For anyone who has studied all three of these (even to very basic level), what’s your opinion?
For me so far:
Chinese = easiest
Japanese = middle
Korean = hardest
I find with Chinese, once you are over the initial bumps and bruises from tones, characters and the fact there is no alphabet, it actually gets easier to learn (illustrated in this graph below by Sinosplice).
Korean I’ve found the hardest so far because the pronunciation is tough.
Whilst the alphabet is easy, that’s where the joy ends. I hope in time I manage to get over these early wobbles with Korean.
In my opinion, Easiest = Japanese. Middle =Chinese. Hardest= Korean
Japanese is a perfect blend of characters and the alphabet. Pronunciation and listening are not challenging. The hardest parts are grammar and vocabulary. There is also a lot of material to learn.
Chinese Grammar doesn’t seem too bad. The tones are scary and take practice, but they’re not too bad either. Speech is slower, and grammar seems pretty straightforward. What makes it challenging for me is the number of characters you need to learn (double if you’re learning both traditional and simplified) and the variations in dialects.
Korean - By far the hardest language I’ve learned. Speech changes, verb conjugations, sound linking, and pure speed of spoken speech. The only easy thing about Korean is the alphabet.
A little Background:
The US government classifies languages in categories 1-4, with Cat 4 being the hardest for English speakers. Those languages are: Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. I’ve had the pleasure of dabbling in all 4. Arabic for 3 months before going to Egypt. I would say an upper A1. Japanese for 3 years in high school and two trips to Japan. A2 because, let’s be real, High school doesn’t really teach languages well. Korean at an upper B1, maybe B2, after learning at a rigorous language school for 7-10 hours every day for 18 months. I just started learning Chinese a few months ago. My tutor said I am all over the board, probably an A2.
Such an interesting question! Honestly I think the level you want to learn a language to is a big factor - if you want to learn enough words and phrases to survive a trip to one of these countries, then Japanese has to be easiest for me. Plenty of loanwords like:
Beer: ビール Bīru
Coffee: コーヒー Kōhī
Toilet: トイレ Toire
Plus the pronunciation is far more straightforward. No dealing with things like Chinese tones or Korean vowels.
However, if you want to learn one of them to near fluency, I’d also agree Mandarin is easiest! Once you’ve got the hang of tones, how characters are constructed etc., the grammar is very straightforward. E.g:
Verbs don’t get conjugated
Nouns don’t change depending on gender/number etc
The sentence structure is similar to English and follows a subject-verb-object pattern, unlike Japanese and Korean
Another advantage to learning Chinese instead of Japanese is that most (not all, but most!) characters are only read in one way and are only one syllable. In Japanese, manyyyy characters have multiple readings, which I find confusing.
But ultimately, the easiest language to learn for anyone is the language they enjoy learning the most, as it will be easier to stick to in the long run
If anyone wanted to read more about why Chinese really isn’t that hard to learn, here’s a blog post you might enjoy
