<p>I believe both Japanese and Russian are pretty cool languages. The history of both countries is pretty interesting, and the fact that both use a different way of writing attracts me to it. I'd like your advice in which of the two should I delve into. Is one more useful than the other? I don't plan in living in either country, but surely visiting them any maybe even staying for a while (perhaps do a study abroad program). I feel taking Japanese would be harder (with all those kanji and hiragana, etc.) and so, would probably take me longer to learn, but yeah, I think both are great and can't decide which one to learn.</p>
<p>Can anyone tell me their experience with either? Which one, in your opinion, should I take?</p>
<p>I've tried learning Japanese. I probably could have been really good at it by now, had I stayed with it. But I just sort of stopped practicing one day, and I gradually forgot everything I learned.</p>
<p>Russian would definitely be easier than Japanese. It has a real alphabet, and you can sound out the words. However, I've never tried learning Russian. </p>
<p>I guess my vote is for Japanese. I think the Japanese culture is much more interesting, and it would be a better place to study abroad. Just make sure you stay with your lessons, and it won't be as hard as you think.</p>
<p>I would also vote for learning Japanese, because although both Japan and Russia have interesting cultures, I'd probably be more interested in Japan's culture and history- learned a little about it this year and it was really interesting.
However, I think Japanese would be much harder to learn and I'm not sure you could get a really good grasp on it in college. (Anyone have personal experience?) Still, Japanese would probably be more useful as well.</p>
<p>Russian and Japanese are both really hard to learn. I have tried to learn both, and my Russian studying seems better. But if you are cool with Japanese characters, Japanese is certainly not a bad idea.
Speaking of culture, I'm crazy about about Russian culture and the Romanov Dynasty.</p>
<p>I'm fluent in Russian and used to be a tad proficient (conversationally) in Japanese, but, alas, considering that I had self-studied it and never had much practical experience, I dropped it, and have since then forgotten a good part of it. I intend to take classes in it once I get to college, though.</p>
<p>Regarding their difficulty, I would say that Russian is more difficult grammatically, and Japanese is more difficult in terms of sheer memorization (so long as you stick to conversation and not decide to become a novelist -- I hear formal Japanese grammar is a *****). Russian has tons of conjugations for near every article of grammar (although I cheat -- I learned it young so it comes naturally and without conscious effort), while Japanese has tons of Kanji and kana that you have to memorize if you ever wish to become partially literate.</p>
<p>The Kana syllable alphabet is more foreign to the romance speaker than the Cyrillic, so I guess Japanese would be harder there too.</p>
<p>As to their respective coolness, Russian has become rather mundane because of my constant interaction with it, while Japanese still retains its exotic qualities, so I can't really comment there,</p>
<p>The kana characters are really pretty easy to learn. It's the Kanji, with their multiple readings per character, that make the language difficult.</p>
<p>^No, not a whole lot. But the sounds of Spanish and Japanese are quite similar. And, as an added bonus, the words for bread are the same. "Pan" means bread in both Spanish and Japanese, although the Japanese borrowed the word from Romance languages. Apparently, bread is not traditionally Japanese, so Japan's first experience with bread was with European traders.</p>
<p>The kana characters are really pretty easy to learn. It's the Kanji, with their multiple readings per character, that make the language difficult.</p>
<p>Yes! Especially when you have 2 kanji whose meanings are completely different but whose spellings only vary by, like, the slightest of tilts in some dorsal slash tucked away somewhere... add that on top of messy/small writing and you get really illegible characters.</p>
<p>Spanish won't really help you, sorry... and, I don't think (although having rarely ever used it, I don't quite know) that Spanish is drastically closer sounding to Japanese than English is...</p>