Learning Japanese in China

[yellowpower]

Hi there

was wondering if anyone has studied Japanese, in addition to Mandarin at the same time.

How were the textbooks and teaching methods? Assuming that the textbook used was in Mandarin? Are there many China or foreign students who are learning Japanese?

Thanks.

[Phil]

A Chinese friend is self-taught in Japanese, having learned it through the medium of Japanese anime/manga films (he could read the kanji in the subtitles as hanzi, and work out the meaning of the spoken dialogue in that way). He then went on to study Japanese formally in Kyoto, and now has a good job in the Shanghai office of a Japanese company. He was 2 1/2-lingual until that point, speaking both Shanghainese and Mandarin as first languages with English as his third language.

[Liebkuchen]

I'm curious about this too. I've seen you can do your masters in Japanese or Korean over in China. I don't have any more information so I'm just assuming they are ab-initio degrees that will be partly taught in Chinese until you can do it all in the new language. Wondered how it works in terms of trying to use Chinese in daily life to increase fluency while at the same time trying to immerse yourself in Japanese language and culture.

[rewsay]

i've done 3 years of japanese learning at an university in university in the United States in addition to mandarin for a year now. i think it's highly doable if you concentrate and think of them as separate languages despite the similarities in writing and some words. in fact, i think you can strengthen one by learning the other.

[kayro]

I've done both - Japanese (university courses, living in Japan, JPLT 1), and I am doing Chinese now (working towards new HSK 6).

As REWSAY mentioned, knowing one would help strengthen the other. But I wouldnt recommend doing both at the same time, I think you'd just get confused. Better to have a solid grounding in one before starting the other. Off the top of my head: (1) Japanese uses mostly traditional characters, not simplified (2) a good amount of characters are used with different meanings.

FYI: I'm a native English speaker, heritage Chinese speaker (non-Mandarin dialect); having an ethnic Chinese background helped immensely with grasping kanji / hanzi concepts.

[yellowpower]

Hi All

thanks for the response and ideas.

Kayro, was wondering if you can share which part of Japan is not so expensive for language study....any good Kanji audio dictionaries or online learning with audio clips?

THanks.

[kayro]

@yellowpower

Unfortunately, there's no such thing as a "cheap place" to study in Japan, everything is typically 3x-4x what it would cost in China. It's a bit counter-intuitive, but I would say being in a big city like Tokyo would give you more price options in most categories - dining out, groceries, bars, etc (but not housing; rent is definitely higher in Tokyo).

This is a great online dictionary, for the intermediate to advanced level; I suspect it's user defined since sentence examples are incredibly rich with techinical, slang, professional jargon.

http://www.alc.co.jp/

As for online audio / learning aids... not so sure.. I've always regarded language learning as requiring an engaged approach; textbooks, classes, teachers, classmates as opposed to online self study..

[anonymoose]

There are lots of Korean students studying English in Shanghai.