<p>I find Chinese much less difficult than Japanese. Chinese is a very tone-based language and requires an auditory and linguistic finesse that is hard to master. Japanese is very even, has only two different tones (more like accents really, though they don’t affect timing as English syllabic accents do). However, the word modifications and honorific language elements in Japanese make it very difficult for English speakers. For example, when someone says “bye” to you in English, it is almost instinctual to respond with the same. However, in Japanese, if a teacher says “bye” you say the equivalent of “I shall take me leave.” I find it weird. Still, it’s a lot more fun.</p>
<p>I still have to say that Chinese is more difficult due to the different tones as well as other elements of the language such as idioms. Idioms are used so often and, in order to really “get” them, you have to know the origins and such.</p>
<p>So OP. . .in your quest to be bilingual, have you made your decision of major importance?</p>
<p>Hello, OP here,</p>
<p>No I have not made my decision. I am leaning towards Japanese as it still is business-practical and not as hard as Chinese, but Chinese sounds great as well. I have a month to decide so I will be researching throughly.</p>
<p>Also, does anyone know of any governments grants or something for studying an in-demand language like Chinese or Arabic or something? Having financial assistance would make things much easier in deciding which language to study…</p>
<p>Thanks for the help!</p>
<p>^Why do you think Japanese is easier?</p>
<p>[Language</a> Difficulty Ranking | Effective Language Learning](<a href=“http://www.effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/language-difficulty]Language”>Language Difficulty Ranking - Effective Language Learning)</p>
<p>That’s the ranking of the difficulty of languages for native English speakers, by the Foreign Service Institute. They actually claim Japanese is the hardest to learn of all the major languages. Korean, Japanese, and Chinese are all in the hardest category, but Japanese has the distinction of being even harder than the others in that category (the asterisk next to it on that page).</p>
<p>Japanese and Chinese are both fun languages.</p>
<p>Personally, though, I don’t think it’s a huge boost in terms of jobs. As a white guy who speaks Japanese and Chinese, I’ve found that employers just find it interesting but at the end of the day, there are plenty of fluent, bilingual, native Japanese/Chinese speakers who can do the same thing.</p>
<p>They’re both still amazingly fun to learn, though, and definitely more interesting than other languages which, imo, are pretty much small tweaks of sentence structure you’re already used to.</p>
<p>Chinese word order is quite similar to English while Japanese and Korean are quite distinct.</p>
<p>Tough part about Chinese is learning the tonal system and the vocabulary is vast. Even a native Chinese do struggle with advance Vocabulary but do not let it discourage you, this does not equate to being impossible to learn.</p>
<p>If you know Chinese, you will be able to read 30% of Japanese while written Korean have no similarity to Chinese and Japanese. </p>
<p>Japanese and korean have similar Grammatical structure. So this means that learning Japanese can help you to acquire mastery in other asian language. Anyway, overall I suggest you learn Mandarin first.</p>
<p>All 3 are going to be really hard, at the college level the teachers expect you to have some background in a language before even taking 101. Sure its possible to keep up with everyone else, but your in for some very stressful exams .</p>