this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2022
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Learn the Chinese language

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I can remember some hiragana and katakana characters. If the two languages are similar enough, maybe I could learn Chinese easier…

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[–] ybl@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 2 years ago

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.