japanese or chinese

I think they both have tonal systems that are pretty similar. I heard that Japanese is more useful, but I'm not really sure.

Japanese has no tones like those of Chinese. I recommend Chinese because it's more grammatically simple and tones can be no problem.

As for usefulness, I don't think learning a language simply for oral communication can be useful beyond "Hello, nice to meet you" level.

Hey, what do you think about Japanese? Is it too popular? Is it too prestige? Should I learn it? I want to connect my life with it.

My life has been connected with Japanese ever since I became conscious. It feels warm and fuzzy inside to use this beautiful language.

There is currently a huge demand world wide for things Japanese; traditions, technology, and pop-culture. This creates demand for non-Japanese Japanese speakers because there is still shortage of Japanese English speakers. I would say it's a great opportunity.

Before getting your life connected to Japanese, however, you might want to elaborate your reasons you want to learn it. Does the language itself suffice to motivate you? Or do you have a Japanese friend? Cultural interests are no doubt very strong incentives. If your motivations clears up as specific as possible, the less questions would plague you when things gets sticky.

hi
I can tell you something!
japanese and chinese have more similar ,japanese is a evolution from chinese.you can find a lot of chinese in japanese ,but japanese is more single .in a word , japanese is just like one son of chinese!
which do you like better?

Well I speak both and I think japanese is easier for western logic, because the sentence is more similar to english than chinese. and also because it has many english words.

In my opinion, Chinese is much harder to learn. The tonal system is very confusing. Also, there are many different kinds of Chinese and the spoken languages hardly resemble each other. A person who is Cantonese would have a very difficult time understanding Mandarin and Toysen is a different dialect entirely. I don't even know why the dialects are all lumped together as "Chinese" when they are so different. You would also have to know about 3,000 Cantonese characters in order to read and write at an 8th grade level. Keep in mind, for the written word Traditional Chinese is used in the countries outside the PRC and Simplified is used in the PRC.

I worked in the sales and marketing end of the translation business for 12 years.

Pronunciation in Japanese is quite easy. Sometimes too easy as the same simple sound can mean many different things. So for hurdles in pronunciation, Japanese is easy. Japanese grammar is very different than Chinese. It is said that Chinese is closer to English than to Japanese syntactically. Chinese is tonal whereas Japanese is metered.

Grammar is fairly regular with few exceptions in verb conjugation. What is difficult is not so much what is spoken but what is NOT spoken. Some of the biggest problems in socio-lingual aspects is nuance and meaning confusions. There are those that speak fluently and yet still have difficulty comprehending due to cultural inferences. This is true in any language, of course, but it is very prominent in Japanese.

Also, many foreigners learn to speak Japanese like a native and yet have an elementary reading skill and even lower in writing. One must take it on a like an enthusiastic hobby with high motivation to accomplish a competent level, which can be achieved.

Japanese gets my vote, mainly because of their amamzing outfits.
I tried ot teach myself Japanese a few years back but didnt get very far.

oddly, I would ask someone wanting to learn Japanese: "how is your math skills?"

LOL. not because Japnese language requires an understanding of any math, but because it is so abstract in snytax. particles gramarically act like mathmatical operators. Pronunciation is super easy in Japanese which help western tongues. It may be my bias, but i think that japanese is easier. At least with japanese you can learn both hiragana and katakana in a short amount of time, learning chinese characters can be a long process, and you need to understand a great number of them to have any sort of proficincy.

i think japanese is more easier 4 a westener
i m a chinese.i m telling the fact.japanese indeed is easier for a westener to master for it has a much more simple pronouciation system as well as a clear grammar system,comparing chinese.
but few westeners know clearly that most japanese words before 1880s are from chinese with pronouciation,some maybe 200 years ago,some 500 years while some more than 1500 years .
there are so many dialects in china because of complex reasons in china.a most reason maybe that in the year of abt 220 bc when the first empire qinshihuang unify china he just order all chinese have the same writing system without a pronouciation system.and too big with all kinds of geograghic and cultral difference is china.and what made the dialects fard understand was the migrations at great level in some war period.for example,there have been 3 times of great migrations in guangdong which was in abt 2200 years ago,1000years ago and since 1980s till now. the migration happened in abt 1000 years ago from the north to guangdong caused by the invation the mongoes and form the most part of pronouciation and grammar of cantonese.thus cantonese which has 9 tones is much like the chinese in song or tang dynasty.the poeple in toysen speak a dialect of cantonese,maybe we can say,but it is not very difficult to learn that language for contonese.
for manderin,it is the combination of many minority ethic pronoucoation with ancient chinese.