Can Japanese read mandarin comic/newspaper?

[jurianbai]

Just curious, is it said to be around 2000 kanjis in Japanese language. then in mandarin it is also said that if you get about 2000 mandarin words then you can understand a mandarin newspaper or magazine or comic . so question arise, can Japanese understand what inside mandarin newspaper / comic ? is it the same THINGS ?

[Yogehi]

Originally Posted by jurianbai

Just curious, is it said to be around 2000 kanjis in Japanese language. then in mandarin it is also said that if you get about 2000 mandarin words then you can understand a mandarin newspaper or magazine or comic . so question arise, can Japanese understand what inside mandarin newspaper / comic ? is it the same THINGS ?

all the japanese news papers i've seen also involve hiragana and katakana and stuff. there are stuff in japanese sentences that can't be replaced with kanji cause there is no kanji for it.

EX
私はヨゲヒ。

[Nagoyankee]

Who said this? Nothing can be further from the truth.

The two languages are NOT linguistically related to each other. The grammar is completely different. Chinese only uses kanji. Japanese uses kanji, hiragana and katakana. How does a Chinese-speaker read the hiragana and katakana without having studying them?

When I see a Chinese newspaper or magazine, all I can guess is what the topic of the article is. I have no idea what the article says.

[Nyororin]

Originally Posted by jurianbai

Just curious, is it said to be around 2000 kanjis in Japanese language. then in mandarin it is also said that if you get about 2000 mandarin words then you can understand a mandarin newspaper or magazine or comic . so question arise, can Japanese understand what inside mandarin newspaper / comic ? is it the same THINGS ?

This is a really good question... And the answer is, well, no.

Chinese is written entirely in kanji. This means that all the grammatical points are also in kanji. Japanese, however, uses kanji only for meaning with the grammatical bits in hiragana.
Reading a Chinese newspaper, a Japanese speaker can usually get a very basic grasp of what the article is about... And in some cases, glean a bit of information from it. But I certainly wouldn`t call that "reading". It would be more along the lines of a native English speaker being able to pick out bits and pieces in, say, German.
While you may be able to figure out that the sentence is talking about Subject A, you`d have no clue WHAT it is actually saying about Subject A.

That is assuming that the kanji being used carry the same meaning in Chinese as in Japanese, which is often not the case at all.

[jurianbai]

thanks nyororin for your explaination, i get your point. btw, i am asking this because something I often see a Japanese poem or calligraphy written in full Kanji, I just how the mandarin person can understand it and vice versa, can the japanese understand what written in mandarin.

ok, how about test to read this one :


冬夜長

一思少年時
読書在空堂
灯火数添油
未厭冬夜長

can Japanese grab the meaning?

the source said it can be read by Japanese (it's a chinese poem written by Japanese monk). the source is :

A Chinese poem of Monk Ryokan

or more interesting see :

Our life in this world - to what shall I compare it?

[MMM]

It's best to think of the Mandarin and Japanese writing systems as two different languages.

English is mostly based in Greek and Latin roots. But that doesn't mean someone who speaks Greek or Latin will understand English.