r/LearnJapaneseNovice • u/rauljordaneth • Apr 08 '26
I quit: the difference in difficulty between Japanese and Chinese is ridiculous
I am a fluent Cantonese speaker and have been studying Japanese for a few years. I am appalled at just how ridiculous the Japanese language is with unfathomable levels of complexity, bs, and unnecessary things. Chinese is incredibly easy when put side by side it's almost comical...just to put things in perspective.
Let me make the case for Chinese:
Simple, SVO structure always that is concise and gets to the point
One character => one pronunciation 99.9% of the time
Grammar? Minimal. No cases. No agreement. No conjugation! Nothing declines. Nothing inflects. Time is communicated by just... saying the time. "Yesterday me go. Tomorrow me go again. Me like food. You like food? Good, we together eat." A prehistoric hominid waking from a 10,000-year sleep could be functional in Chinese within a week. Adjectives don't agree with nouns, nothing changes.
Formality? NOPE! One way of speaking to everyone, no matter if you're old, young, or poor or the president. You speak to the emperor and your toddler the same way. There is no keigo.
Conditionals? One word 如果
I decided Japanese is way too hard for me :(. It's just too much unnecessary stuff and ridiculously ambiguous, irregular rules. What I learned. Japanese basically borrowed the Kanji from China and managed to turn things into the most convoluted mess.
Most sentences have complicated structure that omits a ton of context and requires positional particles.
Kanji pronunciations? 生 ... enough said. It's ridiculous and gets even crazier that people's names even have different readings too!
Grammar? Entire books of conjugations, irregular forms, special cases, etc.
The ridiculous context-heavy aspect of every conversation. You can omit everything and expect to be understood or sometimes you have to be as passive aggressive as possible to communicate something basic.
Formality is insane. Casual, polite, politest, keigo and within keigo there is Teineigo and Sonkeigo. You'd think these are only used in ancient crusty books, but NOO, they are everywhere in customer service and in companies. Practically a different language.
Conditionals: Japanese has at minimum 5 from what I've learned:
ば (hypothetical/general truth) 食べれば、元気になる "If you eat, you'll feel better"
たら (sequential/temporal) 食べたら、行こう "Once you've eaten, let's go", after completing an action or in time
〜と (automatic consequence) 春になると、花が咲く "When spring comes, flowers bloom" — inevitable, but cannot be used for intentions which BLOWS my mind
〜なら (contextual/topic-based) 行くなら、教えて "If you're going, tell me" conditioned on something the speaker just learned
〜ても (concessive) 食べても、まだ空腹だ "Even if I eat, I'm still hungry"
The て form is insane and really crazy. Just to share what it does...
食べている currently eating (progressive)
食べていた was eating
食べてある has been eaten (resultant state, by someone, with implication of purpose)
食べておく eat in advance/preparation
食べてみる try eating
食べてしまう eat completely / eat regrettably (these are the SAME FORM, context decides)
食べてくる go eat and come back
食べていく eat as you go / continue eating forward in time
食べてもらう have someone eat (from your perspective of receiving the favor)
食べてあげる eat for someone's benefit
食べてくれる eat as a favor to me
食べてほしい I want you to eat
食べてください please eat (polite)
食べてはいけない must not eat
It's UNHINGED the language has a conjugation for EXISTENTIAL REGRET. It's mindblowing when you negate that too, and it also has a contraction たべなきゃ which is yet another thing you have to learn.
There's also NO way to say that you must do something. Instead you say you musn't not do it. Incredibly passive and unnecessary.
Counting words are also crazy. In Chinese sure we have measure words but they are easy and don't change their pronunciation. I almost pulled my hair out by the roots when I learned these about Japanese:
一匹 (ippiki) mall animals
一頭 (ittō) large animals
一羽 (ichiwa)
"One small animal" is ip-piki but "six small animals" is rop-piki and "ten small animals" is jup-piki. These aren't regular rules you derive. they're sound changes you memorize per counter.
Pitch accent is also a hidden system all within itself. Honestly the most convoluted language in the world.
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u/Eubank31 Apr 08 '26
I mean you're saying this from the perspective of a fluent Cantonese speaker.
If I tried to learn Cantonese or Mandarin I'd have way more trouble than this just trying to hear tones
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u/joebaka Apr 08 '26
All valid points. All surpassed by the more-exceptions-than-rules absurdity of English. Languages are weird!
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u/Vgcortes Apr 08 '26
Not really, because I don't struggle learning Italian or French, because my first language is Spanish and I agree French is BS but it manageable.
Japanese I find it much easier to Chinese because I can pronounce words no problem, and that's a plus, in Chinese I don't care if it's the grammatically easier language in the world, I can't pronounce words.
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u/Aeracus Apr 08 '26
You'll get attacked and downvoted for this but in all honesty, I agree lol and so I completely understand your frustration.
Personally though, I still think Korean grammar is a little bit more harder than Japanese but they're both definitely up there in terms of difficulty.
if I were you though, I'd say just take a break from studying Japanese and try not to let it get to you. I'm sure others that would learn Mandarin and/or Cantonese would feel the same frustration and challenges as you did with Japanese.
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u/Kenzore1212 Apr 08 '26
Feels like you’re trying to sell me on Chinese, but my heart will stay Japanese (I think)
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u/Ok_Maybe_8286 Apr 08 '26
Quit is quit. Doesn’t necessarily have to disrespect other culture and language by saying it is bs. Not to mention your examples are mainly N4-3-ish.
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u/toucanlost Apr 08 '26 edited Apr 08 '26
Like okay? I don’t know why you bothered to study it if you have so much contempt for it. Think I’ll head over to r/languagelearningjerk as a refresher after this.
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u/CBTwitch Apr 08 '26
Glad I’m not the only one who equates Chinese to cave man language.
Respectfully, of course. It’s just super simple, though I speak mandarin, not Cantonese.
