<p>I just changed my major, and now I'm required to take four semesters of a language (two elementary and two intermediate.) I took three years of Japanese in high school and succeeded; I got A's and B's every semester. While I'd like to take Japanese again because I'm already familiar with it, I want to learn something else.</p>
<p>If I did well in Japanese (spoke it well, learned the characters well), how would Chinese be? I know it's quite a bit different, but I was just wondering if doing well in Japanese is a good sign for my future in Chinese classes. I loved learning how to write new characters in Japanese; it was like art to me. It was so interesting and relaxing.</p>
Chinese and Japanese are completely different from each other. They may share some of the same characters, but the characters are read differently. Their sentence structure and grammar are different, too. A native Japanese speaker at my university who helps TA for my advanced Japanese class is taking Chinese and she said it’s really hard for her.
If it is any consolation, Mandarin Chinese grammar is more similar to English. So even though Japanese vs. Mandarin syntax are different, it’s not something entirely unfamiliar.
If you have learned how you best learn characters, then you will likely be ahead of the curve for learning writing and reading. From there, you’re going to want to be patient with yourself and get a hang of the tones. In terms of long-term success, so long as you find ways to fall in love with cultural aspects, it will be fine. Your motivation will encourage you to find opportunities to practice.
-Been studying Mandarin for many years and gave Japanese a shot just last summer.
I realize this is an old thread, but in case anyone is interested - I spent several years studying Japanese. I’m hardly fluent, but people seem to understand me when I try it out in Japan. I took a beginning sequence in Mandarin last year, and knowing a bit of Japanese was a small advantage at the start because some of the written characters are the same, and a few of the words are similar.
The difficulty with Mandarin is the tones, which Japanese doesn’t prepare you for.
Kanji relates to Chinese, of course. You have advantage of Japanese, which is really good point to start Chinese. If you can master approximately 5000 kanji words or even just 2000 ones, it means you have the firm base to learn Chinese. And thing starts gong easily for you. Even a student who do not learn Japanese or Chinese before can start at the zero, so you can do it, too. But I think you have known that Chinese is one of the most difficult languages in the world.