Japan calling

[Valmy]

The Japanese use a ton of Chinese characters - for naming, every day language use, everything.  The characters are 90% similar, but not 100%.  But they also use their own alphabets. 

The Japanese have an alphabet?!  How un East Asian of them.

[HVC]

Apparently Romanian is even easier to learn if you already speak French or Italian.

Speaking of Italians during my stay in Villefranche-sur-Mer some  Italian would show up knowing nothing and be practically fluent in French in just a few weeks.  Drove me nuts.  The languages may not sound much alike but clearly if it is that easy they must be really similar.

the romance languages are interchangable to different degree (excluding romanian which is technically in there). Easier to go from some languages to others. Portuguese speakers understand spanish way easier then the other way around. any other  speaker going french is the hardest, but still possible.

[Monoriu]

The Japanese use a ton of Chinese characters - for naming, every day language use, everything.  The characters are 90% similar, but not 100%.  But they also use their own alphabets. 

The Japanese have an alphabet?!  How un East Asian of them.

They have two sets of alphabets.  Actually the majority of their communication is done in alphabets.  Chinese characters are mainly for naming, though they are also used in everyday speech.  The Japanese pronounce their alphabets one by one when they speak.

I think the majority of East Asians have some kind of alphabet.  It is the Chinese that is the odd one out, if I am not mistaken. 

[Josquius]

They have two sets of alphabets.  Actually the majority of their communication is done in alphabets.  Chinese characters are mainly for naming, though they are also used in everyday speech.  The Japanese pronounce their alphabets one by one when they speak.

I think the majority of East Asians have some kind of alphabet.  It is the Chinese that is the odd one out, if I am not mistaken. 

They're not alphabets, they're syllabarys.

Chinese characters: I love kanji. One of the things that drew me to Japanese. I actually find it easier than speaking, I know the meaning of around 700 characters so far (around 2000 is the standard number). Not that it does me much good when I don't have much of a Japanese vocabulary to go with it.

Apparently Romanian is even easier to learn if you already speak French or Italian.

i work with a romanian woman. and no, no it isn't. It's like a latin and slavic had a love child and then beat it mercilessly.

It is weird. Written down I go 'hey....this looks a bit like French...' but hearing it...'Russian? Sort of....' but then Portuguese also sounds Russian. And without good reason there.

[Valmy]

I think the majority of East Asians have some kind of alphabet.  It is the Chinese that is the odd one out, if I am not mistaken. 

Wow really?  Shows what I know.

[Viking]

The Japanese use a ton of Chinese characters - for naming, every day language use, everything.  The characters are 90% similar, but not 100%.  But they also use their own alphabets. 

The Japanese have an alphabet?!  How un East Asian of them.

Two, Hiragana and Katakana. Hiragana is used in japanese for japanese words and is used to phonetically write out characters and use prepositions and short grammar related words. Katakana is used for transposing foreign words into japanese. These two "alphabets" don't use western letters, but rather use syllables. Each has 118 character iirc and they are typically set up like this

Hiragana
Ka - か
Ki - き
Ku - く
Ke - け
Ko - こ

Katakana
Ka - カ
Ki - キ
Ku - ク
Ke - ケ
Ko - コ

they can be modified using "diphtongs" e.g. Ga - ガ (in katakana) or miniletters Kya - キャ(in katakana)
You can also see that the Hiragana which is used for japanese characters is more cursive and seems to be better suited for caligraphy, while Katakana is more blockish and seems to be better suited for typwriters. These are both phonetic alphabets. Japanese text is usually a mix of Kanji (chinese characters) and Hiragana with Katakana being used for foreign words and slang.

[Razgovory]

Then quit learning it.  You should be sending native speakers over to train people how to speak English properly, not trying to learn Chinese.

I'm not the one who was trying to learn the damn language.  My friend who stuck with it wants to learn more of it so he can speak with his inlaws (who are high ranking party types).  He occasionally visits China with his wife to see her family.  His wife speaks English very well.  Very slight accent.  You could mistake her for a native speaker.

[HVC]

Apparently Romanian is even easier to learn if you already speak French or Italian.

i work with a romanian woman. and no, no it isn't. It's like a latin and slavic had a love child and then beat it mercilessly.

It is weird. Written down I go 'hey....this looks a bit like French...' but hearing it...'Russian? Sort of....' but then Portuguese also sounds Russian. And without good reason there.

Mainland portuguese always sounds vaguely german to me. over pronounciation.

[Grey Fox]

Apparently Romanian is even easier to learn if you already speak French or Italian.

i work with a romanian woman. and no, no it isn't. It's like a latin and slavic had a love child and then beat it mercilessly.

I work with a romanian woman too & I don't think it'll be that hard.

[HisMajestyBOB]

I think the majority of East Asians have some kind of alphabet.  It is the Chinese that is the odd one out, if I am not mistaken. 

Wow really?  Shows what I know.

Yep, Koreans (except for Hanja, which is very rarely used), Japanese (except for Kanji), Mongolians, Vietnamese, and probably the rest of SE Asia all use alphabets. The Vietnamese even use a modified Latin alphabet, making travel there pretty easy.

Anyway, congratulations Tyr
If I'm ever in Japan in the near future, I expect you to show me around
Tim too if he goes there.

[Caliga]

I work with a romanian woman too & I don't think it'll be that hard.

I've never heard Romanian spoken, but I've seen written Romanian and I could kind of understand at a high level what the subject matter was.  Of course I wasn't sure about the tense, etc.  But with my knowledge of French, Spanish, and Latin I felt like I could sort of wing it.  Same thing happened with Italian when I was in Italy.

[Monoriu]

When China began to modernise, there was a Chinese saying by intellectuals - if Chinese characters are not destroyed, then China will be.  At that time, the bulk of the Chinese population were illiterate.  The characters were seen as an important contributing factor.  They are considered too difficult to learn even for native Chinese 

Mao's solution to the problem was to simplify the characters.  Hence the simplified/traditional difference. 

[HVC]

I work with a romanian woman too & I don't think it'll be that hard.

I've never heard Romanian spoken, but I've seen written Romanian and I could kind of understand at a high level what the subject matter was.  Of course I wasn't sure about the tense, etc.  But with my knowledge of French, Spanish, and Latin I felt like I could sort of wing it.  Same thing happened with Italian when I was in Italy.

To clafify i haven't seen it written. but i have heard it spoken. i judeged my difficulty in knowing whats going on based on that. it was... odd.

[Caliga]

Well, it may be that it sounds very different from how it's written.

[HVC]

There were several words that i could tell were supposed to be latin, but i couldn't place them and trying just meant i was way behind in the "conversation" anyway..

Then again she could have been from a backwards part which made it worse. for example i can understand some italians and not others.