Difficulty of the Various Asian Languages

[Lucas88]

I found this old post in the recently revived thread about avoiding Japan:

It depends - Japanese is hard to learn compared to which language?

Many Asian languages are rather complicated and often have a different writing system too.

I don't know what is more difficut compared to Japanese, but Burmese spoken in Myanmar is difficult too, and Khmer in Cambodia is known as complicated and it is not even a tonal language. Vietnamese is not easy to study, despite its writing is in Roman letters, Korean is at least equal time consuming to learn as Japanese...Indian languages like Hindi or Tamil are known a headache for any newcomer who never had anything to do with such languages....

The only not really so difficult Asian languages which come to my mind are Indonesian/Malay and also Tagalog...but otherwise?
Chinese is not easy, and to study languages of Asian countries like Pakistan - Urdu/Punjabi etc. - and Iran - Farsi - might also not a simple task.

@chanta76 - I was thinking you can speak/read Chinese and/or Korean and you are Asian-American - or not? I am not sure, maybe I am wrong.
What is your native language?

viewtopic.php?f=11&t=36133

I thought that it would be better to incorporate this quoted text into a new topic rather than creating a tangent in the original thread.

As for the difficulty of the various Asian languages, it's true that virtually all East Asian and Southeast Asian languages present a significant challenge for the Western learner with the notable exception of the Austronesian languages (Indonesian, Malay, Tagalog, Cebuano, etc.). That's because all of them are genetically unrelated to European languages and often include their own unique hurdles.

Japanese has a simple phonology with most of its sounds being easy to pronounce (getting the correct pitch accent down is another story, however) but at the same time the language uses three completely foreign scripts including about 2000 kanji/Chinese characters for decent literacy, features an agglutinative grammar with a considerable number of suffixes which work differently to anything Indo-European, incorporates various levels of honorifics, and wields a very exhaustive alien (non-IE) vocabulary often with multiple synonyms to express a single concept. Formal Japanese can be difficult to understand due to the many instances of homophones which are composed of kango (i.e., Sino-Japanese roots).

Chinese has simple grammar with largely the same word order as English but at the same time the language is tonal (four tones for Mandarin) and requires knowledge of an even greater number of hanzi/Chinese characters for decent literacy. Again, like with Japanese, the vast majority of the vocabulary is completely alien to an Indo-European speaker.

Korean has a somewhat more complex phonology than Japanese with the aspirated and tense consonants and has an even more complex agglutinative grammar and more levels of honorifics. Nowadays Korean doesn't use many hanja/Chinese characters and instead gives priority to its own native hangul script. However, the lack of hanja makes it more difficult to distinguish between homophones in writing, a substantial drawback. Korean also lacks long vowels and is spoken at a fast pace. This makes it even tougher to understand homophones in the formal language.

The above are the "big three" of the Asian languages. It's simply a case of "pick your poison".

Many of the less popular Asian languages are considerably difficult too. Thai and Vietnamese are both tonal and have their own unique vocabulary. Khmer, while not tonal, is still very different from any Indo-European language. Moreover, most SEA languages use their own script.

Indo-Aryan languages (e.g., Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, Bengali, etc.) and Farsi aren't as difficult as any of the East Asian or SEA languages mentioned above. To begin with, they're all Indo-European and therefore share common grammatical structures and cognates with many European languages. Usually the most difficult part is the script whether it be Arabic (in the case of Urdu and Farsi) or Devanagari or some other variation of the Brahmi script used by the Indic languages. After learning the script everything else becomes easier.

Hindi/Urdu isn't particularly complex in terms of its grammar. It has two genders, an extremely simplified case system and moderately complex verbs.

Bengali grammar is actually quite simple. No gender, simple case system which works more like a set of agglutinative particles (-ke for definite accusative, -r/-er for possessive and -i/-e for locative), slightly different declension paradigms for animate vs. inanimate nouns, and verbs significantly less inflected than, say, Spanish or French.

Punjabi has a more complex grammar conserving more of the genders and cases of Sanskrit. Same with Marathi which retains three genders and more conservative noun morphology.

Farsi, a Persian language, is also grammatically simple. It has a simple phonology, no gender, simple prepositions and an objective case suffix (-ro) to indicate relationships between words, and simple verb morphology. The main obstacle when learning Farsi is the Arabic script, a non-native writing system which doesn't even suit the phonetics of the language.

Non-Indo-European Indian languages such as Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada are quite difficult though. Of these Dravidian languages, I'm under the impression that Tamil is the most complex while Malayalam is the most simple.

Which Asian languages do you guys think are the easiest and most difficult?

[Natural_Born_Cynic]

I think Chinese is the hardest language. You need to memorize 1000-3000 characters to be literate. Speaking it also involves all those tones.
Japanese is hard too. speaking it is not too difficult but it has there different writing systems.
Korean is not to bad compared to other two. You just have to know the Alphabet and Hangul and everything will make sense.

I don't know about other languages

[Yohan]

Which foreign language is easier or more difficult? I think first of all it depends if the person in question is using this foreign language daily at home, at the workplace, etc. or not. It's all about exercise, to use it all the time. It depends also on the native language of this person...

