I’ve heard that apparently, Japanese pronunciation is simpler to pick up (anime, games, etc). when you hear it spoken. As in, when foreigners learn it: they find that easier to listen to than spoken Mandarin since there’s no tones in Japanese (rather pitch accent, but it’s not the same as it could be understood based on context even if said wrong) while Mandarin places a huge emphasis on tones that change the definition completely.
Also, how does spoken Japanese sound to the ear when you either watch subtitled anime when you compare that to anime being dubbed in Mandarin? I know that one of my friends watches Asian dramas and prefers either Japanese or Korean audio over Mandarin for some reason (I’d assume it has to do with accent and how a language sounds when spoken). Is Mandarin dubbed anime even good or does it sound bad?
As someone who has been learning Japanese for a very long time, I can tell confirm that Japanese grammar is quite complicated, as others have said. One example could be that adjective clauses go before the noun, instead of after the noun, which could be hard to wrap one’s head around it.
The other issue is that the sentence structure is different from other languages. Japanese language uses Subject-Object-Verb structure instead of Subject-Verb-Object - to put it simply, sentences end with a verb. It could be a problem for a beginner, or even when you get to the intermediate level, where you could start hearing 3 complete sentences before getting to the first verb.
And another potential issue is that there are multiple levels of politeness. Each level changes how you say verbs and some other words. The highest levels even change some verbs to different verbs with the same meaning. But this is mainly issue only when you are planning to live there or work in Japanese company.
I don’t know much about Mandarin Chinese other than that it uses different tones to pronounce words. And if you are like me, who doesn’t hear those tones, it could be impossible to learn.
I believe learning Japanese pronounciation is going to be easier for some people, but it really depends where you come from. I never had to learn Japanese pronounciation because it is almost identical to my own (slavic) language.
Subject-Object-Verb is actually slightly more common across the world’s languages than Subject-Verb-Object.
I’m a Mandarin learner and there are some things in Mandarin that feel really intuitive for me, and other things that I really struggle to wrap my head around.
Tones are tricky but when speaking I’ve found I can really rely heavily on context to get me through a lot of it. Culturally Mandarin speakers are pretty forgiving, most of them just seem excited I’m giving it my best shot. Not sure if it’s the same for Japanese speakers.
Japanese language is highly contextual. Quite often they omit the Subject in sentences because it is “obvious” from the context… although the context could come from a conversation that happened before. Sometimes they even omit the Object or the Verb. Not sure if it works the same for Mandarin. Anyway, in some cases the context could help you understand even if you don’t know the words, so it could be similar to Mandarin.
Japanese people are always trying to be friendly, so if you start speaking (even broken) Japanese, their eyes will start to glow and will start saying how your Japanese is perfect (even if it may not true). So, if you speak a broken Japanese, they will try to understand you and sometimes even correct you if you say something wrong. So this is probably similar to Chinese people.
That tracks with my experience. I visited Japan but knew minimal Japanese (pretty much just 有り難う御座います) and everyone was very friendly and helpful, and seemed pleased the limit of my Japanese was at least something polite.
I feel like one difference is a friendly Mandarin speaker would be less likely to try to correct me if I made a mistake and more likely to try to just interpret what I’m trying to say. I wonder if some of that comes from the possibility of misunderstandings from a tonal language.