone who studied some Japanese and a lot of korean, learn Japanese.
The pronounciation is much much easier and you will face a lot more Kanji.
Dont go to korean Just because they Japanese subreddit was rude. Rude communities/mods/individuals are everywhere. Focus on the nice people.
I've studied Mandarin, Japanese and Korean. I'm not fluent in any of them but I'll get back to them soon. My job wants me to learn Spanish, so that's my focus now. A lot of people say that Chinese is so difficult but I think it's easier in some ways. The word order is more similar to English. Don't really have to worry about honorifics. The Korean alphabet takes a few days to learn. Japanese has three types of characters to learn, and that takes a long time.
I would say that you should really give Chinese another chance. It would benefit you as a Chinese person to learn Chinese. If you have Chinese family members you can talk to, maybe they can help you. Or go look at videos about tones online. HelloChinese is the best app to use, if you want to learn. It's made by Chinese people. If you live anywhere near a Chinatown, sometimes they offer free courses at community centers.
Also, as far as jobs go, there's more jobs looking for people fluent in Chinese than Japanese or Korean.
Aside from that, I would say Japanese as second option. You have interests that involve Japanese culture, so that would help keep you motivated and make the learning experience more fun.
I think Koreans only use hanja for abbreviations or symbols. 99% of what you'll see will be Hangul. Just like new generation Americans aren't using cursive.
If you still decide to learn Korean, I would recommend Lingodeer.
Hi! Deaf person here too. I’ve been learning Korean for a few years now and it’s very very easy to learn! Learning the romanization/pronunciation can hold you back in the start because there’s a lot of rules but after you get used to the hangul it’s an easy language to learn!! DM me if you have any questions :)
I just started learning korean in february and it took me only a week to learn the alphabet. And as far as I've come, it's actually much easier to learn than I thought!
Since your main goal is learning Chinese characters, I'd say no. Koreans barely ever use hanja.
As someone who tried learning Japanese: go learn it. I had to quite because of kanji, but if it's what you want, it will probably fit you.
Why ask reddit what you should do with your own time?
It seems like just a whim anyway. Go learn it, then quit if it's not what you want. I'd suggest not leaving your hobbies up to reddit to decide for you.
I wouldn't wish that fate on my enemies.
You don't need hanja to learn Korean. However, if you are ALREADY learning them, it can help you understand the meanings of a lot of words. Just like English has a lot of words derived from French, Greek, and Latin, a large number of Korean words were derived from hanja. If your only reason to study hanja is to learn Korean, don't. Just add that time and effort into focusing specially on learning Korean.
pronunciation of Chinese is possible for anyone. Tone-deafness (amusia) is quite uncommon and it's possible to learn to speak Chinese even if you have amusia. You may not produce the right tones all the time, but that will always require a ton of practice if you're not used to it.
No, for the answer of TLDR, the Hanja is just a traditional Chinese (+ hard pronunciation of the Hanja and the variations of the words like 4-character idioms). And there's a bit of intonation too in Korean. And as Hestia-Creates said, if you are going to learn Hanja, there isn't much resources that is written in English. And even you learn Hanja, it's useless as all of the Korean people now uses Modern Korean (I'm saying like this cause there are old Korean called Hunmin-jeong-eum) rather than Korean Hanja. And if you learn Korean, then you'll need to learn other dialects (which have tones that is very hard), like Gangwondo dialect, Busan dialect, Jeju dialect, etc. So, maybe japanese would be the best fit for u rather than Chinese or Korean (I'm South Korean who've learned abt Chinese and Japanese so believe me, learning japanese would be the best choice)
If your main interest is learning characters then the Korean “Hangul” may not interest you as it is a very very simple alphabet. All three languages are incredibly difficult but Korean probably leans towards easier of them due to the written language being much more simple. I would just offer you this advice… which ever language you chose, make sure it’s definitely what you want to learn, because holy cow is it a lot of work and time. You want to immerse yourself into the culture and language to learn, and if you’re kind of into it but not fully into it, you’ll never actually learn it. It’s like blood sweat and tears lol so that drive has to be there in the beginning. Good luck!
Hey! People have already answered your question well enough but I wanted to put my two cents in. I study Korean studies alongside Japanese studies students and if you’re mainly interested in learning hanja/kanji then Japanese is definitely a better fit for you. It’s more common to learn kanji when learning Japanese than it is to learn hanja when studying Korean (from my observations at least); for example at my uni we start learning hanja only in second year whereas the Japanese studies students started learning kanji almost right away and are way more involved with it. Also, since you consume more Japanese media learning the language might be more enjoyable for you since you can use Japanese entertainment for learning purposes :)
I think Japanese would be a better fit, because they still use Chinese characters (kanji), and as you said yourself, you consume more Japanese media. As for Hanja, the resources in English aren’t that many, because the modern language uses Hangul. And while neither Korean nor Japanese have tones, Korean has tricky pronunciation, whereas Japanese has similarities to Spanish.
Plus Korean can have tones, depending on the dialect
Japanese actually as well but it’s more of a high level concept that isnt relevant in the early years of studying (controversial take)
i think the pitches in japanese are easier to understand in comparision to chinese. this might just be me.