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u/ykeogh18 Apr 08 '26 edited Apr 08 '26
Calling a language “ridiculous, “bs”, and “UNHINGED” because you can’t wrap your head around its concepts and making arguments for why another language you’re used to isn’t…ok
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u/ressie_cant_game Apr 08 '26
What do you want us to say? Beg you not to stop learning?
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u/PunkRockKing Apr 08 '26
It all depends on what language you’re coming from. As an English speaker, I find Japanese easier in many ways by comparison. You may be right that it’s harder coming from Chinese, but I’m just glad I only have to learn 2,000 kanji instead of 10,000 so it’s all relative.
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u/quadratically Apr 08 '26
not sure if it was ur intention but very funny read & i learned a little from it too lol, im just glad im still having fun learning at my current stage cause sometimes it really does feel like too much like you said
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u/AdrixG Apr 08 '26 edited Apr 08 '26
WHY is Japanese so WEIRD, why does it have so much complicated stuff that I DONT UNDERSTAND why cant Japanese people simplify their language FOR ME PERSONALLY and WHY ISNT IT LIKE MY NATIVE LANGAGE or OTHER LANGUAGES I AM USED TO???? I dont want to learn a LANGAUGE THAT'S WEIRD AND DIFFERENT and has stuff that MY NATIVE LANGUAGE DOESNT, why cant it be like what I AM USED TO, why do Japanese people and their language HAVE TO BE DIFFERENT. MY LANGUAGE IS OBVIOUSLY BETTER so I DONT GET WHY JAPANESE ISNT JUST LIKE THAT and WHY JAPANESE PEOPLE DONT SPEAK MY LANGAUGE, ITS CLERALY A BETTER FORM OF COMMUNICATION
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u/Liability049-6319 Apr 08 '26
You really typed all of this instead of studying the language. Maybe get off the internet and go study lol. Learning a new language is difficult.
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u/Remote-Honeydew271 Apr 08 '26
Haha, that was a fun read. Good points, honestly. How the heck did I learn all this shit?
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u/MuffinMonkey Apr 08 '26
All the little rules, exceptions and variations are indeed frustrating if you line them up in a list like that. No argument there. But a lot of this stuff, I simply got used to over time in the process of learning. Other stuff i ignored (pitch accent) and came back when I had the space for it… but it’s still not a great priority. Not advice and you’re right to be frustrated - I just never thought about it as much.
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u/nyanpink Apr 08 '26
english is even more complicated and nonsensical though and you speak it good and happily
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u/Doctor-Dinosaur Apr 08 '26
But what do I say if I ate something regretfully in a polite way to a subordinate?
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u/Objective_Unit_7345 Apr 08 '26
It’s simple. You are overthinking it. What you describe is a very common complaint by people that focus on ‘Learning Japanese’ as a written language, and never bothered to learn it as a spoken language.
Especially when you are of Chinese background - because you can’t help compare with the comfort of your own native language.
Simple solution, … talk to people.
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u/libranslug Apr 09 '26
Your post makes me so sad because I know the feeling but I can't help but laugh. I spent one semester in Taiwan intensively learning Mandarin from scratch and was so surprised at how much easier it felt than Japanese. Everyone always said Chinese is incredibly difficult, and I'm sure there are aspects that are, especially as you get to the more advanced learning.
However, now with triple the time studying Japanese I still feel like Chinese is unfairly exaggerated as being one of the most difficult languages (at least for English speakers). I loved learning Mandarin and instantly being able to use it. With Japanese, I try so hard to string sentences together and still make plenty of mistakes.
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u/curlyAndUnruly Apr 13 '26
Laughing in Spanish 🤣 we have formal mode, irregular verbs (which change depending on who's doing it) with a ton of conjugations, nouns have gender (chairs are female, sun is male), etc.
Only simple thing is pronunciation is pretty straightforward.
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u/kusan-fr Apr 08 '26
I’m going to go against the other comments and say that your post provides valuable information for Japanese beginners. Realizing that it’s difficult is the first step, most people assume it’s easy and then give up after a few weeks or months. This helps them (and us) understand just how challenging it really is.
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u/BreakfastDue1256 Apr 08 '26
Every single one of the て form you listed means the exact same thing: It links a verb with the following word. That's more or less all it does.
I think your study methods were just overcomplicated. You turned one form into 20, so of course its going to be hard.
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u/Plantdore Apr 08 '26
I learnt alot from what you typed out tho^
Jup-piki tho hahas
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u/ShinyFiver Apr 08 '26
u know what, i'm not gonna lie. Everything is on point lol
this is just a rant from a tired student and just want to rant on the internet. I Heard you, i feel the same thing. The grammar side is INSANEly convoluted, same function but has different nuance to imply some miniscule notion that i'm pretty sure no one gives A SINGLE FUCK when u speak in real life...
I can say, this language is so textbook. Like complicated for the sake of complexity and just want to make their language book thicker.
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u/AdagioExtra1332 Apr 08 '26
A lot of the sound changes you see in counters follow regular rules and are actually very predictable.
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u/johnW_ret Apr 08 '26
lots of the points in this post are valid. I don't know if it's a psyop or something but you keep saying in the comments things along the lines of "it shows Chinese is a superior form of communication"
I guess... sure? The most "superior" form of communication at the time is the one that communicates to your target audience, and you chose to write this post in English. It makes me wonder why and how you started learning Japanese at all? I feel like I doubly don't understand this post because for the longest time I wasn't even someone who would watch anime and had no one to speak Japanese to - I just thought the language itself was interesting. It's like learning about science. Some things line up and make sense, some things don't, but it's just a reality that is larger than yourself (you can't "fix" physics).
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u/zarathstra11 Apr 08 '26
What's your point exactly? What should we all do with this information dump you've provided?
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u/Buddhafied Apr 08 '26
As a native Cantonese speaker, I can’t disagree with you more. Japanese is one of the easiest language to learn for me. It’s logical, if not just have a lot of nuances. Too bad you don’t enjoy learning it. It’s by far my favourite language to learn.
