What are some methods for learning Japanese and Chinese?
The best method to learn a language will always be immersion. You can already start by just listening things in those langauges and really pay attention to the sounds, this will not teach you the language but it will get you used to its sounds, which is very important.
The big problem with Japanese and Chinese is that to be able to immerse by reading you need to learn a whole other alphabet. Japanese has three writing systems, which are Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji, and Chinese has hanzi (which are the same as Kanji but often times with different readings).
Learning hiragana and katakana is not too hard, there aren’t that many sounds, you can either use rote memorization or mnemonics but you should practice until you can identify them as quickly as the roman alphabet. The biggest hurdle are the kanji/hanzi.
To be fluent in Japanese (reading) you need to know around 2500 kanji, in Chinese it is like 5000 hanzi because they use them exclusively. Now, there are some good books like Remembering the Kanji, that teach you those symbols with mnemonics, however I personally think they are a waste of time. In my opinion the best way to learn kanji/hanzi is to learn vocabulary. There are many anki deck covering vocabulary for each level of fluency, while learning those words you should memorize how they are writing.
Now, learning kanji/hanzi in isolation with mnemonics can work, many people have followed that path. The problem with it is that, first, those methods don’t really teach you how to read the kanji/hanzi, they just teach you how to not confuse one symbol with another, as for someone who isn’t used to them they usually look like random nonsense.
So, as a summary. What I consider the best way to learn either Japanese or Chinese is to follow the following “steps”:
- Listen to japanese or chinese audio obsessively. Hopefully you do it for a few hours every day.
- For japanese specifically, learn and drill katakana and hiragana.
- Start learning vocabulary with an SSR system. Take care to memorize the writing in the target language, taking special care to memorize the kanji/hanzi.
- Once you get going with vocabulary start obsessively reading children’s books. You can easily find easy resources for beginners on the internet. Once you start getting better you can start reading easy mangas or visual novels.
- Learn some elementary grammar. You don’t need to study it a lot, just read about some basic grammar, as long as you immerse enough you’ll pick up most things without needing to study.
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I don’t know. But I would draw the signs several times and learn songs. Shima uta is a great song in japanese.
The simplest method.
Dr Moku app to master Hirigana, Katakana and Kanji. It also does Korean Hangul and now Arabic.
Kanji mnemonics book. Kanji, Traditional Chinese, is used in Taiwan, Japan and Korea. Simplified is the script in Maine nland China, but they still use it for temples and official looking stuff.
Then watch Japanese or Chinese movies in their native language with Chinese or Jaoanese subtitoes turned it on and try ry to get as many words as you can.
Write down the ones you start heard ng the most.
Read newspapers in those target languages. Reading is much easier rhan hearing.
Rinse and repeat.
Kanji will benefit you the most. Everything that’s a formal name is written in Kanji. It’s used for Both Chinese and Japanese.
Audio wise, you’d be hestvto pick one language. There is almost nothing similar about audio wise between them.
Japanese and Korean have many shared words that are similar or identical such as shimbun, bento, etc. And Japanese has similar grammar since it originated in Paekche, an ancient Korean kingdom that got conquered by Silla. The nobility, artisans, scholars, artists, fled to Japan. The 1st emperor is Korean according to DNA samples.