I find Korean to be more difficult to master compared to Japanese, Hangul is a confusing way how to write and about the vocabulary, I often mix up Japanese words with Korean words....No problem with nouns, but with verbs... Both languages are similar to some aspect to each other, but really not so similar....

Chinese, I can read a lot of Chinese due to the Chinese characters also used in Japan, but spoken Chinese no way.

Thai is terrible for me - spoken and written, but I have been so often in Thailand, I find my way around anyway...

As a native German speaker, I can also communicate in French and English.

While long time ago in Malaysia, I could speak enough Malay for daily communication, but now most is forgotten. It's easy and no problem about writing, just using the Roman alphabet (Rumi), I was never interested into how to write Malay in Arabic script (Jawi).

[Lucas88]

I think Chinese is the hardest language. You need to memorize 1000-3000 characters to be literate. Speaking it also involves all those tones.
Japanese is hard too. speaking it is not too difficult but it has there different writing systems.
Korean is not to bad compared to other two. You just have to know the Alphabet and Hangul and everything will make sense.

I don't know about other languages

For a native Korean, Japanese is definitely easier to learn than the other Asian languages. The grammatical structure is similar to Korean (e.g., SOV word order, agglutination, levels of politeness reflected in the verb forms, etc.), the phonology is mostly like that of Korean but more simple, and there is shared lexicon via Middle Chinese (e.g., hakkyo vs. gakkō 学校). When I was in Japan, Koreans were the foreigners who spoke Japanese the best. They tended to learn the language really quickly, had the best pronunciation and rarely made grammatical mistakes. The older generations of Koreans who grew up reading Hanja had the additional advantage of knowing hundreds of Kanji before even beginning to study Japanese. Younger Koreans however must learn the thousands of characters from scratch.

Korean is definitely on par with Japanese in terms of difficulty for a Western learner. I've even come across experienced language learners who say that Korean is marginally more difficult. Things like the tense consonants and the various levels of politeness (Korean has more than Japanese) are a major challenge. Korean and Japanese are both ranked in the same category of difficulty (the highest) by the Foreign Service Institute.

Yes, Chinese is hard for Koreans. What many Westerners don't understand is that most Asian languages aren't even genetically related to each other but rather belong to completely different language families, sharing only superficial similarities and areal influence. Japanese and Korean are both language isolates each with completely different native vocabulary. The Chinese languages form their own independent language family. Thai and Vietnamese are both unrelated to Chinese and also to each other. The Asian languages are quite fragmented in terms of their linguistic origins and so they tend to be difficult even for other Asians.

Western Europe, on the other hand, is dominated by two main language families: the Romance languages in the South and the Germanic languages in the North. There is a lot of transparency between the likes of French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese and likewise between German, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, etc. Moreover, English - the most widely spoken Germanic language - is like a hybrid between the two language families. Language learning is therefore easier for Western Europeans learning other Western European languages than it is for Asians learning other Asian languages.

When you go further East beyond Germany and Austria, the linguistic situation becomes a lot more like Asia though. You find many distantly related or unrelated languages that are all considerably difficult to learn even for Europeans such as Russian and Polish (Slavic) and Lithuanian and Latvian (Baltic) as well as non-Indo-European languages such as Hungarian, Estonian and Finnish. The same thing happens when you go further Southeast. You come across languages such as Albanian and Greek which are quite unlike Western European languages and therefore present many substantial difficulties.

Which foreign language is easier or more difficult? I think first of all it depends if the person in question is using this foreign language daily at home, at the workplace, etc. or not. It's all about exercise, to use it all the time. It depends also on the native language of this person...

I think that it also depends on the individual learner's unique strengths and weaknesses. Somebody with an ear for tones but who at the same time struggles with complex inflexion might find Chinese easier than Japanese, while another person who is tone deaf but has good pattern recognition and can memorize and integrate grammatical forms with ease might find Japanese much easier. Same with other Asian languages. Somebody who can't hear tones might find Vietnamese much harder than Japanese despite the Latin script and more straightforward grammar.

Also attitudes of native speakers towards foreign learners might factor into the difficulty of learning a particular language. Back in my very early 20s, when I was reaching an intermediate level of Japanese and had begun to dabble in Korean too, I found that Koreans in the UK were very enthusiastic about speaking with me in Korean even though my Korean absolutely sucked, while Japanese people in the UK were generally unwilling to allow me to practice Japanese with them (even though my Japanese was good enough to hold somewhat complex conversations) and would simply give off a vibe of "how dare this gaijin try to speak OUR language". It's one of the reasons why I don't like Japanese people even to this day and typically avoid them.

Teachable moment: - Becoming acquainted with a foreign culture doesn't always result in increased understanding and tolerance as many people assume; sometimes it can turn you against it and foster aversion and contempt. Lol!

The following are the nationalities which I personally tend to avoid:

1. British
2. American
3. Japanese

Conversely, the people groups that I tend to like a lot include Latin Americans, Mediterraneans, Indians and Southeast Asians.

[Natural_Born_Cynic]

I think Chinese is the hardest language. You need to memorize 1000-3000 characters to be literate. Speaking it also involves all those tones.
Japanese is hard too. speaking it is not too difficult but it has there different writing systems.
Korean is not to bad compared to other two. You just have to know the Alphabet and Hangul and everything will make sense.