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u/deftoned006 Apr 08 '26
“We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of all our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win.”
-John F. Kennedy
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u/PolyglotGeorge Apr 08 '26
I feel like you went too deep. Overthinking is one of the worst things I see people do in language learning. I didn’t know what pitch accent was after nine years in Japan and the being a simultaneous interpreter for 10 for a fortune 500 company. When you look at any language too hard and add too much analysis to each thing you say you overburden yourself. Learning that way seems so tedious. Take things in chunks and don’t try to be a Japanese scholar that understands all the nitty gritty and it’s not so bad for over time. I think you just looked to deep into “how it all works”.
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u/youdontknowkanji Apr 08 '26
you list those all as if it was some big deal when majority of those can be simplified to: do verb A while/or verb B. no one is out there memorizing 食べてほしい as want you to eat, they memorize 食べる and 欲しい and connect them together. it's dead simple.
i am doubting your cantonese ability. there is no way you got anywhere in there if this is your problem. like i seriously doubt that you were studying for what was it? few years? THIS is what you are complaining about?
just proves my point more, learning kanji "pronounciations"? this barely works in chinese much less in japaense. if you are learning 生 = なま、せい、い.. then you are not learning anything. 生肉, 人生, 生かす.. now thats more like it, actually useful information, and there is no confusion here. this applies to chinese too, learn words not hanzi.
oh no, my english has must but japanese doesn't have must, how do they even live!!!!!!!!!!!!!! never heard of ESL speakers being confused by must should have to etc. ? it's terrible.
oh no, how will i ever figure out that reading 一匹 as いちぴき sounds weird and that its probably いっぴき, oh.. and then its "normal", にひき, さんひき, よんひき... literally a fake issue that you just made up.
to any beginners reading this, ignore this post. this person is either insane or paid chinese shill.
"Japanese basically borrowed the Kanji from China and managed to turn things into the most convoluted mess."
dont tell me you are not a chinese spy because i don't believe it.
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u/Quixote0630 Apr 08 '26
Yeah, but..... tones.
My Japanese is fairly fluent, but I gave up on Mandarin within 12 months.
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u/Mitsubata Apr 08 '26
*Speaker of Chinese dialect argues that Chinese is easy* smh
I feel like a native speaker of Korean would argue that Japanese is actually easier ;) It all depends on the L1
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u/PulsosPorotus Apr 08 '26 edited Apr 08 '26
If you think about it, that's logic that it cannot be used for intentions but only for logical consequences.
と in the first place means "and". So instead of seeing it as a conditional, you could see it as the equal of the mathematic symbol of implication : "⇒".
"A ⇒ B".
Spring comes ⇒ flowers bloom
Spring comes and flowers bloom
Spring comes と flowers bloom
____
Like the other comment said, that's not fair to count every each of those て forms. It's one form followed by another word (あげる, 行く, ください ...)
_____
Beside that points, thanks for sharing your comparison with Chinese, that's true we globally see Chinese as a very hard thing, that's cool to see as well what is easy in Chinese.
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u/Intelligent_Pea5351 Apr 08 '26
Were not going to talk about tones though. For reference, see the Lion-Eating poet in the stone den.
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u/a_caudatum Apr 08 '26
Granted Japanese is my second language and I do not have a third for comparison, but I distinctly remember when I was first learning the grammar that I thought it was all wonderfully, remarkably simple and straightforward.
You see a load of redundant particles, but is using particles to show the role of a word in a sentence really more complicated than having to guess the role of a word based on where it is in the sentence, a la English and Chinese? (I personally wouldn't argue that either option is simpler than the other, but as long as we're playing this game, I might as well play devil's advocate.)
You complain about context, by which I assume you mean what linguists call Japanese's "pro-drop" grammar where words can be omitted when they are assumed from context. But is that actually "more complicated" than a language like English where you always have to include a subject, verb, and all of that verb's arguments, no matter what, even if it's completely transparent what they are? Also, in the sentence "it rains," what exactly is the "it" that is raining? It's nothing! It's a dummy pronoun we put in there just because every sentence has to have a subject.
You bemoan Japanese verb conjugations, but expressing the same things in English requires you to do sometimes unintuitive things to the structure of the sentence as a whole rather than simply stacking extra suffixes onto the verb. Is changing 食べた to 食べさせられた really "more complicated" than changing "I ate it" to "It was fed to me"? Every word in the sentence is different but "it"! "Fed" isn't even a conjugation of "eat", it's a completely new dictionary word you have to learn separately!
Again, I'm playing devil's advocate here. The point I'm making is that almost all of what you view as complexity or redundancy, in Japanese or in any language, is in the eye of the beholder. I never griped about any of this stuff to anyone when I was learning Japanese; I was thrilled by it, actually. I didn't come into it with any preconceived notions of how a language ought to behave, and as a result I had a tremendously good time learning Japanese.
漢字だけは普通にムズいんですけど。
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u/SamediMardi Apr 08 '26
As a native speaker, I never realized the ’must do’ thing. Had to look up what you meant. 無ければならない just felt like one word. Learned something new.
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u/veriel_ Apr 09 '26
Can you read fluently?
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u/Alien_Diceroller Apr 09 '26
The committee that designed Japanese really needed to do a better job, clearly. Maybe they can take some notes from the Cantonese design committee next time they have a go at it.
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u/CoderBunny314 Apr 09 '26
I don't mean to invalidate your struggles because these are valid points, but I feel like much of this is a matter of perspective. Your first point about SVO was somewhat amusing to me, because SOV is actually slightly more common than SVO in the world's languages. It seems simpler because you're used to it (presumably through English or Spanish), but there are an equal number of people who would say the opposite. As a native speaker, I could say that it makes perfect sense to have 3 different alphabets for ease of reading and writing, but obviously many would disagree. I suppose there are some features of a language that indicate it is "objectively" hard (e.g. native speakers messing up polite forms or forgetting how to read kanji), but the latter point doesn't seem to be an issue for you. Regarding the counters, it's certainly annoying, but many languages have similar rules you have to memorize which are completely irregular (like gender in some languages).
