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According to the Shinsen Kokugo Jiten (新選国語辞典) Japanese dictionary, kango 漢語 comprise 49.1% of the total vocabulary, wago 和語make up 33.8%, other foreign words or gairaigo (外来語 account for 8.8%, and the remaining 8.3% constitute hybridized words or konshugo (混種語 that draw elements from more than one language.

Kango (Kanji phrases) comprise 49.1% of the total vocabulary. As a native Chinese speaker and an advanced learner of Japanese, I can tell you that almost all those 49.1% have been directly imported into modern Chinese. Isn't it crazy?

Of course, there are a few false friends.

Sakaeyellow, your posts regarding the shared vocab of Chinese and Japanese is really enlightening. As a Malaysian Chinese who has brought up with Mandarin, I did not even realize that.

As for the general debacle regarding the relative easiness to learn a certain language, my personal belief is that it is totally relative. We were brought up in different countries and have different backgrounds when it comes to language exposure.

As a general rule, Westerners may find it relatively harder to master pictographic languages (i.e. Hindi, Tamil, Chinese, Japanese, Thai) simply because of the fact that there are no alphabets involved, unlike the Romance languages. Conversely, it is also true that Asians may find it difficult to learn the Romance languages, simply because of the difficulties in pronounciation and the disparities between the enunciated sound and the written word.

However, I would like to clarify that it is definitely not true that Chinese speakers will master Japanese easier than non-Chinese speakers. While it is true that Kanji and Hanzi are similar, this is only true for the traditional form of Hanzi (fanti), which is not in use in China today. The simplified Hanzi used in China (jianti) is very different from both Hanzi and Kanji, for certain characters. Therefore, much confusion ensues for a Chinese speaker in learning Japanese, because he doesn't recognize a particular kanji at all; or it may be written with a different stroke count.

Hope this helps! :vsign:

What's interesting is that Spanish is basically flawless in the pairing of writing and speaking. All vowels and consonants sound the same no matter where they occur, with a handful of exceptions that are handled by writing other ways.

It's like Japanese that way.

Italian is nearly the same. French gets more complicated, though. I don't know about Portuguese and Romanian and such.

Is that for real??? We're just talking about written chinese/japanese, right? I'm not sure about that if you're talking about spoken language. I've heard that if a Japanese looks at a Chinese news paper, they'll get the drift of it... but as far as talking goes, Japanese people seem as lost as I am with Chinese (granted I'm not trying to learn it, and I presume they aren't either).

But ya, sakae yellow, that is amazing that you know so many languages. I generally agree with you about the idea that if you can ask what a word means in the language you're learning, and have it explained to you in the language you're learning, then you are fluent (or on the road there). That's when learning in a second language comes into play. That's what I'm loving right now about having learned the Japanese that I have... I get to talk to people and learn about concepts and ideas that don't even exist (at least to my knowledge) in my American English world. I can only imagine what that would be like if I knew 3 or 4 languages like you sakaeyellow.

See, I'm not entirely sure that's a good definition. I mean, I was taught 〜というのは〜／〜ということだ in my first year of Japanese, but I sure wasn't fluent. I don't consider myself fluent now, and I've been doing precisely the above for years now.

EDIT (to my last post) Yea, although I have italian in my blood I can't speak it, but I had to sing in italian a couple of times and the pronunciation is very similar to spanish. They are both very similar to Japanese. Japanese isn't even flawless in its pairing of writing and speaking though, which seems to be a common misconception. It's definately better than most languages in that regard, however. Discounting all the grammatical differences and what-not between written and spoken Japanese, there are still differences. For example, 学校 vs 中学校 or 小学校 the pronunciation of 学校 will change. The が becomes a different sound than it normally would. This happens all over the place and it's these kinds of subtleties that, if worked on and mastered, will lead to more respect.

"I mean, I was taught 〜というのは〜／〜ということだ in my first year of Japanese, but I sure wasn't fluent."

I think we both know that that doesn't lead to one being fluent... I'm talking about being explained words with whole concepts behind them in a language and being able to understand the explanation of them.

I did put as a small disclaimer at the end of my phrase which read, "or on the way there". In otherwords, being able to do that suggests that you are on the road to fluency. When you don't need a dictionary, you're fluent. I said it a few pages back, but I look at spoken and written language as almost two different languages. So you can be fluent in reading/writing, but not fluent in speaking. The opposite also occurs. Most natives are fluent in the spoken form of their language before they are fluent in the written form. That's what lead me to suggest that maybe studying kanji shouldn't be as prioritized as early on as it is... and maybe that extra energy could be put to listening.

The point is: you need to understand the ~~ part.

So in other words, when you understand something said to you in Japanese, you're fluent? What a revolutionary definition of "fluent"! ;)

I still think it's a very low bar of fluency. I don't consider myself fluent in Japanese or Spanish, but I can explain and have explained basically anything in the language.

But I should stop arguing about what "fluent" means and start working toward becoming fluent!!!