Definitely not, chinese is crazy. but we‘ve been doing the korean <-> japanese comparison here
what is “<->”? i don’t understand the message of your comment. i accidentally misworded my comment
The pitches are way worse than tones, but I speak Chinese a lot better than Japanese so…
that’s surprising for me to hear. i feel like the pitches just come naturally to me when i’m speaking japanese, maybe because the pitches aren’t being shoved down your throat like they are when learning chinese lol.
I mean, in Chinese each character has a tone. There’s rules on tones, too. Makes it pretty easy. That and you just copy what native speakers say. Probably the same with Japanese, but if I say ha^shi vs ha_shi there’s a difference. In reality, I think you could probably in both Chinese and Japanese tell what people are saying via context alone. No need for tones or pitch. Certainly I can in songs, anyways.
i know each character has a tone in chinese, i am chinese lol. it’s just pitches are easier to understanding than tones because it’s not considered a priority when you learn japanese.
Tones shouldn’t be considered a priority either, to be honest. They vary from region to region. As long as you generally pronounce the right syllable (even ignoring the tone) you’ll probably be understood unless someone is trying to not understand you. Source: I’m a foreigner in Southern China. Know many people who have a lot worse pronunciation than I do, they get understood (majority of the time).
exactly lol. even when i could speak a little chinese, my family could still understand me even though i never used tones. it’s easier to just learn that that’s the pronunciation of the word than to learn the individual tones.
But, how else will I know if I should drive across a bridge or chopsticks to cross a river? This isn't really a tone thing, though, but a rising or falling pitch, that can happen has complex rules on when it would happen in a sentence, and the pitch change various by dialect (akin to how baka and aho switch meanings between Tokyo-ben and Kansai-ben) Point is, it's not a controversial take, and absolutely true that you shouldn't worry about tackling it until you can ace N1 of the JLPT.
Are you saying that some words in certain dialects have different meanings depending on tones?
Busan(Gyeongsang) dialect is famous for this. There was a video I watched where 가가가가가 can have different meaning based on the pronunciation
Yes
Only a few words, to my knowledge (I'm a native speaker). Linguistically, "tones" and "accents" are two different terms
The standard Korean (mainly spoken in the greater Seoul area) doesn't have tones. If OP chooses to only learn the standard Korean, there would be no problem. Dialects do have different accents but this is nowhere near the tones of Mandarin.
Korean does not use hanja. So if you specifically want the hanja version of Korean, you will have to enter the academic field of Korean.
fr my parents' generation and above are good at hanja but us millennials and gen-zs don't really know hanja
Chinese tones =/= musical tones. If you can hear the difference between “What do you want to do?” where the tone at the end rises, and “Stop that!” where the tone falls then you can definitely hear tones. Distinguishing them reliably just takes a variable amount of practice. Grammatically and vocab-wise I’ve found Mandarin Chinese much simpler than Korean too.
I have been learning chinese for 6 months and still can't distinguish between tones :(
Try the Dong Chinese tone trainer (free), and keep practicing. Listen loads to natural speech too (I like podcasts for the car and I watch a *lot* of dramas!)
Will check it out thanks
You don’t have to understand spoken Chinese to read or write Chinese characters. That’s kind of the whole point of characters. Until around the turn of the 20th century, educated people throughout China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam would correspond in written 漢文 (Classical Chinese) despite not necessarily knowing each other’s colloquial languages. People would write using Classical Chinese vocabulary and grammar, and each recipient would pronounce it according to their own language’s sounds. So a Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, and Japanese reader would pronounce 學 as *xue, hok, hak,* and *gaku,* respectively, but they would all understand the meaning to be “learn”. That said, learning to understand and speak Korean would be *a lot* of work if you just want to read and write Chinese characters. Even though something like 60% of all Korean words (including most of the fancy ones) come from Classical Chinese, the core of the Korean language is not related to Chinese at all and has a completely different grammar and overall “vibe”. Indigenous Korean words are never represented using Chinese characters, and people hardly use any Chinese characters to write Chinese-based words in modern everyday writing. Chinese characters are still important in Korean culture and can be extremely useful to help *learn* Korean (I think they are actually more useful to foreign learners than they are to Korean people, who are already good at Korean), but there aren’t many good resources intended for foreign learners. Most hanja resources are meant for Korean teens and adults who are trying to pass a hanja class or want to read Classical Chinese and historical Korean texts. If you’re interested in exploring Korean culture (It’s pretty cool! There are many elements shared with China and Japan, but also it is its own thing), you are welcome to study Korean. There is a lot of support for learners, and the scene doesn’t attract as many weirdos as Japanese does. But if you’re really just interested in reading and writing characters, you’ll have much better results using resources meant for English-speaking learners of Chinese. Learning Korean is a long road. The US government’s diplomat school puts it in the same “super hard” category for English speakers as Japanese and Chinese, and hanja are just one part of the puzzle.
FWIW, I thought I was deaf to Chinese tones too, but I kept working on them because if it were actually possible to be tone deaf, there'd be millions of such people in China, not able to use their own language. This can't be true. But it sounds like you're more interested in Korean or Japanese anyway.