I don't know about other languages

For a native Korean, Japanese is definitely easier to learn than the other Asian languages. The grammatical structure is similar to Korean (e.g., SOV word order, agglutination, levels of politeness reflected in the verb forms, etc.), the phonology is mostly like that of Korean but more simple, and there is shared lexicon via Middle Chinese (e.g., hakkyo vs. gakkō 学校). When I was in Japan, Koreans were the foreigners who spoke Japanese the best. They tended to learn the language really quickly, had the best pronunciation and rarely made grammatical mistakes. The older generations of Koreans who grew up reading Hanja had the additional advantage of knowing hundreds of Kanji before even beginning to study Japanese. Younger Koreans however must learn the thousands of characters from scratch.

Korean is definitely on par with Japanese in terms of difficulty for a Western learner. I've even come across experienced language learners who say that Korean is marginally more difficult. Things like the tense consonants and the various levels of politeness (Korean has more than Japanese) are a major challenge. Korean and Japanese are both ranked in the same category of difficulty (the highest) by the Foreign Service Institute.

Yes, Chinese is hard for Koreans. What many Westerners don't understand is that most Asian languages aren't even genetically related to each other but rather belong to completely different language families, sharing only superficial similarities and areal influence. Japanese and Korean are both language isolates each with completely different native vocabulary. The Chinese languages form their own independent language family. Thai and Vietnamese are both unrelated to Chinese and also to each other. The Asian languages are quite fragmented in terms of their linguistic origins and so they tend to be difficult even for other Asians.

Western Europe, on the other hand, is dominated by two main language families: the Romance languages in the South and the Germanic languages in the North. There is a lot of transparency between the likes of French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese and likewise between German, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, etc. Moreover, English - the most widely spoken Germanic language - is like a hybrid between the two language families. Language learning is therefore easier for Western Europeans learning other Western European languages than it is for Asians learning other Asian languages.

When you go further East beyond Germany and Austria, the linguistic situation becomes a lot more like Asia though. You find many distantly related or unrelated languages that are all considerably difficult to learn even for Europeans such as Russian and Polish (Slavic) and Lithuanian and Latvian (Baltic) as well as non-Indo-European languages such as Hungarian, Estonian and Finnish. The same thing happens when you go further Southeast. You come across languages such as Albanian and Greek which are quite unlike Western European languages and therefore present many substantial difficulties.

Which foreign language is easier or more difficult? I think first of all it depends if the person in question is using this foreign language daily at home, at the workplace, etc. or not. It's all about exercise, to use it all the time. It depends also on the native language of this person...

I think that it also depends on the individual learner's unique strengths and weaknesses. Somebody with an ear for tones but who at the same time struggles with complex inflexion might find Chinese easier than Japanese, while another person who is tone deaf but has good pattern recognition and can memorize and integrate grammatical forms with ease might find Japanese much easier. Same with other Asian languages. Somebody who can't hear tones might find Vietnamese much harder than Japanese despite the Latin script and more straightforward grammar.

Also attitudes of native speakers towards foreign learns might factor into the difficulty of learning a particular language. Back in my very early 20s, when I was reaching an intermediate level of Japanese and had begun to dabble in Korean too, I found that Koreans in the UK were very enthusiastic about speaking with me in Korean even though my Korean absolutely sucked, while Japanese people in the UK were generally unwilling to allow me to practice Japanese with them (even though my Japanese was good enough to hold somewhat complex conversations) and would simply give off a vibe of "how dare this gaijin try to speak OUR language". It's one of the reasons why I don't like Japanese people even to this day and typically avoid them.

Teachable moment: - Becoming acquainted with a foreign culture doesn't always result in increased understanding and tolerance as many people assume; sometimes it can turn you against it and foster aversion and contempt. Lol!

The following are the nationalities which I personally tend to avoid:

1. British
2. American
3. Japanese

Conversely, the people groups that I tend to like a lot include Latin Americans, Mediterraneans, Indians and Southeast Asians.

I like your deep insight on the Asian languages. Yes, I agree that Koreans can easily learn Japanese instead of Chinese. I don't know why. Many Koreans say that speaking Japanese is easy, but the writing system is bit harder but not as hard as Chinese writing system which they have to learn huge number of characters. At least the Japanese Higarana and Katakana is a alphabet bases system although bit more complicated than the Korean one. Korean just has one alphabet called Hangul. I am not really good at writing Chinese characters. They are really complicated and easy to forget.
Sometimes I wonder how in the world the Chinese can read their own bloody language... looks undecipherable to me.

I don't know about Vietnamese or Thai, I never have any close encounters with Vietnamese or Thai people in my life.

Koreans abroad tend to be enthusiastic and excited when some British guy, American guy or white guy speaks their language. However, even for a Korean like me, I rarely encountered any Japanese person in the East Coast. There are no Tokyo towns available, and all the Japanese are like "ghosts" to Koreans and Chinese people. They are very invisible and I don't know where they hang out.

I agree with your assessment that the more you learn the foreign language, the less people tolerate you.
Perhaps because you brought down the "Novelty foreigner barrier" yourself that the native people doesn't feel that you are their guest anymore but part of them?

