Tired of "JP ONRY"? Let's bridge the language gap!

[Exstal]

If you run into the Kanji wall and can't find a way to jump over it, I recommend learning Chinese. Chinese is "excusively Kanji" all the way and in very many cases the Japanese simply copied & pasted it over the centuries, which makes japanese even easier for Chinese people (in the rare case they are willing to communicate with Japanese people, though).

I disagree. You can read 日 one way in Chinese. You can read it 3 or 4 ways in Japanese. So you have to know the reading for the word. Chinese characters are just 1 character = 1 sound. Japanese 1 character = possibly, and usually, many readings.

[SolArisa]

I disagree. You can read 日 one way in Chinese. You can read it 3 or 4 ways in Japanese. So you have to know the reading for the word. Chinese characters are just 1 character = 1 sound. Japanese 1 character = possibly, and usually, many readings.

I didn't mean to say it's identical and can be understood right away. It's absolutely right that the Japanese use of it evolved during the centuries. I wanted to point it that it's an easier way to learn them, especially since traditional mandarin is the root of the Japanese language. At least it was a lot easier for me, after I first failed at Kanji.

[Exstal]

I didn't mean to say it's identical and can be understood right away. It's absolutely right that the Japanese use of it evolved during the centuries. I wanted to point it that it's an easier way to learn them, especially since traditional mandarin is the root of the Japanese language. At least it was a lot easier for me, after I first failed at Kanji.

The downside is that you have to learn traditional because that's what most Japanese use。　For example,　chicken in Japanese is 鶏　vs simplified Chinese 鸡。 I think learning Chinese first would be good if you were going to go hard into it, then eventually transfer over to Japanese but otherwise if you have no interest in learning it at all, it's probably better just to slowly work on kanji from the bottom up.