Should I minor in Japanese or Mandarin Chinese?

Question

I'm Chinese, and can speak Cantonese, but I cant read/write Chinese. Which should i study first? Ive been fretting over this problem for a while. I like both languages, and I want to learn both, but I would like to study Japanese first. But will it be wiser to take Chinese first? I am going to take language classes when i start freshman year of college this year.

Would it be possible to learn mandarin by myself? I understand a bit of mandarin, and I'm not completely fluent, and i cannot read/write kanji.

advice please? Thank you!

(also what is your input of both China and Japan's economy? I want to pursue a Business or Environmental major, and I was wondering in which country would that language be more useful? Most Chinese people speak english nowadays right? China is booming now but Japan's always been pretty stable.....)

Answer 1

China is expected to overtake the US in terms of GDP to become the world's largest economy by 2020, and also China has surpassed Japan to become the world's largest trading economy. Learn Mandarin Chinese, definitely.

I'm studying Chinese Mandarin with Economics at college.

Answer 2

Learn mandarin because china will become a world power in next 10 to 20 yr. Also the Japan economy is going down.  Learning chinese characters is not hard at all. IF you learn chinese also you can read japanese and piece together the meaning of the sentence.  Just buy a chinese character book in cantonese and learn the characters. then when you do mandarin it will so easy, then you just learn the pronunciations.  I wish yousuccesss in whichever one you decide. Just choose whichever you want to do. You don't have to listen to me. LOL Also check out this website http://www.iso10646hk.net/jp/document/jy... this gives chinese character chart in cantonese prounciation.

Answer 3

" Most Chinese people speak english nowadays right?"

No, not right. knowing SOME english doesn't mean they're able to speak even read english.

however, most people are Able to speak Mandarin, definitely.

I recommend you just learn Mandarin and Japanese at the same time. That won't bother you anyway, since you have been good at Chinese. I am learning Japnese too.

Answer 4

For job opportunities learn Mandarin. China is the future. In mainland China Mandarin is predominantly used for business, not Cantonese.

You can learn Japanese if it's just for fun or to take a vacation in Japan someday. I personally wouldn't waste the money on Japanese.

Answer 5

Learn Mandarin because...

the language is very common.

and you can translate with people from taiwan too ^^;

Learn Japanese because...

it's a very interesting language.

not a lot of people take it.

be unique! ^^;