Korean vs Japanese vs Chinese: which is the hardest?

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00:00 Intro
01:00 Historical interactions
05:13 Similarities
06:56 Pronunciation
09:31 Reading
11:12 Writing
14:18 Grammar

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Are Chinese and Japanese similar? Which one is more difficult? (subtitles)

[zoe.languages]

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[oumjwjw]

日本人からみた印象
中国語→漢字でなんとなく意味が推測可能
韓国語→宇宙語

[Verbalaesthet]

As a speaker of all of these languages I think Japanese is the hardest of them all. Korean has the simplest alphabet, Chinese characters are the hardest but the Japanese use them too. Pronunciationwise Japanese is the easiest though and the hardest is Chinese with its tones. Grammarwise Chinese is the easiest and Korean and Japanese are the same. If you know Japanese Chinese and Korean is easier to learn but especially Japanese and Korean are close sharing both grammar and vocabulary. Korean has the easiest writing system that you can learn in about 10 minutes btw.

[bszjibe]

일본인과 한국인이 이웃국가중에 서로의 언어를 배우는 것에 접근성이 좀더 좋은 것 같아요. 제 일본인 친구들은 대부분 한국어를 알게 된 지 1주일만에 간단한 회화와 음식점이나 카페의 주문이 가능했고, 공부한 지 3개월만에 30분 이상의 대화가 가능했고, 반년 만에 한국어 시사뉴스의 장문을 독해할 수 있었습니다! 추신: 이 친구들이 천재일 수도 있습니다.(웃음) 하지만 그 중 가장 공부를 안 했던 일본인 친구조차 제 한국어를 어느 정도 알아들었기 때문에 저는 길고양이와 대화할 수가 없었네요.(혼자서 길고양이와 대화하고 있었는데 가까이 온 일본인 친구가 제 한국어를 전부 알아들어서 몹시 부끄러웠습니다😂.그리고 저도 어째서인지 어느 순간 갑자기 그 일본인 친구들의 귀여운 혼잣말이 해석되기 시작했어요.)

[SFTMoon]

この動画を作る労力を考えたら感服せざるを得ないなぁ😅
ほんまに言語が好きなんやなって伝わる。

[naturaphrodite]

Every language has difficult and easy parts. I am learning Korean now and as a native Turkish speaker, our grammar is very similar.

[woysrjx]

As a Japanese, I didn't have much trouble learning Korean, and within three months, I was able to pick it up reasonably well. However, Chinese uses the same Chinese characters, so the meaning is somewhat understandable, but the problem with Chinese is the pronunciation. Pronunciation is too difficult, and maybe it is just me, but Chinese pronunciation and vocalization are a bit embarrassing and difficult for a Japanese person like me.

[isabellegende-xzxw]

As a Turkish, I can say that Korean has almost the same grammar as Turkish. Learning Chinese makes me feel good because it shows how much I can push my limits. Chinese is a very interesting language and I hope I can learn it and talk to you soon. I continue to learn Chinese, Please continue to keep us informed.❤我们爱中国.대한민국 만세. 日本が大好きです

[maiar_]

As a Korean learner in my own experience that was pretty hard at the beginning but when got into the all basic grammar and already learned the alphabet it started to get easier and easier and listening was pretty important tho never give up when you wanna learn a new language it depends on how much you want to learn it keep going 화이팅 여러분 할수있어요💪🏻💗

[s.sh.]

As an Azerbaijani, I’m agree with Turkish people in the comments, our grammar are very similar to Korean. It’s way too easier for us to learn Korean.🇰🇷🇹🇷🇦🇿💗

[brandontaywi]

I love your video, it is very informative and I am a native Spanish speaker who wants to learn Japanese and I think that learning a language takes a long time and your video was a good introduction to learning the Japanese language.

[fmcpbmh]

어느 나라나 언어에 대해 깊게 파고들면 배우기 어렵다고들 하지만... 한국어 문법은 한국사람들도 정말 어려워합니다... 다른 나라 언어 유창하게 구사하시는 분들 정말 존경합니다

[turinoik]

King Sejong, who created Hangeul, made it easy for the common people to learn to write. So, anyone can learn easily. It is a very scientific and creative language.

[journeyneverends_]

As a Japanese adult, I usually can imagine meanings roughly when I read Chinese language.
And when I see Korean language, it becomes more difficult to imagine/understand
meanings as Korean letters look completely different from ours.

But a funny phenomenon is there that when it comes to learn those 2 languages,
we tend to need lesser time to learn Korean than Chinese.

I don't know why, but I assume many Japanese people have experienced that.

[LeeSeungrhee]

As a Korean learner, I just wanna say I really appreciate the amount of effort you put into creating this video and the research on Korean language. Also, I like your Korean accent 😊

[IHBERWIUHBDSAJ]

As a native English speaker, I've studied both Korean and Chinese. Korean is easier to get started because of its phonetic script (5/10), but is harder after the first stage becuase of its more complex grammar (8/10). Chinese is very difficult to get started (recognising characters 11/10), and gets easier afterwards, until it is about the same difficulty as Korean (8/10).

[gongsilvia]

Chinese is super hard in the beginning but get easier later, Japnese seems the opposite. One thing very interesting is, each character in Chinese are similar to the "root word" in English. The number of commonly used chinese characters are 3000-5000, once you memorize them, you can basically guess the meaning of all the words you meet. Also, the reading speed of chinese reader is suuuper fast since chinese sentence is very informative comparing to other languages

[bolinhoparodias]

I live in Brazil and my native language is Portuguese. Most people don't know about it, but even though Japanese doesn't share the same roots as romance languages, the pronunciation of Japanese words is rather similar to Portuguese and Spanish, so for me it's really easy to pronounce Japanese words, especially those which have the same sound and similar spelling (despite of the different meanings).
For example:

In Japanese: Kansei (感性) which means "sensitivity"
In Portuguese: Cansei, which means "I'm done" or "I'm tired"

In Japanese: Ningen (人間) which means "human"
In Portuguese: Ninguém, which means "nobody"
It's really funny because while in Japanese "ningen" means human, ninguém in Portuguese means nobody, not a single human. LOL

In Japanese: Baka (馬鹿)
In Portuguese: Babaca
In this case, both have the same meaning

Also, we Brazilians use the term "ne" frequently at the end of the phrases like Japanese people do and this term "ne" has the same meaning in both languages. We have a lot of Japanese people living in Brazil and they use the "ne" a lot and most Brazilians don't find it awkward because it's natural in Brazilian Portuguese
There are so many similar words both in spelling and pronunciation in Portuguese and Japanese that's really interesting! I love how easy is to pronounce Japanese words and that's why I feel more comfortable trying Japanese than Chinese or Korean. However, I love Chinese as much as I love Japanese. ♥

[kangsoosong]

As Korean native you have very good comparison in these three languages hope similar video to come up soon.😁

[Leenuuuu]

다른 건 잘 모르겠다만, 영어 한국어 중국어 일본어 4개국어가 댓글에 여기저기 달려 있는 상황이 신기하면서도 흥미롭네요 😊