我应该学习日语还是汉语？ [美国媒体]

-------------译者：渣渣的喵-审核者：龙腾翻译总管------------



Hi at my University I have an option to take evening classes in either Japanese or Chinese. I was wondering in terms of what may be more beneficial to learn which one would you recommend to learn? I have a interest in both of them however I would like to focus on one for now.

嗨，我的大学可以选择日语或中文的晚上课程。 我想知道学习哪一门语言更有益 哪一个你会建议学习？ 我对这两个都有兴趣，但是我现在想关注一个。


-------------译者：渣渣的喵-审核者：龙腾翻译总管------------

Jeff Hamacher Japanese Proficiency Exam (Level 1)
Written Sat
A2A. The main consideration for you I think is which language has greater potential to open up new educational professional or personal opportunities for you as an individual.

我觉得主要的考量是哪种语言在教育，职业或个人机会上能提供更大的机遇。

Some people might argue that greater economic opportunities lie in learning Chinese because of that society’s much larger domestic and international-diaspora populations. Although I don’t know how the maturing and growth-slowing of the Chinese economy could affect such opportunities it might still offer better prospects than Japan’s.

有些人可能认为更大的经济机会在于学习中文，因为中国国内人口以及海外华人人口更多。 虽然我不知道中国经济如何成熟和增长放缓可能会影响到这样的机会，但它可能比日本还有更好的前景。

As for cultural or educational opportunities you’d have to decide which society might interest you more. I didn’t know much about Japan before I first went there but slowly immersed myself in several different aspects of the country’s traditional culture and ended up learning a great deal as well as having a fantastic time doing it.

至于文化或教育机会，你必须决定：哪个你可能会更感兴趣。 在我第一次去那里之前，我不太了解日本，但我慢慢沉浸在这个国家传统文化的几个不同方面，最终学到了很多东西，并且度过了一个梦幻般的时光。（外国不好中国好（雾））

-------------译者：tomandjerry-审核者：bs1747------------

If learning one language or the other is simply a matter of personal enjoyment and fulfillment I don’t think that there is a “superior” choice although you might find that one has a greater number of similar characteristics to your mother tongue and therefore could be somewhat easier for you to pick up e.g. basic Chinese grammar consists of subject-verb-obxt word order similar to many European languages whereas Japanese word order even for basic statements is essentially reversed.

如果学这个那个语言只是为了个人爱好和满足，我感觉没有什么“更好的”选择，虽然你可能发现其中一种与你的母语有相似点，那么你能比较容易学会，例如基本的中文语法是主语-谓语-宾语的语序，与很多欧洲语言相似，而日语的语序即使是简单的陈述句也是反过来的。

[EDIT] Other respondents here have mentioned the ideographic writing systems of both languages (kanji in Japanese hanzi in Chinese but both the same in essence … be aware that different styles of the ideographs exist in Japanese usage “mainland” Chinese usage and Chinese usage of Hong Kong or Taiwan). Committing to learning the ideographs for either language is essential for long-term progress towards real mastery. The syllabaries found in Japanese (hiragana and katakana) must be learned as well but they cannot be relied upon solely to communicate at a level beyond beginner-to-intermediate.

[编辑]其他答主提到了两种语言中的表意文字（日语中的汉字和中文中的汉字，但是它们本质上是一回事……注意在日本、大陆中文和港台中文存在不同的表意字形态）。投入学习两种语言的表意文字是非常重要的，如果你想朝向精通迈步时还能有长期进步。日文的字母表（平假名和片假名）也必须学，但要想突破初级和中级水平，不能完全靠它们来交流。

Whatever you decide have fun with it! And learning any language helps you prepare your brain to learn others more readily so your time won’t be wasted either way if you put a solid effort into your study.

无论你做出什么决定，享受它吧！学习任何一门语言都能帮助你的大脑做好学习另一门语言的准备，所以两种选择你的时间都不会浪费的，如果你努力学习的话。

-------------译者：想知aya-审核者：bs1747------------

Victoria Weiya HSK5 working towards HSK6
Written 3h ago R26; Upvoted by Jessica Tang Professional Chinese instructor and lover of the language
From my understanding it would be more difficult to understand spoken Japanese that spoken Chinese for native English speaker. From what I know about Japanese it’s grammar is quite different to English and there are many more rules and spoken etiquette. Chinese grammar is actually quite simple and there are no particular grammatical rules that are used to address different people. Also the Chinese grammatical structure is not too complex it makes it very easy to guess any word you don’t already understand simply by context.
Ultimately it depends on you current interests. eChineseLearning has a free first Mandarin Chinese lesson offer so you could try them and see if Chinese suits you.
Good luck!

