Is it easier to learn Chinese after learning Japanese or vice versa?


For those who speak both Chinese and Japanese, would first learning Chinese
make it easier to learn Japanese?

I know that Japanese Kanji are derived from Chinese characters.




For English speakers, this site breaks down how many "hours" or weeks it takes
to get "proficient"

<http://www.effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/language-difficulty>

If you want some detailed breakdowns, there is a nice analysis of relative
language difficulties available here
<https://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/cryptologic_spectrum/foreign_language.pdf>

One key way that languages are rated (in terms of difficulty) is basic
grammatical orderings of "subject object and verb."

[code]

    Group I (VSO):
      Arabic, Hebrew, Ancient Egyptian,
      Celtic, Polynesian languages
    
    Group II (SVO):  
      Romance languages, English,
      Russian, Chinese, German,
      Albanian, Greek, Khmer,
      Vietnamese, all Thai languages
      except Khamti, Malay, Dutch,
      Icelandic, Slavonic, Norwegian,
      Swedish, Danish, Finnish,
      Estonian, Serbian
    
    Group III (SOV):
      Japanese, Korean, Turkish,
      Burmese, Hindi, Navaho, Tibetan,
      most Australian languages
    
[/code]

From the list above, you can see that Chinese (presumably both Mandarin and
Cantonese) fit into the pattern of SVO or Subject+Verb+Object.

In mastering Japanese it would benefit one more greatly to study a language in
the third grouping, to get one's "mind" wrapped into the form of SOV where the
verb comes at the end. Thus, in preference to learning Chinese, which is
roughly the same grammatical trickiness as English, you might want to look
into Hindi, Tibetan, or even Turkish.

Knowing Chinese would probably help with the lexicon and mastering the writing
system, but the Japanese writing system is catered for a language that is
entirely different in terms of spoken sounds; even though they are derived
from the same origin, their paths have diverged substantially in the last
1000-2000 years. This is not surprising if you look at how much English has
changed since the time of Shakespeare, and that is an example of linguistic
entropy within the "same" language.

In short: For writing, maybe yes. For grammar, there are other languages which
exhibit closer behavior.




For English speakers, this site breaks down how many "hours" or weeks it takes
to get "proficient"

<http://www.effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/language-difficulty>

If you want some detailed breakdowns, there is a nice analysis of relative
language difficulties available here
<https://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/cryptologic_spectrum/foreign_language.pdf>

One key way that languages are rated (in terms of difficulty) is basic
grammatical orderings of "subject object and verb."

[code]

    Group I (VSO):
      Arabic, Hebrew, Ancient Egyptian,
      Celtic, Polynesian languages
    
    Group II (SVO):  
      Romance languages, English,
      Russian, Chinese, German,
      Albanian, Greek, Khmer,
      Vietnamese, all Thai languages
      except Khamti, Malay, Dutch,
      Icelandic, Slavonic, Norwegian,
      Swedish, Danish, Finnish,
      Estonian, Serbian
    
    Group III (SOV):
      Japanese, Korean, Turkish,
      Burmese, Hindi, Navaho, Tibetan,
      most Australian languages
    
[/code]

From the list above, you can see that Chinese (presumably both Mandarin and
Cantonese) fit into the pattern of SVO or Subject+Verb+Object.

In mastering Japanese it would benefit one more greatly to study a language in
the third grouping, to get one's "mind" wrapped into the form of SOV where the
verb comes at the end. Thus, in preference to learning Chinese, which is
roughly the same grammatical trickiness as English, you might want to look
into Hindi, Tibetan, or even Turkish.

Knowing Chinese would probably help with the lexicon and mastering the writing
system, but the Japanese writing system is catered for a language that is
entirely different in terms of spoken sounds; even though they are derived
from the same origin, their paths have diverged substantially in the last
1000-2000 years. This is not surprising if you look at how much English has
changed since the time of Shakespeare, and that is an example of linguistic
entropy within the "same" language.

In short: For writing, maybe yes. For grammar, there are other languages which
exhibit closer behavior.

