What is harder to learn? Japanese, Chinese, or Korean?

I assume this is from an English speaker. Korean is the easiest. It uses a phonetic alphabet (Hangul) that is one of the most logical and concise writing systems in the world. Also, it is not a tonal language. Japanese is probably the next most difficult. It uses three different writing systems, one of which (Kanji) is based on Chinese characters. The other two are phonetic systems. Still it is not as hard to pronounce as Chinese. Chinese is probably the most difficult. It is a tonal language which is difficult for westerners to learn. The writing system is non-phonetic as well.

Korean is definitely the easiest!! then Japanese is pretty much the same sentence positioning as Korean only different words and writing and so on. Chinese is the hardest. Korean writing is very easy to write, read and understand after a bit of practice. Japanese pronunciationon is very very easy but the writing can be hard for English speaking people. Chinese writing and pronunciationon is hard. your wanting to learn all three!!? woah good luck with that^^

I think maybe you should learn Chinese first. I cannot judge that it is the hardest language, but it is the oldest out of the three. A lot of the words in Japanese and Korean are derived from Chinese. Japanese even still uses the "kanji"s which are Chinese characters. Before they invented the current Korean writing system, Koreans used Chinese characters ("hanja") for official documents, too.. However, I think Japanese and Korean grammar are similar to each other but very different from (and harder than) Chinese. So if your weak point is grammar, then maybe you should learn Japanese or Korean first (since you want to learn the hardest one). Personally, I only speak Chinese, and know a little bit about Japanese, so to me, Korean seems to be the hardest. So it also partly depends on your previous knowledge, I guess. I hope I helped.

Korean and Japanese are similar. Chinese is more like English, grammatically speaking. Which one is hardest depends on you. If you find grammar difficult, then Japanese and Korean are going to be the hardest. If you find pronunciation hard, then Chinese is going to be the hardest. The Korean writing system is the easiest to learn. I was in Korea for a week and learnt to read just by comparing the Korean on signs to the English transliteration, stunning my Korean friend who seemed to think I was somehow learning through absorption lol. The Japanese writing system is the most complicated. There are three different 'alphabets' and the characters have more than one reading. Chinese characters (generally) only have one pronunciation and are simplified so they're easier to learn, but there are more of them to learn as Japanese uses lots of hiragana for grammatical functions whereas Chinese will have a character. Just try not to get too confused!

I haven't taken Chinese, or Korean, but I can tell you about Japanese. Japanese has for 4 components in their witting system. Romaji- Which is Japanese written in English alphabet. It is used for people who don't know the language. Hiragana- The basic Japanese alphabet, the one you will learn first Katakana- It is used with Hiragana, and Kanji.- katakana is where it got hard for me, because we had spent all that time learning hiragana then, here comes a whole new alphabet. But even though Hiragana and Katakana are pronounced the same, it was whole new alphabet. But most of the characters are very similar to their Hiragana. Kanji- are the Chinese characters, that are used in the language.- this is where it got really hard for me. I remember my teacher saying that even people who are born and raised their whole lives on the Japanese language don't even know all the Kanji characters i the language. In a way Japanese can be a lot like english. In english every word has letters, and each letter has a sound. putting each letter together with each of their sounds creates words. well in japanese, its not based on letters, but on syllables. syllables in Japanese are letters to us. and instead of letters, they have Hiragana characters. Each syllable has a hiragana character. For example, in Japanese, I, in romaji is " watashi " when you break it down into syllables it's wa-ta-shi., in hiragana it looks like this- わたし. if can learn this, then you have most of basic japanese covered. with ALOT of studying it can nail it, i think. I think anyone can do anything if they put their minds to it. As far as hardness, I think it is based on commitment. Yea, its hard, any complete new language is, but your heart has to be in it. Like when I learned sign language. American Sign Language may look easy, but not really. In my first sign language class, the people who were only in the class because they wanted "the language credit" really struggled, and alot of them dropped out. But those who really wanted make a career out of it, the ones who were really dedicated, or wanted to learn because they had a family remember who was deaf, were the ones who flied by in the class. They were really determined to learn. So its truly a commitment. If you study really hard, and stay dedicated you can learn them all. Its not really which is the hardest, its how much time you dedicate to learning the language. hope this helps! diondra

japanese is the most difficult language in the world..... it is said that almost 60% of japanese people speak only basic japanese.the rest of the japanese language is too difficult to grasp