×

Chinese
Chinese

Japanese
Japanese



ADD
Compare
X
Chinese
X
Japanese

Chinese vs Japanese

Add ⊕

Countries

Countries

China, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, Taiwan
Japan

Total No. Of Countries

51
0 46
👆🏻

National Language

China, Taiwan
Japan

Second Language

Republic of Brazil
Not spoken in any of the countries

Speaking Continents

Asia
Asia, Pacific

Minority Language

Indonesia, Malaysia
Palau

Regulated By

Chinese Language Standardization Council, National Commission on Language and Script Work, Promote Mandarin Council
Agency for Cultural Affairs (文化庁) at the Ministry of Education

Interesting Facts

  • Chinese language is tonal, since meaning of a word changes according to its tone.
  • In Chinese language, there is no grammatical distinction between singular or plural, no declination of verbs according to tense, mood and aspect.
  • In Japanese Language, there are 4 different ways to address people: kun, chan, san and sama.
  • There are many words in Japanese language which end with vowel letter, which determines the structure and rhythm of Japanese.

Similar To

Japanese and Korean Languages
Korean Language

Derived From

-
-

Alphabets

Alphabets in

Alphabets

2699
18 247
👆🏻

Phonology

How Many Vowels

245
0 32
👆🏻

How Many Consonants

2314
9 60
👆🏻

Scripts

Chinese Characters and derivatives
Kana

Writing Direction

Left-To-Right, Horizontal, Top-To-Bottom
Left-To-Right, Horizontal, Top-To-Bottom

Hard to Learn

Language Levels

65
2 12
👆🏻

Time Taken to Learn

88 weeks88 weeks
3 88
👆🏻

Greetings

Hello

您好 (Nín hǎo)
こんにちは (Kon'nichiwa)

Thank You

谢谢 (Xièxiè)
ありがとう (Arigatō)

How Are You?

你好吗? (Nǐ hǎo ma?)
お元気ですか (O genki desu ka?)

Good Night

晚安 (Wǎn'ān)
おやすみなさい (Oyasuminasai)

Good Evening

晚上好 (Wǎnshàng hǎo)
こんばんは (Konbanwa)

Good Afternoon

下午好 (Xiàwǔ hǎo)
こんにちは (Konnichiwa!)

Good Morning

早安 (Zǎo ān)
おはよう (Ohayō)

Please

请 (Qǐng)
お願いします (Onegaishimasu)

Sorry

遗憾 (Yíhàn)
ごめんなさい (Gomen'nasai)

Bye

再见 (Zàijiàn)
さようなら (Sayōnara)

I Love You

我爱你 (Wǒ ài nǐ)
愛しています (Aishiteimasu)

Excuse Me

劳驾 (Láojià)
すみません (Sumimasen)

Dialects

Dialect 1

Mandarin
Sanuki

Where They Speak

China, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan
Kagawa

How Many People Speak

960,000,000.001,000,000.00
1.5 960000000
👆🏻

Dialect 2

Wu
Hakata

Where They Speak

China, United States of America
Fukuoka

How Many People Speak

80,000,000.00127,000,000.00
700 274000000
👆🏻

Dialect 3

Yue
Kansai

Where They Speak

China, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam
kansai

How Many People Speak

60,000,000.00127,000,000.00
2 230000000
👆🏻

Total No. Of Dialects

1031
0 188
👆🏻

How Many People Speak

How Many People Speak?

1,051.00 million128.00 million
0 1200
👆🏻

Speaking Population

16.00 %1.90 %
0 89
👆🏻

Native Speakers

873.00 million128.00 million
0 873
👆🏻

Second Language Speakers

178.00 million3.00 million
0.01 400
👆🏻

Native Name

中文 (zhōngwén)
日本語

Alternative Names

Zhongwen, Hanyu
Nihongo

French Name

chinois
japonais

German Name

Chinesisch
Japanisch

Pronunciation

[ʈʂʰíŋ] [huà]
/nihoɴɡo/: [nihõŋɡo], [nihõŋŋo]

Ethnicity

Han
Japanese (Yamato)

History

Origin

1250 BC
1185

Language Family

Sino-Tibetan Family
Japonic Family

Subgroup

-
-

Branch

-
-

Language Forms

Early Forms

No early forms
Old Japanese, Early Middle Japanese, Late Middle Japanese and Early Modern Japanese

Standard Forms

Standard Chinese
Japanese

Language Position

18
1 120
👆🏻

Signed Forms

Wenfa Shouyu 文法手語 ("Grammatical Sign Language", Signed Mandarin (Taiwan))
Signed Japanese

Scope

Individual
Individual

Code

ISO 639 1

zh
ja

ISO 639 2

ISO 639 2/T

zho
jpn

ISO 639 2/B

chi
jpn

ISO 639 3

zho
jpn

ISO 639 6

zho
jpn

Glottocode

sini1245
nucl1643

Linguasphere

79-AAA
45-CAA-a

Types of Language

Language Type

Living
Living

Language Linguistic Typology

Subject-Verb-Object
Subject-Object-Verb

Language Morphological Typology

Analytic, Isolating
Agglutinative, Synthetic

Chinese vs Japanese Speaking Countries

There are plenty of languages spoken around the world. Every country has its own official language. Compare Chinese vs Japanese speaking countries, so that you will have total count of countries that speak Chinese or Japanese language.

  • Chinese is spoken as a national language in: China, Taiwan.
  • Japanese is spoken as a national language in: Japan.

You will also get to know the continents where Chinese and Japanese speaking countries lie. Based on the number of people that speak these languages, the position of Chinese language is 1 and position of Japanese language is 8. Find all the information about these languages on Chinese and Japanese.

Chinese and Japanese Language History

Comparison of Chinese vs Japanese language history gives us differences between origin of Chinese and Japanese language. History of Chinese language states that this language originated in 1250 BC whereas history of Japanese language states that this language originated in 1185. Family of the language also forms a part of history of that language. More on language families of these languages can be found out on Chinese and Japanese Language History.

Chinese and Japanese Greetings

People around the world use different languages to interact with each other. Even if we cannot communicate fluently in any language, it will always be beneficial to know about some of the common greetings or phrases from that language. This is where Chinese and Japanese greetings helps you to understand basic phrases in Chinese and Japanese language. Chinese word for "Hello" is 您好 (Nín hǎo) or Japanese word for "Thank You" is ありがとう (Arigatō). Find more of such common Chinese Greetings and Japanese Greetings. These greetings will help you to be more confident when conversing with natives that speak these languages.

Chinese vs Japanese Difficulty

The Chinese vs Japanese difficulty level basically depends on the number of Chinese Alphabets and Japanese Alphabets. Also the number of vowels and consonants in the language plays an important role in deciding the difficulty level of that language. The important points to be considered when we compare Chinese and Japanese are the origin, speaking countries, language family, different greetings, speaking population of these languages. Want to know in Chinese and Japanese, which language is harder to learn? Time required to learn Chinese is 88 weeks while to learn Japanese time required is 88 weeks.