As someone who studied some Japanese and a lot of korean, learn Japanese. The pronounciation is much much easier and you will face a lot more Kanji. Dont go to korean Just because they Japanese subreddit was rude. Rude communities/mods/individuals are everywhere. Focus on the nice people.
I've studied Mandarin, Japanese and Korean. I'm not fluent in any of them but I'll get back to them soon. My job wants me to learn Spanish, so that's my focus now. A lot of people say that Chinese is so difficult but I think it's easier in some ways. The word order is more similar to English. Don't really have to worry about honorifics. The Korean alphabet takes a few days to learn. Japanese has three types of characters to learn, and that takes a long time. I would say that you should really give Chinese another chance. It would benefit you as a Chinese person to learn Chinese. If you have Chinese family members you can talk to, maybe they can help you. Or go look at videos about tones online. HelloChinese is the best app to use, if you want to learn. It's made by Chinese people. If you live anywhere near a Chinatown, sometimes they offer free courses at community centers. Also, as far as jobs go, there's more jobs looking for people fluent in Chinese than Japanese or Korean. Aside from that, I would say Japanese as second option. You have interests that involve Japanese culture, so that would help keep you motivated and make the learning experience more fun. I think Koreans only use hanja for abbreviations or symbols. 99% of what you'll see will be Hangul. Just like new generation Americans aren't using cursive. If you still decide to learn Korean, I would recommend Lingodeer.
Hi! Deaf person here too. I’ve been learning Korean for a few years now and it’s very very easy to learn! Learning the romanization/pronunciation can hold you back in the start because there’s a lot of rules but after you get used to the hangul it’s an easy language to learn!! DM me if you have any questions :)
I just started learning korean in february and it took me only a week to learn the alphabet. And as far as I've come, it's actually much easier to learn than I thought!
You seem more interested in Japanese!! :))
Of the 3 languages, the letters are the easiest to learn is Korean. But, korean grammar is sooooo hard. More hard than Chinese ☹️☹️
Since your main goal is learning Chinese characters, I'd say no. Koreans barely ever use hanja. As someone who tried learning Japanese: go learn it. I had to quite because of kanji, but if it's what you want, it will probably fit you.
Why ask reddit what you should do with your own time? It seems like just a whim anyway. Go learn it, then quit if it's not what you want. I'd suggest not leaving your hobbies up to reddit to decide for you. I wouldn't wish that fate on my enemies.
You don't need hanja to learn Korean. However, if you are ALREADY learning them, it can help you understand the meanings of a lot of words. Just like English has a lot of words derived from French, Greek, and Latin, a large number of Korean words were derived from hanja. If your only reason to study hanja is to learn Korean, don't. Just add that time and effort into focusing specially on learning Korean.
pronunciation of Chinese is possible for anyone. Tone-deafness (amusia) is quite uncommon and it's possible to learn to speak Chinese even if you have amusia. You may not produce the right tones all the time, but that will always require a ton of practice if you're not used to it.
No, for the answer of TLDR, the Hanja is just a traditional Chinese (+ hard pronunciation of the Hanja and the variations of the words like 4-character idioms). And there's a bit of intonation too in Korean. And as Hestia-Creates said, if you are going to learn Hanja, there isn't much resources that is written in English. And even you learn Hanja, it's useless as all of the Korean people now uses Modern Korean (I'm saying like this cause there are old Korean called Hunmin-jeong-eum) rather than Korean Hanja. And if you learn Korean, then you'll need to learn other dialects (which have tones that is very hard), like Gangwondo dialect, Busan dialect, Jeju dialect, etc. So, maybe japanese would be the best fit for u rather than Chinese or Korean (I'm South Korean who've learned abt Chinese and Japanese so believe me, learning japanese would be the best choice)
If your main interest is learning characters then the Korean “Hangul” may not interest you as it is a very very simple alphabet. All three languages are incredibly difficult but Korean probably leans towards easier of them due to the written language being much more simple. I would just offer you this advice… which ever language you chose, make sure it’s definitely what you want to learn, because holy cow is it a lot of work and time. You want to immerse yourself into the culture and language to learn, and if you’re kind of into it but not fully into it, you’ll never actually learn it. It’s like blood sweat and tears lol so that drive has to be there in the beginning. Good luck!
I like Korean rock music (specifically 장기하) better than Japanese.
Hey! People have already answered your question well enough but I wanted to put my two cents in. I study Korean studies alongside Japanese studies students and if you’re mainly interested in learning hanja/kanji then Japanese is definitely a better fit for you. It’s more common to learn kanji when learning Japanese than it is to learn hanja when studying Korean (from my observations at least); for example at my uni we start learning hanja only in second year whereas the Japanese studies students started learning kanji almost right away and are way more involved with it. Also, since you consume more Japanese media learning the language might be more enjoyable for you since you can use Japanese entertainment for learning purposes :)
There is no hanja Korean. Hanja is no longer being used. Korean is very easy to learn with small set of letters.
learn all of them if you're interested, imo best to learn 2 at once I'm tone deaf = I haven't listened / studied enough yet