Chinese vs Japanese: which is easier, and which should you learn? (video)
We matched all 2,136 jōyō kanji to Chinese: 89% are written the same. Tones vs pitch accent, grammar, HSK vs JLPT, and which to learn for your goal.
Chapters
- 0:00Start
- 0:22The short answer
- 0:42Which is harder?
- 1:20Nine in ten kanji are Chinese
- 2:34A kanji reader starts ahead
- 2:59One kanji, many readings
- 3:35Tones vs pitch accent
- 4:20Grammar is closer to English
- 4:54The exams
- 5:35Who speaks each
- 5:56Which should you learn?
- 6:28What to do next
Transcript
Start
Japan's list of everyday kanji has 2,136 characters. We matched every one of them to Chinese. 1,892 are written exactly the same. That's 89%. From SayMei Guides, by Mei Lin: Chinese versus Japanese. Which is easier, and which should you learn?
The short answer
The short answer: neither is easier overall. Chinese is harder to hear and say at first, because every syllable carries a tone. Japanese gets harder as you go on, with verb endings, three scripts and several readings per character. So choose by goal: the people, places and media you care about.
Which is harder?
So which is harder? The US State Department's language school puts both in its slowest group and budgets 88 weeks of full-time study for either. The hard parts just sit in different places. Chinese has tones and 3,500 common characters. Japanese has verb endings, three scripts, and about two readings per character. Here's the surprise. After 24 weeks of training, that school's Mandarin students scored 1.5 for speaking. Its Japanese students scored 1.0. So tones didn't make Mandarin the slower language to speak.
Nine in ten kanji are Chinese
Now, that count. We checked all 2,136 joyo kanji against China's Simplified list and Taiwan's Traditional one. 1,280 are the same in both. 498 match Traditional only, and 114 Simplified only. 232 are a Japanese form of a Chinese character. Just 12 have no everyday Chinese counterpart. Each group has a story. Water, mountain and person, 水, 山, 人, look the same everywhere. Language and car kept their older forms in Japan. Country and study, 国 and 学, were simplified the same way as on the mainland. Read Traditional? Then Japanese looks familiar: Taiwan's set matches 83% of the list, the Simplified set 65%. Same form, same meaning? Mostly. About one shared character in twenty has drifted. Whole words make the worst false friends. The Japanese word for letter means toilet paper in Chinese. High school becomes university. And context rarely rescues you in conversation, because the shared words sound nothing alike.
A kanji reader starts ahead
Flip it around. If you already read Japanese, Chinese reading comes fast. Of the characters up to HSK 4, a kanji reader knows 82.5% in some form, and 54.4% in exactly the same form. The gaps at HSK 1? Grammar words like 你, 吗 and 很, which Japanese writes in kana. The catch: every sound is new.
One kanji, many readings
Japanese adds another job: choosing the reading. The joyo list sets about two official readings per kanji. In Chinese, 87% of HSK characters have a single reading. The extreme case is life, or birth: 生. Chinese reads it one way. Japan's list gives it twelve readings. Then come the kana, two sets of 46 basic signs, for grammar endings and loanwords. A Japanese sentence mixes all three scripts. So Chinese asks for more characters, and Japanese asks you to know more about each one.
Tones vs pitch accent
Sounds are where Mandarin is the harder start. Every syllable has one of four tones, and the tone changes the word: 妈 is mum, 马 is horse, and 骂 is scold. Japanese has pitch too, but it does less work. In Tokyo, chopsticks and bridge are both hashi: one falls, the other rises. Get Japanese pitch wrong and you sound foreign. Get a Mandarin tone wrong and you may say a different word. Mandarin uses about 400 syllables, or about 1,300 with tones. Japanese builds words from about a hundred short sound units. One bonus: in one study, Japanese listeners heard Mandarin's falling fourth tone better than English listeners did.
Grammar is closer to English
Grammar flips the picture. Mandarin's word order mostly follows English. I'm going to the library tomorrow: 我明天去图书馆. Word by word, I, tomorrow, go, library. Japanese puts the verb last: tomorrow, library to, go. Japanese verbs also change form for tense, negation and politeness. Chinese adds a separate word, or says nothing: 吃, 不吃, 吃了. And Japanese has keigo, the polite and humble forms you'll need at work.
The exams
What about exams? China's HSK is moving to nine levels. Japan's JLPT has five, from N5 up to N1. At the top, they ask for similar amounts. The JLPT's last official count put its top level at about 2,000 kanji. HSK 6 expects 1,940 characters. Just don't read that as a conversion table: no official table links the two. Japan's exam is the bigger one. About 1.9 million people applied for the JLPT in 2025, a record. China's testing body reports more than 810,000 HSK takers a year.
Who speaks each
Who speaks each? Mandarin has about 990 million native speakers, by Ethnologue's widely quoted estimate. Japanese is spoken almost entirely in Japan, home to just under 123 million people. But it travels well: the Japan Foundation counted 4 million learners abroad, a record.
Which should you learn?
So which should you learn? The one tied to something you'll actually do. Choose Japanese if you're drawn to Japan: anime, manga, games, travel, or a Japanese company. Or if you want to speak early, or already read Chinese. Choose Chinese if your people speak it, in China, Taiwan or Singapore. Choose it for reach, for simpler grammar, or if you already read Japanese. Nothing ties you to either? Listen to each for ten minutes a day for a week, and notice which one you look forward to.
What to do next
What to do next? Name your goal first. Try both sounds for a week. Pick one, and get it to an intermediate level before starting the other. And start speaking early. SayMei teaches Mandarin only. For Japanese, the guide points to free courses like Irodori and NHK's Easy Japanese. If Mandarin is your pick, you can practise speaking with Mei Lin, SayMei's teacher, in a short spoken lesson at your level. The full guide, with every source, is on the page at saymei dot app.