It's quite different how people treat guests vs their equal. I mean for example, the Koreans you encountered in the UK thinks that you are a honorary guest. However, once you live amongst them, marry one of their females, and learn how to speak their language then the novelty starts to wear off and you will be expected to follow Korean customs and fulfill your obligation within the culture.

[Lucas88]

I like your deep insight on the Asian languages. Yes, I agree that Koreans can easily learn Japanese instead of Chinese. I don't know why. Many Koreans say that speaking Japanese is easy, but the writing system is bit harder but not as hard as Chinese writing system which they have to learn huge number of characters. At least the Japanese Higarana and Katakana is a alphabet bases system although bit more complicated than the Korean one. Korean just has one alphabet called Hangul. I am not really good at writing Chinese characters. They are really complicated and easy to forget.
Sometimes I wonder how in the world the Chinese can read their own bloody language... looks undecipherable to me.

The key to learning the Chinese characters is practice through handwriting and studying the radicals. Each Kanji/Hanja is made up of several basic components which each have their own meaning. Once you understand what each radical means, it becomes much easier to memorize and remember new characters. As you progress in your study of Kanji/Hanja, many advanced characters are merely variations of more basic ones with the addition of one or more extra radicals. Often, for some reason, the onyomi pronunciations of these similarly composed characters are the same or similar. Learning Kanji/Hanja isn't that difficult after a certain point. The learner simply builds upon what he already knows.

Today, in Japan at least, less people know how to handwrite Kanji efficiently and often forget how to write some Kanji completely. That's because they've become accustomed to word-processing programs which use Latin script as the input format and then convert the Hiragana that appears on the screen into Kanji. In the event of homophones, You just type with the keyboard and then select the correct Kanji combinations from a list. Today many young Japanese people can't handwrite their own language for shit! However, the good news for the foreign learner is that you don't strictly need to know how to write Kanji. As long as you can identify them and remember their pronunciation and know how to use a keyboard and a conversion program you can survive in Japan and on the Japanese-language internet.

In Japan people who can't handwrite Japanese due to overreliance on modern technology are colloquially called waapuro baka ワープロ馬鹿 (i.e., word-processing idiots).

I don't know about Vietnamese or Thai, I never have any close encounters with Vietnamese or Thai people in my life.

I've known various Thai girls in the UK and Vietnamese girls in Japan. They're actually really friendly, vivacious and fun-loving, a far cry from the anal and uptight people who you typically meet in East Asian countries like Korea and Japan.

Koreans abroad tend to be enthusiastic and excited when some British guy, American guy or white guy speaks their language. However, even for a Korean like me, I rarely encountered any Japanese person in the East Coast. There are no Tokyo towns available, and all the Japanese are like "ghosts" to Koreans and Chinese people. They are very invisible and I don't know where they hang out.

I agree with your assessment that the more you learn the foreign language, the less people tolerate you.
Perhaps because you brought down the "Novelty foreigner barrier" yourself that the native people doesn't feel that you are their guest anymore but part of them?

It's quite different how people treat guests vs their equal. I mean for example, the Koreans you encountered in the UK thinks that you are a honorary guest. However, once you live amongst them, marry one of their females, and learn how to speak their language then the novelty starts to wear off and you will be expected to follow Korean customs and fulfill your obligation within the culture.

Yes, I've noticed that Koreans tend to be incredibly patriotic and love it when foreigners speak their language and show admiration for Korea.

Japanese people on the other hand seem to hold onto this notion that their own language and culture are somehow completely unique and impenetrable, only for the Japanese themselves, and no non-Japanese person could ever possibly understand it. However, seeing a blond-haired and big-nosed foreigner speaking Japanese fluently obviously puts a dent in that preconceived notion of theirs and makes them feel uncomfortable. Some of them become visibly angry. Lol!

I'm talking about Japanese people who I've met in the UK and to a lesser degree in Spain, by the way. In Japan, the situation is completely different. Most Japanese people in Japan are relieved when they learn that the gaijin who they are about to interact with understands Japanese since most Japanese people don't speak English well at all.

[Natural_Born_Cynic]

The key to learning the Chinese characters is practice through handwriting and studying the radicals. Each Kanji/Hanja is made up of several basic components which each have their own meaning. Once you understand what each radical means, it becomes much easier to memorize and remember new characters. As you progress in your study of Kanji/Hanja, many advanced characters are merely variations of more basic ones with the addition of one or more extra radicals. Often, for some reason, the onyomi pronunciations of these similarly composed characters are the same or similar. Learning Kanji/Hanja isn't that difficult after a certain point. The learner simply builds upon what he already knows.

Today, in Japan at least, less people know how to handwrite Kanji efficiently and often forget how to write some Kanji completely. That's because they've become accustomed to word-processing programs which use Latin script as the input format and then convert the Hiragana that appears on the screen into Kanji. In the event of homophones, You just type with the keyboard and then select the correct Kanji combinations from a list. Today many young Japanese people can't handwrite their own language for shit! However, the good news for the foreign learner is that you don't strictly need to know how to write Kanji. As long as you can identify them and remember their pronunciation and know how to use a keyboard and a conversion program you can survive in Japan and on the Japanese-language internet.

In Japan people who can't handwrite Japanese due to overreliance on modern technology are colloquially called waapuro baka ワープロ馬鹿 (i.e., word-processing idiots).

