How hard is Chinese/Japanese

[Pegun]

My school is proposing a new major that instead of doing a Computer Science degree, i would do a computer engineering degree in which case one of the requirements wold be to either learn Mandarin or Japanese as an international studies type aspect. How hard are the languages to learn as a 21 year old with no prior background other than a little spanish in high school? How would this profit as opposed to something like a regular computer science degree with a focus in network administration?

 

[Tuktuk]

If 885 million people can speak Mandarin Chinese, you can too.

 

[Crono]

Originally posted by: Tuktuk
If 885 million people can speak Mandarin Chinese, you can too.

Japanese is easier to learn for most of us Americans, though.

 

[maddogchen]

they should offer Hindi too...after they outsourced your job to Asia, you can follow it there

 

[uhohs]

japanese is easier to learn with less kanji characters to memorize.
chinese is memorization hell.

chinese would be probably more useful unless you're aiming at working in japan.

 

[Pegun]

Honestly i'd rather stay in the US, if possible the Northeast (Pfizer is big around here, so is the Submarine bases for the navy)

 

[Juddog]

Japanese is a lot easier to learn IMHO. It's also easier to grab anime and watch it without subtitles if you ever want to test your skills.

 

[ghostman]

I'm not going to kid you... it ain't easy. I took two years of beginner's Mandarin in college (I speak limited Cantonese, but absolutely no Mandarin). In those years, I saw several Chinese and non-Chinese students struggling. If two years or so of Mandarin is all you'll ever take, you won't remember how to speak a full sentence of it two years after you're out. If, however, you actually have an interest in it, it could prove to be very useful entering the growing China markets.

 

[razor2025]

Japanese is probably easier than Mandarin Chinese. The Kana (Hira and Kata) is much easier to master than damn Pinyin. Hell, I'm native-born Chinese (moved to US @ 8) and I'm still having some hard time with picking up Mandarin. Also, if you learn Japanese Kanji, you have a somewhat useful basis for learning the Chinese character, as Kanji is near-same copy of traditional Chinese characters.

 

[Martin]

I don't know any chinese, but I was read a blog about a guy's attempts to learn it. Basically, its the writing system that kills:
- there is a complete disconnect between reading and writing. ie the character doesn't carry any phonetic value, you just have to know what it is.
- you have to memorize a lot of characters. although they say there are only 4000, common ones, putting them together results in new characters which have no correlation to the two its made up of.

 

[Slickone]

There was a giant thread on ATOT on it a couple years ago, which made my mind up not to bother trying to learn it.
If the search worked well enough, I'd try to find it. You might.

 

[Phokus]

They're both hard, give up.

 

[Parasitic]

If it's just for requirements then do Japanese.

 

[sdifox]

Originally posted by: Tuktuk
If 885 million people can speak Mandarin Chinese, you can too.

That number is a bit low no? Thought the Chinese population is like 1.3B?

 

[Tuktuk]

Originally posted by: sdifox

Originally posted by: Tuktuk
If 885 million people can speak Mandarin Chinese, you can too.

That number is a bit low no? Thought the Chinese population is like 1.3B?

Chinese population =/= Mandarin speaking population

 

[Imported]

Do Japanese if you need to. It's easier than Chinese by far.

 

[DVK916]

Jap, no tones at all in the language.

 

[TreyRandom]

I can only speak to the difficulty of Mandarin - it's very difficult. It took me 6 hours a day, 5 days a week, 47 weeks to gain just the least bit of fluency.

 

[sdifox]

Originally posted by: Tuktuk

Originally posted by: sdifox

Originally posted by: Tuktuk
If 885 million people can speak Mandarin Chinese, you can too.

That number is a bit low no? Thought the Chinese population is like 1.3B?

Chinese population =/= Mandarin speaking population

Mandarin speaking population > Chinese population. It is the official language in PRC and ROC you know. Plus non-Chinese speakers.

 

[chr6]

taiwanese women are hotter. learn mandarin. jk

japanese is easier. just bow if you don't know the answer to anything.

 

[compnovice]

Learn Japanese.... That way you can watch all those crazy Japanese TV shows...

 

[timosyy]

Speaking chinese is alright...

Writing it will kill you.

 

[CityShrimp]

I'm not sure how exactly a second language will help you in your career, but I'm pretty sure it will, since everything's becoming globalized.
I'd learn Japanese just for the sake of being able to watch Anime / Japanese Shows without subs...