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Comment by 999900000999 | Hacker News Reader

Hypothetically, you have unlimited time but you need to learn Chinese, Japanese and Korean,

Which order would you do in it?

I've met tons of Koreans who can speak Japanese extremely well, along with one who really hated it. She was a good first girlfriend though...

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I know Japanese and have tried to learn the other two. (Didn't have enough motivation to keep going, and besides, there is always more Japanese to learn...)

Korean has similar grammar and some words share etymology with Chinese/Japanese, which is why Koreans can learn Japanese so quickly. The pronounciation is harder but hangul is not too hard to learn. I felt like I could have learned Korean pretty well given a year or so.

Chinese has completely different grammar, tone system is very hard for most people, no hiragana/katakana (so even simple words like 'Chocolate' are written with relatively complex characters, which you have to learn to read and write). The kanji is mostly the same but there are lots of Chinese-only variants particularly if you go simplified (mainland China) over traditional (Taiwan etc.). I found it quite difficult, particularly the tones. There is a lot of regional variation too, and crucially, I couldn't find any interesting Chinese media and have no interest in visiting the mainland, so it was pointless to continue.

I'm actually taking Chinese and have been for a good while.

The grammar is almost the same as English, with it actually being easier to say some basic things.

他没有工作。 He (negation word / no) have job.

He does not have a job.

Japanese, is one of the hardest things I've ever tried to do. It's just hard.

But I'm confident in being able to hold down a conversation in Mandarin one day

I'd say learn Hokkien first, which as a Min dialect has a more conservative phonology, which will help more than Mandarin when learning Japanese and Korean. The rest is a matter of test.

Also, I recommend using a website like the one I made (in alpha), which helps comparing the pronunciation of vocabulary of Sinitic origin: http://144.24.197.67/entry/e5b585e5-aba3-0000-0000-000000000...

Cool website, any way you could like have a domain so I could send it to people. Looks kind of scary now

That's on purposes for few reasons ranging from legal, mistakes in the linguistic modelling, approximations in the data used for algorithmic comparison, lack of pagination in the indexes, etc.

Send me an email from the address found on the paper on the website if you want, so I can keep you notified of the real release.

I was told to do Japanese first. Because you get grammar similar to Korean and Chinese characters both for free, or at least half off.

Much of the Kanji even means the same thing in Chinese (different pronunciations of course though).

>Hypothetically, you have unlimited time but you need to learn Chinese, Japanese and Korean,

Any question starting from the assumption you will learn three completely new languages is probably the wrong question to ask.

I mean, sure if it's your job, a planned career, or you somehow have family in all those languages, go for it. If not, you probably want to prioritize whatever language you want to learn the most, the one you have the most fun being in, or have the most need to learn.

To answer your question anyway, I would guess Japanese first, then either of the other two after, since Japanese will make you learn both Chinese characters (which still help somewhat in Korean) and has grammar similar to Korean, so it should give you a leg up on either language after. But if you are in a situation where you meetings tons of Korean people, or in Korea, that seems like a way more important factor...

It's more like I'm from LA, and I had an apartment in K-Town once.

I'm definitely planning on continuing with my Chinese classes, it's much easier in my opinion than the other two. And I'm meeting tons of Chinese people now

I agree. I was pretty fast at learning Japanese (passed N1 after two years), 8 years later there are still tons of words I don't know, I can't write a lot of kanji, listening comprehension isn't as good as it could be. It's a lifelong thing. Props to anyone mastering more than one language!

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