Is it Japanese or Chinese?

My eldest brother recently gave me a bunch of films in Chinese. The problem is I am learning Japanese.

I’ve been studying Japanese for many years now and it hasn’t dawned on me until now that my family might be completely lost when it comes to distinguishing the languages. In this particular situation it is the written language as the two languages share logographs with slight deviations.

Why would it be important for my family or your family members to know which language you are studying? My recent “gift” from my brother certainly calls for it.

Japanese has more than just logographs. The written language has 3 different forms of writing:

  • Kanji => the logographic chinese characters
  • Katakana => used usually for foreign words
  • Hiragana => used for native words

Katakana and Hiragana are bundled into what is called ‘kana’ characters and look like this:

  • Hiragana : いあおうえただがかばは…
  • Katakana : イアオウエタダガカバハ…

To be brief I hadn’t listed all of the syllables. The two are very distinct and allow any beginning reader to quickly perceive the difference between the two. Hiragana is very curvy and has a flow to it while Katakana is very sharp and simplified.

To complete our distinction between the written languages, between the Japanese Kanji and the Chinese hànzi, lets now see how each looks like next to each other:

Japanese: 日本語は中国語と比べたらちっとも違う語ですね。

Chinese: 與中國人相比,日語是完全不同的詞,不是嗎?

Both read: If you compare Chinese with Japanese they are both completely different languages, right?

I translated the Japanese sentence into Chinese via Google Translate. Apologies to anyone who might find the Chinese version lacking, I don’t know Chinese ;) . If you noticed, I hadn’t used Katakana in the Japanese one.

Anyways, due to the combination of Kanji and the Kana characters Japanese is considered one of the most difficult written languages to learn. although, Chinese does boast a larger logographic collection than Japanese. The Japanese learn a minimum of 2,19o Kanji’s by the end of High School while I’ve heard that Chinese surpasses that number more than double.

Chinese can be seen to contain only logographic characters. This contrast is usually what I search for when I decipher between the two, usually with a quick glance I could tell. The second stage will be to identify any Kana and if that doesn’t convince me I might go deep into the differences of the logographs.

I hope this articles gave you a better ability to distinguish Japanese and Chinese. I certainly hope my family will know how to impress me next time they try getting me some Japanese gift.

)
Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade