<p>I am gonna go with Chinese. </p>
<p>If you learn Japanese, you aer probably planning to live in Japan. Don’t, because everything in Japan is so ****ing expensive, it’s like a robbery.</p>
<p>I’m learning Chinese, and it’s been a very rich experience thus far.</p>
<p>我的中文老师是很好。</p>
<p>You people do realize this thread is more than year old, right?</p>
<p>china:13trillion people
japan:few million people
You do the math lol</p>
<p>To the people saying Japanese is hard because it has 3 alphabets:</p>
<p>No, not really. I learned Hiragana and Katakana in my first semester of high school Japanese and from there it was second nature. It becomes so easy to write in hiragana/katakana that you will likely never forget it.</p>
<p>The Kanji is complete memorization, and your proficiency to learn will depend on your teacher. However, there are people who memorize 10 or so characters a day and in 3 months, know quite a bit. It takes a lot of dedication; you have to practice daily and review everything you’ve learned daily. I didn’t find it too bad since most of the time, even is characters have more than one meaning, you can 95% of the time derive the meaning from the context.</p>
<p>Grammar, I found, was structured (At least more than English is) and your ability to craft more and more complex ideas in Japanese will get better every day.</p>
<p>In the end, Japanese (or any other language) just takes a lot of diligence and dedication to master. I took Japanese for 4 and a half years. I haven’t practiced formally(much to my regret) for over a year and am starting to forget a few things. I really need to review everything before it’s gone forever though.</p>
<p>I take Chinese and it’s not really that bad.
But if you are going to live in Hawaii, learn Japanese!</p>
<p>I am about to start school here in Honolulu and don’t know which language to take: Chinese or Japanese. My father knows fluent, a tad rusty, Japanese and I have been in touch with it all my life because of that, but not to the point that I can speak it. I know tiny little things, but overall, can’t speak any other language but English. I have been doing research and found that most say Chinese is more useful, but Japanese is easier to speak. I have taken Latin in the past, when I lived in the Continental US and found that my strength is definitely speaking/pronouncing a language. I can memorize vocabulary well, but characters I have a tad of difficulty with.
Concerning the usefulness of both languages, I do not intend to partake in a career that requires me to correspond with foreign-language speaking co-workers, or any economic/traveling career that people consider a real job. If any believe otherwise, I have from a very young age, not had any career or interest that contains potential to be one in mind, so as of now, no career plan.
The only reason I am taking a language is because of school requirements and just for fun; I would like to be able to speak with people in the native tongue. Here in Hawaii, the Japanese population is more than 3x the amount of the Chinese population. However, most Japanese know English while most older Chinese citizens do not.
Sorry this is long, but considering what I’ve written here, what language is best suited for me?</p>
<p>Keep working on your spanish.</p>
<p>I’m sure you’re not actually fluent.</p>
<p>In my opinion, learning Chinese is a waste of time (coming from a native speaker). I can speak fluently but really almost all “educated” Chinese who you would probably do business with will know English.</p>
<p>Practical languages to learn:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Spanish (Almost all of Central / South America and a lot of them don’t know English real well). Despite the French constantly trying to distinguish themselves, this is by far the most important language to learn than English</p></li>
<li><p>Russian - The entire Eastern Bloc has languages similar to Russian. Plus once you learn Cyrillic, makes life a whole lot easier. Especially when you travel to those areas. Many people don’t speak English.</p></li>
<li><p>Arabic. Most Muslim countries have this as their primary language. Very useful especially in the middle east</p></li>
<li><p>French. Really no other countries besides France and some of its ex-colonies speak French as an official language. Do you see yourself doing business with the Ivory Coast anytime soon?! Still useful as a “diplomatic” language.</p></li>
<li><p>Any Asian Language</p></li>
<li><p>Any other European Language (almost all children have to take English class, so they all speak English perfectly</p></li>
<li><p>The Rest</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Japanese… </p>
<p>If you want to do business in China… whether or not you can speak Chinese will be the least of your worries…</p>
<p>If you want to do business in Japan… speaking/writing fluent Japanese would be the most beneficial skill besides a strong background in your desired field…</p>
<p>Introductory courses are useless unless you plan to further polish your ability in either language…</p>
<p>****ing gravediggers…</p>
<p>Whatever language you learn, it will become hard at some level. Don’t choose a language that is more practical or popular only for those reasons. I learned spanish for years without passion for the language becouse I thought it was practical and more people speak it. Today, I still can’t hold a conversation in Spanish. Later, I started learning French which I really liked even though its not very useful. In 2 years, my French surpassed my Spanish by alot. So just take the one that interests you the most.</p>
<p>@Pessimistic: Hey, what are you talking about?
“whether or not you can speak Chinese will be the least of your worries…”
Mind explaining?</p>
<p>Japanese…japanese chicks are cute =P</p>
<p>China is quickly becoming a powerhouse in the world. But other than that, China literally has thousands of years of history and culture. There are also millions of Chinese people around the world that know Mandarin.</p>
<p>Japanese isn’t as widely spoken a language as Mandarin, but Japan has its own unique culture and history as well. Japan has also had an edge on technology for a number of years. Some would argue that Japanese is a bit trickier than Chinese, but that opinion varies.</p>
<p>Currently, I’m a Chinese learner, but I don’t have interest in learning Japanese at this point. I’m probably a bit skewed in that regard, but whatever language you learn is your choice.</p>