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Chinese Foreign Minister Jiechi Yang shakes hands with
Japanese Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura.
Source |
While I am not a Chinese or Japanese language expert (far from it), I did commit almost three years of my life to the study of language learning, specifically cognitive linguistics (CL). Accordingly, when I teach English or engage in language learning myself, I tend to use cognition-based techniques; they are logical as they relate to how the mind works. I also love that CL centers around semantics; meaning is the focus, not syntax or grammar rules.
Nevertheless, although it is CL-based, this post is not meant to be an exploration of CL. I'd simply like to share my thought process and some of the methods I use now that I am trying to reinforce and learn more Mandarin while acquiring the basics of Japanese.
Naturally, I've written this post as a person who studied Mandarin first, then Japanese. However, if you're only studying Chinese or Japanese, you might find some of these methods useful as well. Hopefully, this will encourage you to pursue both languages. As ancient Japanese was derived from Chinese, if you're currently learning one of those languages, you have already built a great foundation for the other.
1. Pay attention to on-yomi readings of kanji, they will be easier to memorize
As anyone studying Japanese should know,
kanji（漢字）are identified as either
on-yomi（音読み）or
kun-yomi（訓読み）readings. The former are extracted from Chinese (not just Mandarin, but the many regional dialects in China), while the latter are derived from Japanese meanings. Thus
katakana, the writing system for foreign words and onomatopoeia, is used to write the pronunciation of
on-yomi because they're not from Japanese. Of course, there are sub-classifications under each, but they're not important to know in order to understand how to read
kanji.
Chinese learners know there is a Simplified and Traditional writing system. Simplified as its known now began its development in the 1930s as a response to illiteracy (some Chinese characters are so elaborate they have over 10 strokes). It's used primarily in Mainland China and the Chinese departments of Western universities. Unfortunately, much of the meaning behind Chinese characters are stripped away in Simplified, but luckily, the two systems of writing have an overlap of over 50%; there are several characters that look the same in both scripts.
Now, for those of us who'd like to learn both languages, we get to be utterly confused as Japanese
kanji uses both Simplified and Traditional Chinese writing. Well, perhaps I'm exaggerating. I actually find this double-dipping as a reinforcement to my Chinese as I learned Simplified in college and Traditional in Taiwan.
Still, when studying, you have to be conscious of the differences.
On-yomi sticks in my brain almost immediately because of its closeness to the original Chinese words. However, not all
on-yomi is Mandarin-derived, so there's more brainpower needed to remember the ones formed from other Chinese dialects.
Take a look at the chart I made below:
Japanese
(kun-yomi)
|
Japanese
(on-yomi)
|
Chinese
(Simplified)
|
Chinese
(Traditional)
|
English
|
病
（や.む、-や.み、やまい）
(ya.mu, -ya.mi, yamai)
|
病
（ビョウ、ヘイ）
(byõ, hei)
|
病
(bing4)
|
病
(bing4)
|
ill; sick; sickness/disease
|
試
（こころ.みる、ため.す）
(kokoro.miru, tame.su)
|
試
（シ）
(shi)
|
试
(shi4)
|
試
(shi4)
|
test; try; attempt; experiment; ordeal (Japanese);
fit (Chinese)
|
学
（まな.ぶ）
(mana.bu)
|
学
（ガク）
(gaku)
|
学
(xue2)
|
學
(xue2)
|
study; learning; science (Japanese); subject/-logy (Chinese)
|
n/a
|
不
（フ、ブ）
(fu, bu)
|
不
(bu4)
|
不
(bu4)
|
negative; non-; not; bad (Japanese); ugly (Japanese); clumsy (Japanese); neg. prefixes (e.g., "ir-"; "im-"; "in-") (Chinese)
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