The characters have mostly similar meanings, but there are differences to how they’re used in the two languages. Kanji have been in use for around 1500 years, and they’re a Japanese adaptation of the Chinese Hanzi system. The Chinese characters, Hanzi have been in use since the bronze age, meaning that it’s one of the oldest writing systems that’s still being used today.Īnd Japanese Kanji are practically the same thing.

In principle, Japanese and Chinese use the same writing system. 5 Verdict: Is Japanese Or Chinese More Difficult?.4 Words And Vocabulary In Chinese And Japanese.3 Chinese And Japanese Grammar Compared.2 Japanese and Chinese Pronunciation Compared.

1 Writing Systems In Chinese And Japanese.In the following, I’ll try comparing some of the specifics of both Japanese and Chinese in order to try and illustrate what the challenges are in each language. When it comes to writing, Japanese uses three separate scripts with different pronunciations and complicated rules, whereas Chinese uses only one which, despite the many characters, actually is logical. Japanese pronunciation is not a big deal, but Chinese tones will take a long time to learn. Japanese grammar and word order is a struggle, whereas Chinese is easy in that regard. While they’re definitely time-consuming, there are a few others, like Arabic or Korean, that might compete for the title.īut focusing on Chinese and Japanese – which one is actually the more difficult language?īoth Japanese and Chinese are extremely complicated languages for an English speaker, but in different ways. Whether this is true or not is debatable. Many call Chinese and Japanese “the hardest languages in the world”. They are notoriously difficult to master, and if you hope to reach even a moderately high level in either language, you’ll need to keep studying for years! Whenever people speak of language learning, or more specifically, difficult languages, two languages are almost always mentioned more than others.Įverybody and their aunt know that these two languages are two of the most complicated tongues out there, at least from the perspective of an English speaker.

Ispeak chinese in japanese