What are the differences between Chinese, Japanese, and Korean (collectively called CJK, for short)? Are Chinese characters (hànzì) the same as Japanese kanji and Korean hanja?

You are not alone if you are confused. Let’s debunk some of the biggest language myths about CJK.

Myth 1: Japanese and Korean originated from the Chinese language.

No. There is no dispute about their origins; they did not come from the Chinese language. What is a fact is that a large part of their vocabulary consists of borrowed Chinese words, which happened during the countries’ historical interaction with each other. Furthermore, although the Korean language (Altaic) and the Japanese language (Japonic) are highly similar to each other (e.g. similar-sounding words and grammar rules), they are considered to be isolated and different languages too.

Myth 2: Asians who can speak either one of the CJK languages actually understand and/or speak all three of them.

No. A person who knows one CJK language might be able to understand most of the words written on a Chinese/Japanese/Korean newspaper, but not everything. What he/she can do is link enough of the characters together to get a picture of what is probably being written about. As for the spoken word, there may be far too many differences between CJK for one to know what the other person is saying.

What are Chinese characters (hànzì)?

While Chinese characters (hànzì) were developing in China, Japanese kanji and Korean hanja did not exist yet. Eventually,, the Japanese people adopted hànzì to write their own language, which became ‘kanji’. Korean people did the same, and adopted hànzì to write ‘hanja’.

Myth 3: Chinese characters (hànzì) = Japanese kanji = Korean hanja?

No. Chinese hànzì, Japanese kanji,and Korean hanja do not use the same set of traditional Chinese characters.

The characters used in Korean (hanja) and Japanese (kanji) are distinct from those used in China in many respects. First, they look similar (but not necessarily exactly the same) to traditional Chinese characters than simplified Chinese characters. Second, they typically have (but not necessarily) similar meanings, but often quite different pronunciations.

Myth 4:  Chinese hànzì, Japanese kanji, and Korean hanja have the same pronunciations

Chinese hànzì and Japanese kanji/Korean hanja are pronounced differently!

For example:

“剑/劍” (“sword” written in simplified and traditional version respectively) is pronounced “jiàn” in Mandarin Chinese but written as “剣” and read as “けん [ken]” or “つるぎ [tsurugi]” in Japanese. It is written as “劍” and read as “검 [geom]” in Korean.

Let’s look at ten more examples!

*simplified/traditional

**simplified and traditional characters are the same

Did you notice the high similarities between Japanese and Korean pronunciations? Japanese and Korean share a considerable number of lexical similarities than may not be applicable to Chinese.

The modern way to learn Chinese characters
Nowadays, people can easily write in all three languages by using a phone or computer. It’s possible to learn Chinese characters without writing them out by hand. You just need to learn the Pinyin/Zhuyin and select the right characters, in which most of the time the right characters are chosen automatically. Before phones and computers, one had to actually learn to write them with a pen and paper.

Conclusion:

As with other learning other languages, you need to do a lot of reading, listening, and speaking to become fluent. Learning Chinese characters is a major investment of time, but there is one thing for sure: once you get into these languages, you will see the beauty in them, as well as a reflection of the great culture that created them. These languages will enrich your life in a way that you can never imagine, and give you a deeper understanding of the people who speak them.

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About 13% of the world’s population speaks Mandarin Chinese.

Have you ever wished you could speak fluent Chinese with a native speaker?

You might be thinking, “I’ll memorize some Chinese characters and phrases, then I’ll be ready to communicate in the Chinese language.”

Unfortunately, conversational Chinese isn’t that easy.

Many new Chinese language learners try to learn Chinese characters and the Pinyin pronunciation at the same time, without realizing that learning Chinese needs a slightly different approach than that.

Having said this, to learn Chinese is still easier than you think! But before we get to the model, we’d like to tell you why speaking Mandarin Chinese is easier than you think, by debunking 3 popular myths about learning Chinese.

Myth #1: All Chinese characters are pictographic

No, not all characters are pictographic. You may have learned about an early fascination with certain characters like the one above for “horse”, which is indeed pictographic and easier to remember. However, this type of Chinese character creation only makes up at most 4% of total Chinese characters. In other words, if you want to be conversational asap, learning Chinese characters “pictographically” might be not be the best approach.

Myth #2: Memorization of Chinese characters is mandatory to be conversational in Chinese

No. Most Chinese speakers learn how to speak before learning to recognize Chinese characters. Even if you don’t have a tutor/learning buddy, there are cutting-edge technologies like Chatbots to help you practice conversational Chinese, which you can do with or without Chinese characters. You can even learn and chat using Pinyin, which is composed of the letters from the Western alphabet.

Myth #3: I need to learn many Chinese words to be conversational

No. There may be up to 106,230 characters (Yitizi Zidian), but the vast majority of them are archaic. Research shows that you just need 2% of all Chinese words to be conversational. Mastering about 1000 Chinese words is enough for handling daily situations, both in and out of a professional context. (information modified from BBC)

The best and fastest way to become conversational in Mandarin asap is to master spoken Chinese with Pinyin first, and then learn Chinese characters later. Your learning experience will be much more manageable and enjoyable this way.

Here is an unconventional model for fast-track conversational Mandarin Chinese:

In other words, you can learn Hanyu Pinyin for conversation and Chinese characters separately. This way, you can start to communicate in Chinese with half the effort it would have taken if you had studied them together.

The post How To Start Speaking Mandarin Chinese Very Quickly – An unconventional fast-track model to cut your time to fluency by 50% appeared first on .