Victoria Weiya HSK5 正在向HSK6努力
根据我的理解，对于英语母语者来说，日语口语比中文口语更难懂。据我所知日语有完全不同的语法和很多规则以及敬称，汉语语法很简单，称呼不同的人没有特定规则。中文语法也不复杂，很容易只根据上下文猜出你不理解的任何单词。
最终还是取决于你的兴趣，eChineseLearning提供免费的第一节汉语课，你可以试试看是否适合学中文。
祝好运。

-------------译者：想知aya-审核者：兄弟我亮、鸿哥------------

William Park speaks Japanese
Written Sat
As Mr. Duran said Chinese is a tonal language so speaking may be the hardest part of Chinese. However it is frequently said that Chinese grammar is easier as there aren’t as many verb conjugations. Also it is true that Japanese grammar (which is surprisingly similar to Korean grammar) is very complex but possible to master. On the other hand speaking Japanese is easier as Japanese is not a tonal language (although tones are important for connotations).
In terms of writing I would say that Japanese and Chinese are similar. Both Japanese and Chinese need to memorize thousands of characters. Memorizing characters isn’t as important in Japanese but is it still vital if you want to be good.
I would say both are good options and if you are interested in both Japanese and Chinese cultures just go with your gut feeling.

William Park 说日语
 星期六回复
如杜兰先生所说，中文是一门音调语言，口语可能是中文里最难的部分。然而，也经常有人提到由于没有许多动词时态，中文的语法更简单。同时，日语语法（和韩语惊人的相似）是真的非常复杂但可以掌握。另一方面，日语口语更简单，因为日语不是一门音调语言（尽管音调对内涵意义很重要）。
以书写方面来说，我认为日语和中文是类似的。日语和中文都需要记忆上千个汉字，记忆汉字对于日语不是非常重要，但是如果你想学好，它非常必要。
我想说，二者都是不错的选择，如果你对日本和中国文化感兴趣，那么就跟着感觉走。

-------------译者：capsclock-审核者：bs1747------------

Laurie Chilvers 
Written Sat
I’m leaning towards the opinion that Japanese is a lot more approachable than Chinese.

我倾向于日语比汉语更易于理解的观点。

You can learn Hiragana in the space of a day and instantly have stuff to read which is just something that doesn’t exist in Chinese. Japanese has a very minimal and easy to pronounce phonetic repertoire if you can do a Spanish ‘r’. then you already know all you need. You don’t have to worry about mispronouncing tones (people have different opinions on how difficult this is and native Chinese speakers have even told me it’s not that important as long as they can understand you from context but it’s still a thing). The first 1000 or so Kanji represent 90% of everyday newspaper articles written communication etc which still a lot but a heck of a lot more forgiving than Chinese.

一天时间你就可以学会平假名，并且立马可以阅读一些材料，在这一点上汉语是不行的。日语的语音库很小，而且音也容易发。如果你能用西班牙语发出“r”这个音，那么你就已经知道你所需要的一切。你不用担心发错音（人们对发音的困难程度是有不同意见的，母语为汉语的人甚至告诉我，发音不是那么重要，因为他们可以通过上下文来理解你的意思，不过这确实是个问题）。最常用的1000多个日本汉字就能表述90%的每日的报纸、文章、书写和通信等等，虽然仍然很多，不过比汉语少太多。

 -------------译者：想知aya-审核者：bs1747------------

There just seem to be a lot of little reasons that make Japanese one of the most accesible east Asian languages. Not any one of them on their own is huge but when you add them up…
Plus this is all backed up by a near bottomless library of world class Japanese films tv series and computer games which can be used for practice and exposure.
Finally since you have declared you are interested in both if you were to pick Japanese to study at University first then you would break through the toughest hurdle people face when learning Chinese namely 汉字. The process of learning Japanese will completely demystify how Chinese Characters work for you and although China and Japan use them in very different ways and have different standards you can still reuse your experience of Kanji to make basic sense of Chinese if and when you decide to study Chinese later on.

看起来有很多原因使日语成为最易理解的亚洲语言。每一个都不是很重要但是你把他们合起来...
而且还有那么多世界级的日本电影，电视剧和电脑游戏，可以让你用来练习和实践。
最后，由于你说你对二者都感兴趣，所以如果你在大学里准备先学日语的话，那么你要攻破学习中文时所面临的最大障碍，那就是汉字。学习日语的过程可以完全阐明汉字是如何工作的，尽管中国和日本的使用方法和标准都非常不同。如果你事后改学汉语，那么你学习日语汉字的经验仍然可以提供一个基础感受。

 -------------译者：capsclock-审核者：bs1747------------

Severine Riise More than averagely interested albeit yet to by anywhere near proficient
Written Sat
As for statistical usefulness I’d go with Mandarin. It is the most spoken language in the world and China is becoming more and more relevant in the world economy (both as producers designers as well as consumers).

从统计学实用性来说，我倾向于普通话。中文是世界上使用人数最多的语言，并且中国同世界经济的联系也越来越紧密（同时作为生产商、设计者和消费者）。

The bad point with Mandarin specifically is the tones. There are four tones to be applied in order to indicate meaning in spoken language. There is the issue of hanzi (Chinese written scxt) as well.

普通话的难点在于发音。为了表达清楚意思，在口语中有四种声调。学习汉字也很难。

Japanese is also very useful but is slightly less likely to encounter (unless you work in the tourism or service business) out of Japan. There are of course a number of companies that are Japanese and that could require some proficiency.

