Japanese or... Korean or... Chinese...
Which one should I learn? I don't know!
I love anime but I'm also fond of K-pop
and I could never say no to Chinese food
I get it, you love all these countries
and you dream about going in each one of them
Now I’ve received quite a few messages
asking which one is the best to learn
First of all, deciding to learn a language is a very personal choice
And secondly, there is no such a thing
as a language that’s better than the others
If you learn Mandarin, you’ll get the ability
to speak to more than one billion people
If you learn Japanese, you’ll be able to watch anime without the subtitles
and perhaps even work in the industry
And if you learn Korean, you’ll finally be able
to properly sing "Oppa Gangnam Style"
It really depends on your priorities and personal tastes
However, if you’re like me
and you absolutely want to learn the 3 of them
then keep watching because I’ll be showing you
the characteristics and challenges of each
Then I'll give you my humble opinion on the wisest choice of learning
Japanese, Korean and Chinese are completely different languages
associated with different cultures, different sounds
pronunciations and behaviors
Nevertheless, you’ll find similarities that’ll help you
in your learning journey
Just like knowing Spanish helps you learn French or Italian
For instance, grammar in Japanese and Korean is almost identical
They are both agglutinative languages
which means they use a system suffixes
to determine the role of each word in a sentence
In Japanese, what we call the topic particle is [wa]
In Korean, it’s [eun] or [neun]
[eun] after a consonant
and [neun] after a vowel
The subject particle in Japanese is [ga]
In Korean, it’s also [ga] after a vowel
or [i] after a consonant
The object particle is [wo] in Japanese
In Korean, it’s [eul] or [reul]
I’m not going to list all of them
but I hope you get the idea of the logic
The fundamental structure of a sentence
is also going to be the same in both languages
In its simplest form, it's going to be subject - object - verb
For example, if you want to say "I eat rice"
In Japanese, it’ll be [watashiga gohanwo tabemasu]
In Korean, it’s going to be [jega babeul meogeoyo]
[Watashi] & [je] mean "I" which is the subject of the sentence
So they’re both associated with [ga]
Now what do I eat? Rice!
That's [gohan] in Japanese and [bab] in Korean
So [wo] and [eul] were added to make that clear
Now in both languages, it’s possible to get rid of the subject
when the context makes it obvious
So it would sound more natural to just say
[gohanwo tabemasu] and [babeul meogeoyo]
In Chinese, the syntax is closer to English
with the fundamental structure being: subject - verb - object
So saying "I eat rice" in Chinese would be [Wǒ chī fàn]
[Wǒ chī fàn]
As you might have noticed, there are no suffix particles in Chinese
By the way, rice being ubiquitous in these countries
by extension, "eating rice" also means just "having a meal"
About Chinese, the 2 main difficulties for English speakers
would be the tones and the writing system
In Mandarin, there are 4 tones
So for example, these 4 characters are all read [ma]
but with different tones: [mā] [má] [mǎ] [mà]
respectively mother, hemp, horse and scold
So remember that if you don’t use the proper tone
you might end up saying something completely different
from what you had in mind
Secondly, the Chinese language doesn't use an alphabet
or letters but characters
Each character has already a meaning
and therefore is a word in itself
but it’s also by combining characters together
that we form other words
So for example, if you combine [shǒu] meaning "hand"
and [zhǐ] meaning paper
it becomes [shǒuzhǐ] meaning toilet paper
But the most incredible thing is that
if you ask Japanese people to read the exact same word
they would read [tegami]
[te] means hand and [kami] means paper
so nothing different so far
But together [tegami] means the mail
How interesting!
Anyway, my point is that the Japanese language
also uses Chinese characters alongside 2 alphabets
called kana, katakana and hiragana to be more specific
Now even if there can be a little bit of misunderstanding
for words like toilet paper and mail
Japanese and Chinese people can kind of communicate
using their writing system
My very first job was working in a sushi restaurant
and most of the staff was Japanese
except for that one Chinese guy
They would write things down to communicate
It was fascinating to watch!
No talking, no body language...
just a pen and a sheet of paper
The Korean language on the other hand
uses a very simple alphabet called hangul
It was created by King Sejong in the mid 15th century
to expand literacy among the people
Hangul is indeed so easy that Korean people often say that
even a stupid man can learn it in only 10 days
And it’s true, it usually takes a few hours to learn
Now what most people don’t know is that
before hangul was created
the Korean language was using Chinese characters too!
In fact, until the 19th century!
So a lot of Korean words are similar to Chinese and Japanese ones
For example, let’s take this character meaning tea
In Japanese, it’s going ot be [cha], in Korean too [cha]
and in Chinese, it's going to be [chá] with the 2nd tone
Now if you take this character meaning "warm"
and that other one meaning "degree"
together it becomes "temperature"
In Japanese and Korean, it's going to be [ondo]
In Chinese, [wēndù]
Chinese characters are very powerful tools for the brain
because each one is a mnemonic in itself
So even if you're just interested in Korean
learning them will help you learn vocabulary
faster and more efficiently
So from my humble perspective, if you want to learn the 3 of them
I would recommend starting with Japanese
Because knowing the Chinese characters will help you
learn both Chinese and Korean
and you’ll already be able to kinda communicate with Chinese people
You’ll also understand how an agglutinative language works
and making sentences in Korean will be a piece of cake
That was my personal opinion...
Now these 3 languages sound completely different
and sometimes just listening to then can make you
realize that you connect more with one
So here are a few clips to give you an idea