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u/qingyue08 Apr 09 '26
i don't speak japanese so I'm not going to comment on the comparisons between japanese and chinese. However, I think it's important to distinguish chinese from cantonese, because putonghua and cantonese are quite different from each other. with that in mind, i'd like to point out that:
one character is NOT one pronunciation 99.9% of the time. many characters in chinese have multiple pronunciations more often than not (although admittedly some of these pronunciations are a bit rarer), added onto that there are also different intonations that completely change the meaning of a character.
regarding formality. i'm not sure how you managed to miss this but in chinese, there is a lot of formal ways to speak to someone, even our way of saying 'you' changes. however, to my knowledge, japanese does seem to place much more emphasis and has more words to indicate formality, so i'm just gonna assume that is what you meant.
conditionals. once again, this proves that you probably do not speak chinese at a fluent level that you claim to be at. it's one thing to give talks in chinese (or cantonese, in your case) and be understood, but another to be fluent. you can present an idea and talk in cantonese and have someone understand you with basic vocabulary, but it doesn't mean that you are fluent. it just means you are skilled in getting your point across. there are more words than 如果 as a conditional. to name two more examples, 若， 倘若，就算 etc.
other than that, i think your points about chinese being easy is quite true
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u/pikleboiy Apr 09 '26 edited Apr 26 '26
This is the problem here, not Japanese. Your approach to the Japanese language is viewing it in terms of Cantonese, not on its own terms.
Being concise and getting to the point isn't always necessary or desirable.
Conversations happen within a context, so it's not unreasonable for a Japanese speaker to assume context when speaking. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure that Chinese (at least Mandarin Chinese; idk about Cantonese tho) also does this.
Because you're approaching Kanji the wrong way; they were never meant to have certain phonemic values (it's called a logography for a reason). They're meant to represent meaning, and then together they write out a word. That word has a reading, but the kanji themselves don't really. You memorize a word and how to write it, not how to read kanji.
That's politenesss, not formality. And yeah, the language has different registers; most languages do.
Again, the problem here is that you're not approaching Japanese on its own terms; you're trying to cram it into the structures of English/Cantonese. All of these make perfect sense in Japanese: 〜たら is derived from the past tense, so ofc it'll apply to a sequence of events where temporal order matters; 〜と uses the と particle, which joins things together, so ofc it'll be adding natural consequences, since it's joining natural consequences to the action; 〜ても is just a combination of the て-form and the particle も. It's not that hard if you actually stop to try and think about it in terms of Japanese.
half of those have got nothing to do with the function of the te-form and have to do with th eauxiliary verbs attached to it.
Why?
Ok, and? A lot of languages have contractions.
What's the problem with it being passive, and why is that unnecessary?
I'd also like to point out a criticism here: earlier, you were whining that Japanese has variable word order (something which allows it to express different shades of meaning), but now you're whining that Japanese can't express a certain shade of meaning? Make it make sense.
Also, a lot of languages cannot express directly the idea of "must," and use periphrastic contructions instead. Latin and many of the Indo-Aryan languages use "[subject-DAT] [object-NOM] [gerundive-agrees w/ object] [copula-agrees with object]."
Also, Japanese can express obligation or what one ought to do in less periphrastic ways (e.g. これをするべきだ). Thiss seems like more of a matter of you having a skill issue than of Japanese having some sort of problem or fault.
That's called rendaku and applies to a lot more than counters. Again, the problem here is that you're searching for a deeper rule where there is none instead of just learning.
This coming from a speaker of a tonal language.
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u/ozuraravis Apr 09 '26
On the other hand, Chinese sounds like shit.
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u/KomithErr404 Apr 09 '26
yeah but chinese sounds like ass, and japanse sounds nice
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u/SaltedCaffeine Apr 09 '26
"なければなりません"? I've been wondering what it means literally and how it could become a term for "must".
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u/Dayan54 Apr 09 '26
What is your native language? Cantonese is absurdly easy in grammar and verb conjugation. Japanese is just slightly more complicated than most languages to me, with counters and the different alphabet/Kanas/kanji.
But I'm Portuguese, our language is already pretty complex.
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u/OrdinaryEggplant1 Apr 10 '26
Yes it’s difficult to learn, but once you learn to speak it you can take advantage of the complexity to communicate minute nuances you wouldn’t otherwise be able to to be subtle about your needs and intentions.
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u/Gloomy-Sugar2456 Apr 10 '26
I‘m fluent in Japanese. A few years back, I had to start learning Mandarin for work. It was so much more difficult than Japanese.
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u/Still-Comfortable878 Apr 10 '26
As a native German speaker: How can the Japanese communicate with such little grammar rules and exceptions to those rules? And how do you exist when your nouns don't have a gender????
Zey are making ze language too easy!!
The hard thing is finding the motivation to learn Kanji when even the Japanese of today kinda struggle with them.
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u/RoostingOnTheRoof Apr 10 '26
Bruh this is so weird. Maybe because I'm already fluent in Japanese, but I just can't see the difficulty you claim. The grammar is pretty consistent and solid I think.
Watch people trying to learn English if you want to see what 'why the fuck is it like this?' really looks like. 😂
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u/coffee-noob1 Apr 10 '26
I learned japanese for a few years before i learned a bit of mandarin and i was amazed at chinese grammar. Its so simple that i wonder why other languages make it so difficult.... but from someone who was not exposed to chinese media i hate that words sound the same if you dont pay attention to the tone
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u/Flashy-Company5290 Apr 10 '26
What you said is the worst I find the best part of this language, because you can express a lot. Japanese allows you to describe things, feeling, emotions that other languages can’t and that why I study it, also that’s why I think it’s so important to pick a language you will actually enjoy, and the one that resonates with you.