Well that's one way to decipher Chinese characters. I am glad you found a shortcut for it. I was neve a big fan of Chinese Characters. My dad could read some of them, but I can't. Kanji or Hanja was taught in Schools in Korea during the 70's-90's. I learned some in Korean school in America but quickly forget about them.

I am very surprised that lot of Japanese people can't even handwrite their own language. Koreans can easily handwrite their language because Koreans have their own Hangul keyword settings instead of what the Japanese are using which is english letters converted to higarana or katanaka or Kanji. I heard google or microsoft or some other company tried to make a physical keyboard set but ends of failing..

This is supposed to be Japanese Kanji Keyboard...

I've known various Thai girls in the UK and Vietnamese girls in Japan. They're actually really friendly, vivacious and fun-loving, a far cry from the anal and uptight people who you typically meet in East Asian countries like Korea and Japan.

Sheeeittt.. you got that right. I am East Asian but even I think East Asians are bunch of boring and anal retentive assholes. They don't have good social skills and loves to bring each other down all the time. It's quite suffocating. I heard South East Asians are more chill and have that Latin spirit.
The Filipinos I met during business were very nice, and fun loving.

Yes, I've noticed that Koreans tend to be incredibly patriotic and love it when foreigners speak their language and show admiration for Korea.

Japanese people on the other hand seem to hold onto this notion that their own language and culture are somehow completely unique and impenetrable, only for the Japanese themselves, and no non-Japanese person could ever possibly understand it. However, seeing a blond-haired and big-nosed foreigner speaking Japanese fluently obviously puts a dent in that preconceived notion of theirs and makes them feel uncomfortable. Some of them become visibly angry. Lol!

I'm talking about Japanese people who I've met in the UK and to a lesser degree in Spain, by the way. In Japan, the situation is completely different. Most Japanese people in Japan are relieved when they learn that the gaijin who they are about to interact with understands Japanese since most Japanese people don't speak English well at all.

Koreans have a "hard on" or get excited when some white bloke start to speak their language whether they are at abroad or in Korea.
However if your black, Filipino, Muslim or from a third world country who speaks Korean, Koreans will NOT be as excited because most Koreans are pretty racist against the darker skins and Filipinos. Keep that in mind. that's how most Koreans are.

Koreans will gladly accept mass "white people immigration" with open arms and gets "giddy" showing their great Korean culture to white people.
However, Koreans will quickly discriminate and shun non whites telling them to get the f*ck out of their country or treat non whites as slaves or untermenschen. That's the difference between White people's multiculturalism and Korean's idea of multiculturalism. Korean's idea of multicuturalism is mix of people from supposedly advanced european and western countries. White nation's idea of multicuturalism is mix of non whites and whites.

[Lucas88]

I am very surprised that lot of Japanese people can't even handwrite their own language. Koreans can easily handwrite their language because Koreans have their own Hangul keyword settings instead of what the Japanese are using which is english letters converted to higarana or katanaka or Kanji. I heard google or microsoft or some other company tried to make a physical keyboard set but ends of failing..

This is supposed to be Japanese Kanji Keyboard...

Wow! I've never seen one of those before!!!

It looks extremely cumbersome to use. No wonder it failed!

As for Japanese young people being unable to handwrite their own language, they can typically write Hiragana and Katakana very well but then always find themselves looking up how to write certain Kanji with those electronic dictionaries that they carry around with them.

Sheeeittt.. you got that right. I am East Asian but even I think East Asians are bunch of boring and anal retentive assholes. They don't have good social skills and loves to bring each other down all the time. It's quite suffocating. I heard South East Asians are more chill and have that Latin spirit.
The Filipinos I met during business were very nice, and fun loving.

My neighbor is a Thai woman and she's super funny, wild and free-spirited. She's also extremely frank and often comes out with non-PC stuff in public and doesn't give a fcuk. Lol! She's also trained in Muay Thai and once showed me and my brother a spinning back kick in the supermarket and almost kicked all of the wine over. LMAO! Thai people like my neighbor are a whole lot of fun to be around.

I also met some Filipinas at hostess bars in Japan and made friends with some Vietnamese girls. Again all very fun, wild and free-spirited. A world apart from the uptight, anal retentive and socially retarded Japs. SEA people definitely have more of a Latin vibe.

In Japan, I definitely perceived a strong difference between Japs and Korean people. The Koreans were more open and easier to talk to but at the same time much more assertive and overbearing and often prone to anger. During my stay in Japan, I actually preferred Korean immigrants to the Japanese. They were far more direct which made for better conversation and I could handle the assertiveness being a Westerner myself. Of course, I'm not going to naïvely claim that all Koreans are awesome just because I got along with them in Japan. I know what they're really like and how they treat each other. They simply know when to put on their best behavior in front of the Western foreigner. Lol!

Koreans have a "hard on" or get excited when some white bloke start to speak their language whether they are at abroad or in Korea.
However if your black, Filipino, Muslim or from a third world country who speaks Korean, Koreans will NOT be as excited because most Koreans are pretty racist against the darker skins and Filipinos. Keep that in mind. that's how most Koreans are.

