Experiences with learning Chinese (Mandarin) already knowing Korean
G'Day!
I should start off by saying that I am native/fluent in German and English, the rest probably does not matter but I also know quite some dutch and whatever is left from 2 years of Spanish in high school, which - needless to say - is not much.
The Chinese language has always fascinated me and I also do find interest in it but I have always been scared away by the sheer amount of characters along with their pronunciation I would have to memorize to even be able to just get along.
However, this was before I even started learning Korean. While learning Korean and getting to understand it more deeply I came to realize how many Korean words actually have the same or similar pronunciation of their old Chinese ancestors - Hanja.
Although I do not know many (if any) Hanja characters (actually written), I do know a lot of them in their Korean pronunciation and meaning. That made me wonder whether this could prove to be helpful to me finally starting to learn Chinese as well...I should clarify that my Korean is at a fluent level already. I only face some trouble when it comes to very specific/uncommon words.
Search from various English teachers...
Answers · 5
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As a native chinese speaker, to learn korean is difficult for me as well, even though there are some similar pronunciation.just like the chinese word ''男票'' which means boyfriend, and the pronunciation of "男票" in korean (a little bit difference exactly, in chinese is ''nanpiao'' in ''korean'' is ''lanpiao'') means husband or couple. When i learn how to speak french(I had given up already because of the female and the male word ),the similar pronunciation to the english confused me a lot. So maybe learning chinese as a single language will be helpful.
In contrast to Korean, Japanese has the similar characters to the chinese which has a totally different pronunciation just like the word "写真". That's why chinese can read some japanese word, but can't understand what they say.
And just like the shevelen said the grammer is different, it is a big problem.
however, since you have learned korean well, you are able to learn chinese as well. Because there are so many chinese partner in italki. And I believe the chinese is much easier than korean.
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as they use letters in Korean -- it's easier to read and write, but the grammar is different from Chinese, more similar to Japanese
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I did the opposite of you - I learned Chinese first and Korean second. As others have said, there are many words with similar but not exact pronunciations. Ex. 중요해 is 重要 (Zhòngyào) in Chinese. So you need to remember how to pronounce it in each language, but I didn't find I had much of a problem with this once I was familiar with the sounds of Korean. Plus Chinese has the tones, which makes it feel distinct from Korean.
The grammar of the two languages have very little in common, so there will be no interference there. But both languages have similar ways of making words like each syllable is a building-block with its own meaning(if that makes sense), so that was helpful, because once I understood the concept in Chinese, I could easily understand and apply it to Korean.
By the way, when I started learning Chinese, I learned solely how to speak for the first 6 months or so before slowly starting with reading and writing. If you get too bogged down with memorizing characters in the beginning it'll take a long time to get anywhere. You don't have to do this - just a suggestion!
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I have never been learning Korean, but I've been learning Japanese after Chinese. Of course, it was a bit helpful because I've already known characters, but I agree with Guo42. You should be attentive because pronunciation is different and sometimes you can mix up it, but I think it's a temporary problem. Wish you luck in learning Chinese. 加油！
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Knowing some of the characters can certainly help. It mostly depends on your learning style, I think. I've had friends who knew either Korean or Japanese that tried to study Chinese. Some of them did very well. Others had a hard time transitioning the pronunciation and differences in tone/nuance of characters between languages.
That being said, Korean grammar is completely different from Chinese grammar. So be prepared for a shock there.
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