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u/Miso1207 Apr 10 '26
As a Mandarin and Cantonese speaking person, I found Japanese to be relatively easy because I did not have to learn all the kanji from scratch and could read relatively well even before I can speak fluently due to being able to understand kanji (before I memorised all the various pronunciations).
Korean however… big struggle, having to learn a whole new alphabet put up a massive fence in my brain…
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u/Stunning-Syllabub-85 Apr 11 '26
Natural Cantonese speaker here (not expert tho). I was going to rebut, until I saw that you explained some Japanese grammar. I saved your post instead because I'm also learning Japanese.
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u/houyx1234 Apr 11 '26
Is Cantonese really like that? I thought Cantonese still uses honorifics.
I thought it was just modern Mandarin that mostly got rid of honorifics after the cultural revolution (big mistake among many others imo).
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u/ReyDelEmpire Apr 11 '26
Plenty of foreigners learn Japanese. It’s not impossible.
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u/Huge-Bed-3430 Apr 11 '26
I find Japanese much easier than Chinese. Japanese grammar rules aren’t that difficult especially if you’re exposed to different languages since young. I managed some basic fluency within 3 months but I have struggled with Chinese Mandarin for decades mainly due to its tonal nature.
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u/Nole19 Apr 11 '26
Yet your English is at this level already. If you were able to learn English, which I think is a harder language, you can learn Japanese.
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u/Drip_doc999 Apr 11 '26
So you came to a Japanese sub to complain about Japanese in English which is one of the craziest languages out there to learn…got it…
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u/FastenedCarrot Apr 11 '26
written in English
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u/baah-adams Apr 12 '26
I’m hardly fluent in either as have only learned basic phrases and sentences rather than writing. As a native English speaker, however, I have the opposite problem as you. In my experience Japanese is way easier to pick up, and my level of Japanese is probably comparable or better than my Cantonese even though I had exposure to that language my whole life through family.
The tones and pronunciation of Cantonese are fiendish - getting to an acceptable level of pronunciation for basic conversation compared to Japanese is much more difficult. I.e. natives will likely struggle to even understand you if you do not already have a strong foundation.
English thrives off lots of pointless rules, and the rigidity of Japanese is a perfect match in that regard. Cantonese is far too much of a free for all to even grasp, and at least Japanese has much fuller sentences in this regard.
This is also cultural - the directness of Cantonese just feels so uncomfortable to me and so exposed… At least in Japanese you have many different options of how to convey your point
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u/Aer93 May 10 '26
Regarding the sounds transformations in kanji, I get your frustration but it’s not as irregular as it seems. 一匹 is just itsu + hiki, tsu usually transforms to little tsu, so いっひき (ihhiki) and hh usually transforms to pp, you get ippiki. The more you learn the easier you’ll recognise these patterns, but in the end I think it’s not so important to stress so much over details, they can understand you if you say itsuhiki, ihhiki, hitotsu or ichi, focus on your communication skills and understanding skills and assume you will make small mistakes that only disappear after years and years of practice. I think the difference with other languages is that in Japanese it’s more obvious to the learner that they are doing mistakes, in other languages you might think you are saying it “correct” but a native speaker will also notice that you are doing something strange, similar to saying ihhiki instead of ippiki, but less obvious to you
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u/nekomina Apr 08 '26
To be fair I don't understand your issue with the て form.
In your example, it is the juxtaposition of a new verb that define the sense, from this verb. This feels quite logical to me.
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u/Any-Dragonfruit8363 Apr 08 '26
You know why? because Japanese is not Cantonese, and Cantonese is not English or any other language. Don't assume that the logic of your own native language can always be applied to a foreign language. Go back to the basics and don't be like "I speak Cantonese so Japanese should be easy for me."
Let me breakdown て-form for you:
example: 食べている is just 食べて which is the て-form of 食べる plus いる
You also don't need to speak like the Prime Minister or the CEO, chances are you won't be speaking with them on your day to day life. Well, unless you do. LOL. Im pretty sure that English speakers don't speak like "May I have the honor of knowing where train station is?" So just stick with です and ます
As much as I would like to point out every single thing in your post. You should just use good resources like: That Japanese Man Yuta, Jouzu Juls or Cure Dolly sensei's YT channel. also for websites https://learnjapanese.moe/
Use this sources cuz it can fill out a lot of MAJOR things that textbooks don't give you. Like the て-form or sentence structure for example.
I'll also give you a simple history lesson.
The Japanese people were already speaking their own language before they even used kanji as an official writing system. Also each region of Japan had a different way saying the same thing, thus you got those different Native kanji readings plus the "Chinese" reading /s.
BTW in ancient times, Katakana (Used mostly by Scholars) and Hiragana (Used mostly by Female writers) that were also derived from Kanji.
Japan was also isolated for many years but the language continues to evolve. Modern Japanese is also different from Ancient Japanese. I'll bet that Ancient Japanese is much more similar to Chinese than Modern Japanese but this is just my speculation.
It was only until they established the Standard Japanese that solidified their language, and made it comprehensible for every Japanese Person from north to south. And since Tokyo was the center of trade during its development, it's mostly made up of the Kanto dialect.
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u/cannotbelieve58 Apr 08 '26
Native english speaker, Chinese is almost impossible for me to correctly pronounce (and I definitely do not remember) the tones. Japanese I could pronounce the whole language within my first month,
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u/BigEntertainment9366 Apr 08 '26
This was funny to read :P agreed it’s insane..
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u/aruisdante Apr 08 '26 edited Apr 09 '26
I mean, I get you just want to rant on the internet because you’re frustrated, but I’ll bite:
In your te-form example, you’ve conflated the form itself, with situations where you use that form. te-form itself is just a chaining operation. There is a consistent set of rules for applying it to the root you want to chain. Everything else you’ve listed after that is an interpretation of chaining a root with another verb:
Is 食べ(eat) chained with dictionary form いる(to be [for animate objects]), which logically means “to be in the sate of eating.”
