[Susanne]

I'm undecided on whether to study Chinese or Japanese.

As a girl living in the western world and having no connections with Orientals nor planning to go to Asia anytime soon, I have no incentive to pick one over the other.

I recently started learning Japanese and now have a fairly good grasp of it. My reasons for wanting to learn it are that I love the Japanese culture, history, language (both spoken and written), and their stereotypical drive for technology (I'm a computer scientist). Additionally, I'm a manga junkie. I've already memorized both the hiragana and katakana syllabaries as well as a few dozen kanji. It seems as though I'm currently on the right track to learn the language.

On the other hand, Chinese seems like a generally easier language to learn, compared to Japanese, given that I have a good ear for tones. However, I don't know half as much Chinese as I do Japanese. I've also been told several times that "Chinese would be more beneficial to know, in the long run, given that many people already speak it and China isn't obviously a small, isolated island floating somewhere in the pacific."

I can't make the choice and I need to pick one soon due to graduate school classes being just around the corner. I'm aware I can learn both, but I know myself too well to tell right away that that won't be a possibility, at least for the time being. I surely like Japanese better than I do Chinese, but I still think that Chinese would be the most useful in the long run.