What is the difference between the Japanese and the Chinese language?

5 Comments

1. Marci says:

   September 23, 2009 at 4:49 am

   Speaking:

   Chinese is based up on 4 main tones, and you can say there is a 5th tone, as well, but it’s sort of flat. Where as Japanese has no specific tones in order to convey a message.
   Also, Chinese can end a word with N or NG, where Japanese can only end in a vowel or N.

   Written:

   Chinese consists of thousands of characters each can be a word itself or used in combination with another word to form a compound, and a whole new word. Each character has one way of being pronounced, but two ways to be written: 1. Simplified, 2. Traditional.

   Japanese has thousands of borrowed characters from China called kanji. Each kanji has an onyomi (chinese sound) and a kunyomi (Japanese sound) and when placed next to another kanji usually takes on the onyomi of both characters.
   Japanese also has a set of phonetical characters called hiragana and katakana. These are specific to Japan and Japan only. Small hiragana placed over kanji act as a pronunciation guide, because the pronunciation of each hiragana/katakana character remains the same.
   唖 has the pronunciation of A, Aku, and Oshi, but あ will always have the pronunciation of A.

   Similarities:
   Some characters are the same in Chinese and in Japanese. Such as the character 愛 is love in both languages and it is also pronounced the same "Ai" (like Eye).

   Differences:
   Pronounciation of the inflection on certain words in Chinese, that doesn’t exist in Japanese. Also, there are many characters that werent’ borrowed into the Japanese language, so one way to spot chinese is through radicals　like 讠and heavy characters like 龘, 靐, and 齾. Japanese will always contain kana characters like は, が, を, に, and で.

   I hope I helped.
2. Haley says:

   September 23, 2009 at 4:49 am

   they do have different words, and pronunciation.
   maybe the reason why you keep getting their letters confused is because the japanese do use the chinese symbols sometimes.
   the chinese symbols are called kanji, and the japanese also have two different sets of characters. one called hiragana, and the other is katakana (katakana is used for foreign words).
   hope this helps. [:
3. Tyson says:

   September 23, 2009 at 4:49 am

   Well, the Japanese language did adapt some Chinese characters over to their own. The differences is that Japanese seems to have more "curvey" characters whereas Chinese has more strokes and straight lines. It comes by experience to tell the difference easily and in time you’ll tell the difference like second nature.
4. Chad F says:

   September 23, 2009 at 4:49 am

   Before contact, the Japanese had their own spoken language with no writing the language. It varied a bit according to region, especially the Ryukyu (Okinawa) people in the southern islands and the Ainu (Hokkaido) people in the north who were considered different nations.
   The Chinese were ahead of the Japanese language wise, in that they had developed many different languages and a writing system which was roughly the same all over china.
   The Japanese imported the Chinese letters and some sayings along with lots of Chinese culture around the Nara/Asuka era and first tried to fit it into the Japanese spoken language by using the Chinese phonetics of the characters and some how reading it by how they sound in Japanese. The higher Japanese people learnt to read and write in Chinese, like the European aristocrats learnt Latin.
   During the Heian era, the Japanese people, especially the aristocratic women started modifying the letters so that it was easier to write letters, kind of like how cursive writing is a modified form of the original alphabet. This is how hiragana and katakana evolved. Now the hiragana & katakana could be used for the sounds, and the Chinese characters, kanji could be used in place for certain words if preferred. The Japanese simplified the kanji a bit, and designated each character several ‘Chinese’ ways of reading and several ‘Japanese’ ways of reading as well as keeping the meanings and adding some meanings.
   The Chinese characters had kept on changing form and was simplified separately, so that the kanji the Japanese used looked quite different from the Chinese characters by then. The Chinese had also many, many more letters invented for each occasion.
   Now, the Japanese spoken language has about 106 sounds as well as several ‘extinct’ sounds. The tone or pitch of the sound doesn’t change the meaning, it just sounds slightly foreign or like one of the dialects. There is a common use dialect which is also viewed as the polite form, and most Japanese people can speak it if they want to be polite, but they usually speak in their own dialect or the dialect of the place they live in when in casual conversations.
   There are 44 characters in hiragana and katakana, as well as the ‘extinct’ ones, the sound varying by double dots and circles. Since the Japanese don’t need to use kanji for every thing, they usually use the designated 2000 or so that the government issued for learning in school. People do use kanji other than the 2000 for daily use, but some are more used than others and not every one can be expected to be able to read them.
   The Japanese grammar is kind of like Korean, I have heard. The placing of the words in the sentence doesn’t matter so long as the word is connected with the right preposition like things after them.
   The Chinese language now still varies by region, like mandarin, Canton, etc. The tone and pitch changes the meaning.
   I don’t know that much about grammar.
   There are so many characters that no one knows how many there are.
5. Elena S says:

   September 23, 2009 at 4:49 am

   yes, they have absolutely different words for car or cat of flower

   when you saw a certain writing, you didn’t pay attention to the symbols it consisted of, this is why you cannot see the difference… but in fact the different is very clear…

   the first and foremost, Japanese language is harder than Chinese… it seems easier but only seems… when you reach the level to realize it — you will have spent too much time and efforts to stop and turn to Chinese…

   the easiet way to find out the details — Wiki, Chinese language and Japanese language…