Koreans will gladly accept mass "white people immigration" with open arms and gets "giddy" showing their great Korean culture to white people.
However, Koreans will quickly discriminate and shun non whites telling them to get the f*ck out of their country or treat non whites as slaves or untermenschen. That's the difference between White people's multiculturalism and Korean's idea of multiculturalism. Korean's idea of multicuturalism is mix of people from supposedly advanced european and western countries. White nation's idea of multicuturalism is mix of non whites and whites.

I'm sure that if I, as a Westerner, memorized the lyrics of this song (https://video.fc2.com/en/content/20100619mYYDm1T4) and sung it on Korean national TV, the Emperor of Korea would jizz in his pants, grant me an audience with His Highness in the Korean Royal Palace, and then give me my own harem of Korean K-poop idols for my great service to the Korean fatherland.

However, I'd have to decline because most Korean chicks look like 12yo girls and don't have any ass!

Maybe His Highness could get me a harem of Colombian and Venezuelan girls instead. And with extra-large ASSets.

[Natural_Born_Cynic]

Wow! I've never seen one of those before!!!

It looks extremely cumbersome to use. No wonder it failed!

As for Japanese young people being unable to handwrite their own language, they can typically write Hiragana and Katakana very well but then always find themselves looking up how to write certain Kanji with those electronic dictionaries that they carry around with them.

I am surprised they still use electronic dictionaries.. It was a fad in Korea in the early 2000's but they stopped using it once the first smart phones came out.

My neighbor is a Thai woman and she's super funny, wild and free-spirited. She's also extremely frank and often comes out with non-PC stuff in public and doesn't give a fcuk. Lol! She's also trained in Muay Thai and once showed me and my brother a spinning back kick in the supermarket and almost kicked all of the wine over. LMAO! Thai people like my neighbor are a whole lot of fun to be around.

I also met some Filipinas at hostess bars in Japan and made friends with some Vietnamese girls. Again all very fun, wild and free-spirited. A world apart from the uptight, anal retentive and socially retarded Japs. SEA people definitely have more of a Latin vibe.

In Japan, I definitely perceived a strong difference between Japs and Korean people. The Koreans were more open and easier to talk to but at the same time much more assertive and overbearing and often prone to anger. During my stay in Japan, I actually preferred Korean immigrants to the Japanese. They were far more direct which made for better conversation and I could handle the assertiveness being a Westerner myself. Of course, I'm not going to naïvely claim that all Koreans are awesome just because I got along with them in Japan. I know what they're really like and how they treat each other. They simply know when to put on their best behavior in front of the Western foreigner. Lol!

Sounds like fun, those Thai and Filipina girls. I am not really familiar with Thai, but I heard they like Japan very much and into their own brand of K pop.

Unfortunately I never encountered any Korean Japanese people in Japan. My encounters were based on people in South Korea and Koreans in K-towns in America. There is also a dichotomy between Koreans and Korean Americans too. The Fresh off the boat Koreans dress like a metro sexual
boyband style while Korean Americans dress like typical Americans. The Koreans are more cunning, restless, image conscious, and like to hang out in packs while the Korean Americans are more laid back, casual, and are more independent. I tend to like Americanized Koreans better because they are not as scheming and backstabbing than their native cousins.

I'm sure that if I, as a Westerner, memorized the lyrics of this song (https://video.fc2.com/en/content/20100619mYYDm1T4) and sung it on Korean national TV, the Emperor of Korea would jizz in his pants, grant me an audience with His Highness in the Korean Royal Palace, and then give me my own harem of Korean K-poop idols for my great service to the Korean fatherland.

However, I'd have to decline because most Korean chicks look like 12yo girls and don't have any ass!

Maybe His Highness could get me a harem of Colombian and Venezuelan girls instead. And with extra-large ASSets.

Lol. Nice Anti Japanese rap song. Personally I don't really hate Japan and there is no Emperor of Korea in Korea. There is a palace but that's for tourist show piece only. I agree, most Korean women looks like emaciated 16 year old girls with little ass and curves. I would take many of your "Gorda bonitas" posted in this forum.

[Lucas88]

I am surprised they still use electronic dictionaries.. It was a fad in Korea in the early 2000's but they stopped using it once the first smart phones came out.

Maybe they don't use them anymore in Japan either.

Like I said in another thread, I've not been in Japan since the early 2010s. Some of the information that I give might be outdated by a decade.

We're now in the age of advanced AI and ChatGPT so I imagine that even fewer Japanese young people write anything themselves anymore.

Lol. Nice Anti Japanese rap song. Personally I don't really hate Japan and there is no Emperor of Korea in Korea.

Oh shit, wrong Korea! I got the two countries mixed up!

I agree, most Korean women looks like emaciated 16 year old girls with little ass and curves. I would take many of your "Gorda bonitas" posted in this forum.

Yeah, I love my gordibuenas too!

[Natural_Born_Cynic]

mmmm.....

[WilliamSmith]

@Lucas88
Holy !@#$, that's one hell of a nice ass. LOL.

Huh, what? Difficulty of the various Asian languages? Oh yeah... well personally I think this based on studies in Japanese, Cantonese, Mandarin, and Vietnamese:

All of them that use Chinese characters are naturally harder because you have to learn between 2-5,000 characters, but once you know them, the job's done there.