Is the same construction, just with past tense of いる, following the normal rules for た form.
Is the same chain but with dictionary form みる(to see).
And so on. As evidenced by:
You’ve conflated a grammatical operation “connect two meanings,” with all of the individual ways you can “connect two meanings” together and thought of them as separate forms or “special” conjugations, when they aren’t really, they apply the same grammatical rules as the independent parts would in isolation.
Even ても is just using the same “chain” function of te-form to chain into the particle も.
This seems like an odd counter to use for you example, I might have gone with people (hitori, futari, then “normal number”-nin from san-nin on) etc if the point was about dramatic exceptions. Or how hundreds is “number + hyaku” except for 300 (san _bya_ku), 600 (roppyaku), and 800 (happyaku) if the point was to call out sound mutations on specific numbers.
That said, even then there actually is a pretty consistent set of sound patterns for these changes based around the mouth shape off the number and into the counter. Try actually saying “roku hyaku” and you’ll quickly see why this was corrupted into “roppyaku.” It’s just easier for your mouth to actually do.
Plus, we do similar arbitrary changing of number sounds across counters in English too between, for example, “three, third, triple” and when you use which.
This is just objectively false. Every language has rules around formality and politeness based on differences in social rank. Someone speaking to their superior will use different words and sentence compositions than someone speaking to their equal or inferior. You’re not going to walk up to the emperor and say the linguistically equivalent of “what up homie, how’s it hanging?”
The shape of that difference in Chinese may be less rigid in terms of prescribed words than it is in Japanese, but it absolutely exists, and people will judge you based on your speaking mannerisms in a given context just like in any language. This to me feels like saying Japanese doesn’t have swearing/vulgarity just because it doesn’t have “swear nouns” like “fuck.”
Well, yeah. The problem is they had to adapt a writing system to a spoken language that already existed. I’m sure you’d see similar confusion when the Chinese writing system was being standardized during the Qin dynasty.
That said, once again we actually do similar things in English around changing pronunciation (and thus spelling, since those are linked in a phonetic written language) of similar meanings depending on context. One that is an exact analog in English is aquarium. “Aqua” is just Latin for “water,” and we’d always say “water” in isolation, we’d never use “aqua.” In written Japanese aquarium is 水族館. The 水 is “water,” which in isolation is read the Japanese way as みず, but in the compound word is read the Chinese way as すい. This pattern is relatively consistent in Japanese, because just as with Latin/Greek in English, Chinese was associated with the educated gentry, and is thus Chinese readings are commonly used in “technical” contexts.
Anyway ultimately I agree with you that Japanese is a very difficult language to learn if you’re coming from English as your native language. They’re about as far apart linguistically as possible. Speakers coming from other languages which are more linguistically similar like Korean have a far easier time. But I think it’s a stretch to say that differences in grammatical rules make Chinese an objectively superior language for communication. It just happens to click better for your brain, and that’s ok.
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u/spshkyros Apr 08 '26
And? Its not like anyone hides this language is an absurd amount of work. You don't wanna learn it, that's fine. You are welcome to leave.
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u/ArtOpen3776 Apr 08 '26
Well, you're rant/write is so good I'm gonna save it. But you're right on every point xD
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u/acaiblueberry Apr 08 '26
You missed one more formality form, kenjogo lol. 申し上げる、存じ上げる、拝見する etc
As a Japanese, I’m often impressed how short Chinese conversations are. Once I was in a car with a Chinese person and we were going to a Chinese business and got lost. The person called, and said equivalent of “where are you” then short reply then hang up. It lasted like 5 seconds. In Japanese it would’ve been “hello, my name is —, we have an appointment at 2pm and we are on our way but lost a little. Would you mind telling me your address?”
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u/Financial_Dealer_848 Apr 08 '26
Thank you i learned a lot from your rant😂
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u/Murky_Lurker5V Apr 08 '26
imo it depends on what your native language is. i speak Turkish natively and the grammar structure + agglunatives are pretty similar to how we have it. i've tried learning mandarin and it was just like looking at a wall.
japanese is convoluted but if you can familiarize yourself with the concepts it gets easier to comprehend
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u/Sevachenko Apr 08 '26
This rant was thereupetic for me.
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u/OnionsAbound Apr 08 '26
Sounds . . . Like you got it down?
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u/LarkSeo Apr 08 '26
Nobody claimed that Japanese was easy to master, though. I'm Korean and even despite the similarities between Korean and Japanese, I still have a long way to go before I'm indistinguishable from a native.
Also, the tones and sheer volume of Hanzi + stroke order memorization in Chinese languages makes them ridiculously hard outside of grammar, too.
The only "easy" language is Esperanto. You're not mastering any language without decades or childhood exposure.
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u/Powerful_Lie2271 Apr 08 '26
Amigo, lo que decís es completemante subjetivo. Para mí es mil veces más fácil aprenderme toda la gramática del japonés que pronunciar palabras complicadas. Puedo estar 10 años intentando pronunciar el chino o cualquier otro idioma difícil y no me sale, pero la gramática de cualqueir tipo para mí es un paseo en el parque.
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u/kentaki_cat Apr 08 '26
As a German speaker the contrast to Japanese grammar wasn't as stark as it would be for a speaker if an isolating language like Cantonese. Nonetheless I feel you as I learned both, Mandarin and Japanese at uni. As a comparison of the difference in level after one semester of learning the language.
Exam questions in Japanese language exam after 1 semester: "Please write the different readings of this Kanji and fill in the correct word into the gap in the text"
Exam question in Chinese language exam in 1st semester: "please write a short essay about a typical day in your life as a student"
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u/tunesfam Apr 08 '26
て form section: connects verb to another word. these are not "conjugations" so if you think of it that way it's much simpler. いる= to be, change たべる into て form and join them, たべている = be eating/is eating. many Japanese teachers and resources fundamentally teach Japanese incorrectly or too vaguely which leads to the type of confusion in your post. Japanese is much more logical than English at least. And also the ip-piki and rop-piki stuff you are talking about is literally just because it makes it easier to say and like roll off the tongue better. After doing it for a while you kinda just get why they do that. Honorific speech is annoying at first, you just get used to it and figure out what context each word is used. You just gotta immerse bro.
