<p>Has anyone taken chinese or japanese in college? Which one is easier to learn?</p>
<p>I took Japanese for a year during law school. I loved it (and want to take it again sometime, since I’ve forgotten everything in the intervening 20-some years). It was not too difficult for someone who likes learning languages. We did writing and reading as well as (mostly) speaking; in a year we learned all the kana and many kanji. While (as in most languages) the way things are pronounced is important, it’s not a “tonal” language like Chinese; it’s pretty easy to get the basic pronunciation rules (and exceptions) down, then just practice, practice, practice. We had lab 5 days a week, and within a few weeks we were speaking no English in lab. Every night we’d have dialogues and exercises to practice and learn, then we’d practice them with variations in class. The important thing is to push yourself to actually speak, preferentially with native speakers.</p>
<p>My niece took Chinese (Mandarin, I think, but I’m not sure) for 4 years in high school. It seemed more difficult to me than Japanese, because of the tonality issue. In Chinese, the same basic sound can mean different things if it is said with different tonal quality (low-to-high, high-to-low, stuff like that). This would be very difficult for me because I am somewhat tone-deaf. </p>