Personally I think Japanese is by far the easiest because it's non-tonal and has great potential to be a strong masculine, orderly language. Many don't think so because they're intimidated by the major grammar differences (but like I said, it's pretty orderly, since once you learn how they do things, it's not that big a deal), and the fact they use both hiragana and katakana (but those are really just 2 more little phonetic alphabets to learn, and it's not a big deal even though it takes some time).

Chinese (Cantonese and Mandarin) has pretty easy grammar. I love Cantonese the most, it's just a classic case of where you need to do your gruntwork bulling through memorization of thousands of characters in order to be literate.

Vietnamese is very different, but it's grammar is also pretty simple IMO. They use romanized script with diacritics now, but almost all words tie to traditional Chinese characters.
Vietnamese and Cantonese are so closely related in a lot of ways they're like similar looking twin siblings and most vocab is very close between Vietnamese and Cantonese.
(They both originate from the same areas that had more in common with each other in ancient times before they were colonized by the Han Chinese, but the Han didn't speak the Mongoloid "Mandarin" at that time either, and authentic "Middle Chinese" was actually more similar to Cantonese than Mandarin is.)

Shit, I'm getting a little too cerebral here... I think I should stop there and get back on the subject of chicks with big asses before I tired myself out, since the rainforest birds mesmerized me out of my restless sleep just before dawn, and I've been drinking silver rum ever since then (since that's what I seem to do whenever my gf isn't here)...

[Lucas88]

Vietnamese is very different, but it's grammar is also pretty simple IMO. They use romanized script with diacritics now, but almost all words tie to traditional Chinese characters.
Vietnamese and Cantonese are so closely related in a lot of ways they're like similar looking twin siblings and most vocab is very close between Vietnamese and Cantonese.
(They both originate from the same areas that had more in common with each other in ancient times before they were colonized by the Han Chinese, but the Han didn't speak the Mongoloid "Mandarin" at that time either, and authentic "Middle Chinese" was actually more similar to Cantonese than Mandarin is.)

I've just done some reading on the origins of Vietnamese. Vietnamese is classified as an Austroasiatic language together with the neighboring Khmer of Cambodia but during certain periods of its history Vietnam received substantial influence from Middle Chinese and now it is estimated that 50-70% of modern Vietnamese vocabulary derives from Chinese. That means that Vietnamese is lexically an Austroasiatic-Chinese hybrid, unrelated to Chinese genetically but having received a significant degree of input from the latter.

Just out of curiosity, how much have the pronunciations of Sino-Vietnamese words diverged from their original Chinese source? Are they still largely recognizable to, say, a Cantonese speaker or do many of them now look completely unrecognizable?

Further to my conversation with @Natural_Born_Cynic about Asian languages having extremely diverse origins (which obviously makes learning other Asian languages quite difficult even for Asians themselves), mainland Southeast Asia is dominated by a handful of distinct language families which have little or no genetic relationship but with varying degrees of common influence from outside sources (e.g., Chinese, Sanskrit/Pali, etc.).

Vietnamese and Khmer belong to the Austroasiatic language family. The former, as we've already established, is significantly influenced by Middle Chinese (over half of its vocabulary according to some sources). However, despite a proposed genetic relationship, Vietnamese and Khmer seem quite distant from each other. Knowing one probably wouldn't help much with learning the other.

Thai belongs to the Tai-Kadai language family. Like Vietnamese, Thai also receives some of its vocabulary from Middle Chinese; however, due to the strong influence of the Dharmic religions in Thailand, a larger portion of Thai vocabulary originates from Sanskrit, Pali and some of the Indian Prakrits. There are even a few Tamil (Dravidian) words in Thai.

Burmese is a Sino-Tibetan language family. Like Thai, Burmese receives much influence from Sanskrit and Pali.

As you can see, most of the languages mentioned above originate from completely different language families and only share superficial commonalities imported from external sources. It would therefore be quite difficult for a Thai to learn Vietnamese or Burmese, for example.

@WilliamSmith

I also have a high estimation of Vietnam as a country as well as its people (in my experience, Vietnamese girls are attractive and have a lot of class), but I doubt I'll ever study Vietnamese though. After learning Japanese, I think I'm done with Asian languages. To be honest, I don't think that I can be assed with all of those countless homophones that sound the same but have the opposite meaning (lol!), tones, and all of that shit. Asian languages are just too much of a pain in the ass for me at this point.

However, I'm very much interested in the Indo-Aryan languages right now. For a long time I've had a certain fascination for Sanskrit which I believe is an absolutely perfect language with unbelievable depth of expression as well as special spiritual-vibrational qualities. I also think that Bengali, which derives from Sanskrit and is spoken by over 265 million people in West Bengal and Bangladesh, is a very beautiful and charming language. I've been reading a lot about it recently. Hindi is absolute trash though - a repugnant Turkified, Arabized and "Britishized" mongrel language. I feel the same way about Hindi as you feel about the ugly Mongolized Mandarin.

[Lucas88]

Personally I think Japanese is by far the easiest because it's non-tonal and has great potential to be a strong masculine, orderly language. Many don't think so because they're intimidated by the major grammar differences (but like I said, it's pretty orderly, since once you learn how they do things, it's not that big a deal), and the fact they use both hiragana and katakana (but those are really just 2 more little phonetic alphabets to learn, and it's not a big deal even though it takes some time).