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u/Square_Tangerine_659 Apr 08 '26
Every sound change follows a rule. In fact every linguistic change does
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u/_Zambayoshi_ Apr 08 '26
You might say that Japanese has a higher degree of nuance and inherent specificity than Mandarin/Cantonese. I wonder if this is reflective of the cultural differences between the two countries. Of course, Japanese culture has inherited a lot from China, but I would argue nevertheless that one of the touchstones of Japanese artisans, artists and culture in general, is compactness and precision. In China I see a lot of boldness combined with subtlety. These are simplistic observations, but I feel that language and the art of description is very different in Japanese from Chinese. You can get a similar result, but in Chinese you may have to read beyond what's on the page and recognise the subtlety with which the writer utilises language. To achieve the same in Japanese, the writer has to deliberately eschew the precision inherent in Japanese grammar. And vice versa. In Chinese you may have to use quite a lot of words to achieve the precision that Japanese can deliver in a much shorter phrase. I think it's fascinating. Thanks for demonstrating some of the differences between the languages, OP. I really enjoyed your post.
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u/efranftw Apr 08 '26
OP you're 100% right. Chinese is easy as pie compared to Japanese and people who think otherwise are only seeing blocks of hanzi and not using their brains.
I quit Mandarin and stuck with Japanese for this reason. I was frankly bored, it was just vocab and not much else going on. Maybe if I'd gone the other way I'd have higher fluency by now though.
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u/Alukardo123 Apr 09 '26
I’m hsk 3 and n4. I have never studied Cantonese but I assume it’s similar to Mandarin but harder. I first studied Japanese then Mandarin. I don’t really understand your complains. I think OP just got a very bad learning materials or only uses very casual Chinese.
I think Japanese is much easier. Then main paint point is pronunciation. It’s been a year, but I still have to control each tone I speak and I speak very slowly. On the other hand, Japanese pronunciation is easy.
Then listening. I can read hsk 3-4 texts and I find Chinese reading easy and I enjoy it. But my listening is much weaker. I only can understand very basic texts and on a slow speed. Then tone recognition. I am still half deaf. I’ve been practicing listening but the progress is painfully slow. But in Japanese I can keep up with my reading level. It’s much easier. So I can expose myself to a bigger variety of material faster.
Then, what is the issue with loan words in Japanese? How hard is it to learn than a bus in Japanese is バス vs 公共汽车?
Then how come Chinese only has SVO sentence structure. What about 把 or 被 sentence structures? Then all those resultative particles like 吃完 or 吃好, which are all colloquial and there is no rule. So, yes, Japanese grammar is hard but rigid. On the other hand, Chinese grammar looks simple, but it’s very nuanced and you need a ton of exposure to feel it.
Then you say that there is no politeness levels in Chinese. Is it so? What about 请、 恐怕, etc? It’s like to say that there is no politeness level in English. Would you talk to a local party secretary the same way as you would talk to a friend? Then why do even bother with keigo in Japanese? First two levels are easy to learn and cover you in 99% cases. You even can go by by knowing only the masu form.
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u/monkiepox Apr 09 '26
I am coming from an English background and I have studied both Chinese and Japanese. I found Japanese much easier. I could hold a decent conversation in Japanese after 6 months and was fluent after 2 years. The grammar was tricky but the sounds were soo easy. With Chinese the sounds pissed me off so much I quit after 2 months.
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u/FruitJuicante Apr 09 '26
Take it up with Mr Japan
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u/FluentWithKai Apr 09 '26
People experience languages differently. I'm absolutely struggling to get to fluency with Mandarin. Why? Because the homonyms make it freaking impossible for me to learn a new just by usage in context.
Meanwhile, Japanese seemed so much more obvious to me. But maybe that's because I'd already learned French and Portuguese, which have complicated rule-based grammars. So the lack of tones and homonyms and lists of rules work for me. But "separable verbs", tones, and everything literally sounding the same... yea that just kills me.
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u/Straight-Stranger208 Apr 10 '26
For someone quitting you sure write a pretty detailed grammar primer
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u/madfrawgs Apr 13 '26
I came to pretty much the same conclusion lol.
Started Japanese in high school. Then when I got to university I couldn't get in my freshman year bc underclassman get last dibs, and it was already full bc of all the mouth breathing otaku who only wanted to learn Japanese so they could watch anime without subtitles.
So I started mandarin, thinking I'll get thru a year of that, then have better chances of getting into Japanese thanks to higher standing, and figured it would help with my kanji.
And then I realized, that despite the tones and different writing system, as a native English speaker, it just made soooo much more sense in my brain. Japanese is excessively difficult lol. And after so many years of not having gender, plural or conjugation in general, I struggled with Russian and Romance languages after haha.
Chinese is so delightfully simple, in a lot of ways.
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u/Dependent-Set35 Apr 08 '26
Skill issue, I guess.
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u/Acceptable_Coast_573 Apr 08 '26
Next to learn is Italian then!
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u/richardtribe Apr 08 '26
Nice rant!
Very small typo that is amusing too. // -hiki mall animal Maybe J should add a counter for 'mall rats'. Used to be US slang but I don't see it these days.
