Which language is harder to learn: Russian or Japanese?

I've bought two language learning cds of these russian and japanese and i find russian more difficult to grasp. japanese is more easier to pronounce as it has standard consonants and pronounciation. well..it's really up to the individual. there's alot of language learning videos of such in youtube or very useful resources at About.com under Languages. have fun!

Both have hard aspects and easier aspects. In Russian, writing is a snap but what's difficult is pronunciation (lots of consonants and very lengthy words) and grammar. In Japanese, writing is difficult but pronunciation is pretty easy. Personally, I'd go for Japanese. Russia's economy is in the toilet (though it's now growing) but Japan's is world class. You can make a lot of money if you speak Japanese. You can't make much money be speaking Russian (trust me, I know this first hand - I speak fluent Russian and it's gotten me nowhere).

Definitely Russian! after taking a class, I can only remember how to say "My name is" and "Russian language is very difficult". For me, Russian was difficult because it is a gendered language like other European languages. English and Japanese do not have that change the gender when you conjugate the verb and so on. Both Russian and Japanese require learning a new way to create sentences, vocabulary, and writing system. But that gender thing was the straw that broke the camel's back. I'm half Japanese but blood doesn't make a language easier. I didn't even know how to speak it despite years of lessons until after living there for some time. It helped that I lived in Japan and have never lived in Russia (not yet at least). This is just my own experience. If you're good with gendered languages and already know one of them, the switch to Russian will probably be easier as some words are the same. Some of my relatives lived in Russia for a bit and they've never learned another language but were able to pick some of it up due to immersion.

I have to respectfully disagree to lot of contributors here. Since you will be visiting these countries I assume you are interested only in learning how to speak and not read/write. Learning to speak Japanese is relatively easy as compared to Russian. However, reading and writing is a different story as Japanese language more than one script and some words are respresented by symbols. Good luck.

Japanese. and also. the writing in japanese is extremly hard because some words like the same but mean very different things

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Japanese.

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Japanese