Don't be fooled into believing that Japanese is far easier due to its comparatively easier phonology. The language has a lot of hidden difficulties which become more apparent at the intermediate and advanced stages of learning.

First of all, Japanese features various particles or combinations thereof which are appended to the end of sentences in order to express nuances of emotion (e.g., yo, ne, yo ne, etc.) as well as a constantly highlighted distinction between the sentence's basic ending and the no desu construction and its variations (n desu, no da, n da, etc.) which serves to indicate that the speaker is giving an explanation for some already imparted information, not to mention the various levels of politeness expressed in the sentence-final verb, most notably the -masu form. In Japanese you rarely ever simply declare what you desire to express like you do in European and most other languages. Japanese people frequently pepper their speech with the aforementioned peculiarities. It is necessary to master all of these in order to sound like a natural speaker and not just like a foreigner speaking broken Japanese. All of the above makes speaking Japanese beyond the intermediate level difficult in my opinion.

Second, Japanese vocabulary is exhaustive and absolutely terribly organized. Many concepts can be expressed by both a native word and at least one equivalent Sino-Japanese loanword and the synonyms are seemingly endless. To make matters worse, many of these Sino-Japanese synonyms for native words have various homophones due to the language's relatively small phonological inventory and are therefore difficult to distinguish in spoken form. Moreover, conceptually related terms (e.g., teach, teaching, teacher, etc.) are often not developed through the addition of regular and predictable suffixes but are rather expressed through completely different words. The verb is typically a native word while related nouns are more often than not sino-Japanese compounds. For example, "to teach" is oshieru 教える while "teacher" is kyoushi 教師 and "teaching" (as in the teaching profession) is kyoushoku 教職. The verbs and their related nouns look completely different and are indeed of completely different lexical origins and this obviously makes learning and using the language's vocabulary considerably more taxing.

Chinese on the other hand renders sentences in a more direct and straightforward manner and with much less embellishment in the form of particles, honorific verb endings, etc. and derives the vast majority of its vocabulary from its own native source. Because of this you usually don't have radically different readings to express related terms.

I myself reached a high level of fluency in Japanese in the early 2010s (even passed JLPT level 1 ) but now I absolutely can't stand the language and think that it's extremely poorly designed and unwieldy. Many learners at the beginner's stage believe that Japanese is extremely logical due to it lacking many of the grammatical complexities of European languages such as gender, noun cases and personal conjugations as well as it having a mostly regular grammar (the language has only two irregular verbs), but the truth is that many of the difficult and poorly designed aspects of the language don't become apparent until the intermediate stage.

Another thing that makes Japanese (and Korean) difficult is the fact that relative clauses are always placed before the nouns that they modify. For example, "the man who went to the shop" is rendered shop to went man (お店へ行った男). This might be easy for simple sentences but, when it comes to long and complex sentences with relative clauses embedded within other relative clauses, it requires a lot of effort to organize one's thoughts that way and remember all of the complements that modify the main noun. For me at least, the Indo-European way of doing things (i.e., using a relative determiner after the noun followed by the additional information) is much more logical and wieldy.

@Natural_Born_Cynic, you speak Korean. Don't you think that having to put relative clauses before the noun (rather than after the noun like in English and other European languages) is a pain in the ass? Don't you think that it is cumbersome and makes the language less flexible in its ability to introduce new information on the fly? Or does it just feel normal to a Korean speaker? I'm just curious about what you think since you're a bilingual Korean-English speaker. Also, what are your general thoughts on Korean as a Korean American misfit?

[Natural_Born_Cynic]

you speak Korean. Don't you think that having to put relative clauses before the noun (rather than after the noun like in English and other European languages) is a pain in the ass? Don't you think that it is cumbersome and makes the language less flexible in its ability to introduce new information on the fly? Or does it just feel normal to a Korean speaker? I'm just curious about what you think since you're a bilingual Korean-English speaker. Also, what are your general thoughts on Korean as a Korean American misfit?

Nope, very little difficulty at all. Because I speak, read, write Korean at home and speak both Korean and English at my workplace.
Takes very little effort to switch between both languages.
What about you? I know you prefer Spanish rather than English, but those Spaniards still consider you "Anglo" because of your UK nationality.

My thoughts on Koreans as a Korean American misfit? The same as yours towards your own countrymen, my friend.
Neutral to bad. I never had any deep and lasting connection with Koreans because most of them are conformist, cold, soulless, conniving, backstabbing, selfish, narrow minded, rigid little c*nts. I never hang out with them as they can't be trusted. Just like you, I like Latinos more.

White people: I find American white people to be mixed bag. Some of them are all right, and some on them are lying assholes.
European white people are more open minded than your American ones at least on the surface.. European whites, I like most of them although some can be assholes especially the German white male with their rigid, "know-it-all", "holier than you" attitude. I only met few British people, not the Chavs, but only the smart British people holding jobs in the U.S. I find British people to be pleasant. I like their accent though especially when they say bottle of water. They say "Bo-o-o-wah-ta". I know you don't like your own countrymen, and I understand. I don't like my countrymen either.
I guess that makes you a British misfit.