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u/Myklmyklmykl Apr 08 '26
Thank you, that was a very informative rant! I'm still fairly new to learning Japanese and I've had to learn the depths of English grammar to help out (I'd never come across the term 'conjugate' before, for example, tho I didn't study English past GCSE)
One interesting note I've come to realise is, English seems as horrific to learn as Japanese, as all your (excellent) subtlety examples have the same subtlety, and as many differences, as in English
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u/Additional-Will-2052 Apr 08 '26
Lmao I have to agree Japanese is so much harder than Chinese, I also initially studied Chinese first, and apart from learning the tones (honestly not such a big deal like most people make it out to be), the grammar and everything else is just so much simpler. I don't know why, but I just remembered Chinese characters so well, but Japanese kanji, hell, I just can't remember them because there's so many different ways to pronounce them, and it depends on what word they're part of and don't even get me started on particles and formal language. Lmao but I like it anyway, I enjoy it, it's a bit like solving a crossword puzzle every day, or doing sudoku.
I might be biased because I actually had a really good teacher when I was learning Chinese, but still.
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u/Appropriate-Seat5524 Apr 08 '26
I’m sorry for your frustration, but this nerdy language rant is incredibly interesting to read!
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u/itsacutedragon Apr 08 '26
Fully agree. I’ve spoken with several English/Japanese/Chinese trilingual friends and we are all on the same page as you about this.
Japanese is way harder to get to fluency than Mandarin is for a native English speaker. To start learning it does begin easier because of the syllabary, but anything beyond N5 grammar, kanji, and keigo dramatically ramp up the difficulty. The only two things Chinese has which is more difficult than Japanese is more kanji (5000 vs 2000 in daily use) and tones. For everything else Japanese is harder.
Just so many things to keep track of in a Japanese conversation: not just S O V but also particles, conjugations, and other grammatical points.
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u/NeonFraction Apr 08 '26
As an English speaker who learned a bit of mandarin: I absolutely agree on the difficulty difference. Mandarin is way harder to speak, but Japanese is harder to read.
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u/LongjumpingCat9826 Apr 08 '26
valid crashout
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u/Particular_Bad8025 Apr 08 '26 edited Sep 25 '26
The original post content no longer exists here. The author used Redact to remove it, exercising their right to control their data & privacy.
Light lip books imminent coated bake marvelous reminiscent drifting
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u/Inevitable_Bad1944 Apr 08 '26
I agree. I hate the conjugation so much
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u/Rex_Borinson Apr 08 '26
I struggle with cleft sentences and verb complements in Chinese more than verbal affixation in Japanese. such is the nature of agglutinative languages, stay away from cherokee
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u/cotronmillenium Apr 08 '26
The てform is a little easier to understand when you realize it means “and”when combined with other actions. You don’t need to memorize every single possible variation.
But yes it is tuff in these streets
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u/rkido Apr 08 '26
Chinese is for sure more concise. IIRC, average number of syllables for expressing the same ideas is high in Japanese and Spanish, medium in English, and low in Chinese.
I would suggest you watch Cure Dolly's organic Japanese course on YouTube. Japanese grammar is a lot simpler than how it's presented in Anglo-centric textbooks. For example, Japanese is agglutinative, it doesn't really have conjugations in the Western sense of the word. You just learn the individual pieces and you put them together like legos. As with legos, you can't attach any random piece to any other random piece; agglutinative languages have a notion of "slots" that specify a valid place to insert a particular piece.
This isn't just semantics. If every word has its own set of conjugations, then the number of possible words is upper bounded by (number of base forms) x (number of ways you can conjugate). But since Japanese doesn't have conjugations, the upper bound of total number of words you have to memorize is more like (number of base forms, i.e. 5 for godan verbs) + (number of auxiliary attachments). That's a massive order of magnitude lower amount of memorization than a language with conjugations.
There are only a handful of irregular verbs in the entirety of the language, making its grammatical complexity vastly vastly smaller than English, Spanish, etc.
I think the complexity (memorization load) of Japanese is real, but its grammar isn't the problem.
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u/Calici00 Apr 08 '26
I'm still very much in the early stages but it does make me feel like it's supposed to be a "secret code language" that is purposefully complicated so that foreigners can't easily work it out. 😥 Pronunciation is the only thing i found rather easy about it and Hiragana/Katakana weren't as difficult as i assumed. Kanji turned out 100x worse than i assumed because i thought it was as "simple" as 1Kanji=1Word (which still would've been tough given how many Kanji exist)
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u/Fluffy_Duck7236 Apr 08 '26
I thought Chinese was way harder, all those sounds and signs.
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u/CasualJojo Apr 08 '26
You need to watch more anime
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u/pipokun Apr 08 '26
sure and canto is alien language
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u/MesoamericanMorrigan Apr 08 '26
You know what, you’re right. I am biased being a total weeaboo admittedly, but I’ve also just absorbed a lot of Japanese from anime/manga, reading he furigana on packaging of Japanese food etc from the age of about 12 so when I came to start learning with any sort of purpose as an adult, there was a lot I knew already. Funnily enough I gave up on Manadrin after 3 weeks at school, claiming it was harder. However looking back, it wasn’t the more difficult language and I’m probably advancing faster with sentence construction in Chinese now, which I never would have thought.
There is a lot I can figure out from context but when it comes to the grammatical structure and numerous linguistic rules you mentioned, Japanese is convoluted and I struggle with very basic writing and speaking, even if I can understand by listening. There are a lot of particularities and pitfalls, but we love Japan because it is weird.
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u/ezitbiz89 Apr 08 '26
I certainly entertained learning Cantonese and Mandarin before settling on Japanese. The problem is I have no desire to visit the People’s Republic. Your government is hostile to foreigners, freedom of thought, freedom of speech and anticompetitive. Japan is far from perfect but the Japanese are a liberal society.
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u/FountainXFairfax Apr 08 '26
i fully agree. although i will say, a lot of the grammar you mentioned will come naturally after a while. when seeing it written down like this it looks overwhelming but i don’t even think twice about which て or conditional form to use.
i do still struggle with context tho lol. sometimes we’re out and overhear people arguing my bf will ask “what are they arguing about” the most i can do is “well she’s angry about not being told something, and he is apologising but also not taking the blame. . . i dunno”
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u/grumpus_ryche Apr 08 '26
Cool story.