日语同样非常实用，不过离开日本就不太用得上（除非你从事旅游或服务行业）。当然也有许多日本的公司，它们会要求你精通日语。

The good point about Japanese is that learning the sounds is relatively easy. It is not a tonal language like Mandarin Chinese. You still have to topple the challenge of kanji (Japanese scxt) that is complimented by two additional (as well as purely phonetic) syllabaries.

日语的好处在于学习发音相对容易。它不是像汉语普通话一样是声调语言（指发同一个语音的时候，用不同样的长短、不同样高低的声调，会构成不同的意思的话与涵义。 译者注）。不过你还要赢得日本汉字的挑战，它还要附加两种假名（读音也不尽相同）才能表述。

I don’t know what to recommend because it still comes down to what interests you. I’m not just talking about the language but what kind of job you see yourself having or where you see yourself going.

我不知道该推荐哪一个，因为这取决于你对哪一个感兴趣。我不仅是在谈论语言，我更是在谈论你会做什么样的工作或是你怎么规划你人生。

I hope this helps.

希望帮助。

-------------译者：蓝BluBlu-审核者：bs1747------------

Kelvin Bradley I've learned conversational Japanese Mandarin and Spanish
Written Sat
I have learned a little of both Mandarin and Japanese. Japanese I did for fun; and it was. Its a beautiful language with a rich culture that connects directly to the language itself. It’s much much much easier to speak than Mandarin.
Mandarin though I learned because it is useful. It is spoken by far more people on Earth than Japanese. And is the second most spoken language period. There is a large growing population of Mandarin speakers in the part of America I live in. And the language can help with getting a job. Mandarin I have had opportunity to speak with people living right in my community. Japanese on the other hand I have only had a chance to speak with people who are visiting straight from Japan.
That said if I had to focus on one or recommend one Id go with Japanese. It’s the one I enjoy more. I would love to visit Japan; China would be cool but if I never go that’d fine. So really the question will likely come down to which you feel more passionate about. (Unless you want to aid a career. Then probably Mandarin)

Kelvin Bradley(学过日语、中文和西班牙语，能够交谈)
写于周六
我学过一些中文和日语。学日语是因为有趣，并且这是真的。日语是很优美的语言，并且语言本身与其丰富的文化紧密相连。何况与中文相比，实在是太太太简单了。
而我学普通话是因为它很有用。与日语相比，地球上使用这门语言的人真是太多了----是世界上第二使用人数最多的语言。就美国我所居住的地方来说，使用中文的人数在大幅增长。而且会中文能帮助我找到工作。说中文使得我有机会直接与住在我社区的人交谈。从另一方面来说，只有见到来这里的日本游客，才能有机会用日语交谈。
如果我只能专注于一种或推荐一种（语言），我会选择日语。它是使我更享受学习的语言。我很想去日本，但中国，去也很好不去也不遗憾。所以问题是哪一种你会觉得更有热情并静下心来（学习）。（除非你是为了对事业有帮助，那可能该选中文）

-------------译者：capsclock-审核者：bs1747------------

Joshua Duran
Written Sat
Chinese tends to be easier in terms of grammar however learning the characters can be insufferable . Chinese is also a tonal language which means a word can mean something else if it’s pronounced differently which can be hard and confusing. Although Chinese takes a while to learn it does yield many benefits such as many more business opportunities.

汉语的语法更简单，不过学习汉字却非常痛苦。汉语还是一种声调语言，也就是说一个词的发音不同意思也不同，这很难，也很令人困惑。学习汉语要费一番功夫，不过也会带来很多好处，比如说更多的商机。

Japanese can be quite hard as well. For one you need to learn three writing styles Hiragana Katakana and Kanji. Learning Hiragana and Katakana shouldn’t take you too long but learning thousands of Kanji characters can be a pain. Japanese grammar rules are also said to be quite hard as well. In terms of job opportunities Japanese isn’t as useful as Chinese because of Japan’s slower economic growth in recent years.

日语同样很难学。你要学习三种书写方式：平假名、片假名和日本汉字。学习平假名和片假名不会花多长时间，不过学习数以千计的日本汉字会很痛苦。日语的语法规则同样非常困难。就工作机会而言，日语不如汉语实用，因为近些年来日本经济增速更低。

So in my opinion I’d learn Chinese it’s easier and you’ll get more bang for your buck

所以，在我看来，我会学汉语，它更简单。并且，这会让你更有“钱”途。

-------------译者：糯米团子-审核者：龙腾翻译总管------------

Krishna V studied at PSG College of Technology
Written Sat
My recommendation would be to learn the language that you have most interest in and either whose movies/media you like the most or you have the most people with whom you can practice with.

我的建议是挑你感兴趣的去学，两种语言中你最喜欢哪种语言的电影和媒体资源，或者两种语言中哪种语言你能找到最多的人一起学习。

Both languages are tough and need long concerted effort to learn. It's like a marathon so you need to have sustained interest to fuel your studies.

这两种语言都很难，需要马拉松一样漫长的学习周期。所以只有强烈的兴趣才能学好。