okay, so i am facing a really hard choice. my school offers a crp load of languages, among them japanese and chinese.
I have decided that i WILL take one of them, i just dont quite know which one.. i used to be certain that i was going to pick japanese, but lately ive thought chinese would be the best one to learn. i have tried to make some pros regarding both languages. i wont make a second list for cons, ill just include them under the pros list lol. whatever langauge i choose, I'll be learning it for 2 years.
Japanese
pros: Tokyo is the biggest city in the world. It also looks undoutably better than any chinese city in pretty much every aspect. Big cities are my passion and no matter which language i choose, this is where i will spend my time. surely i will visit the countryside and smaller cities as well, but yeah. you get the point! (my plan is to spend A LOT of time in whichever country i choose, and possibly study there a year or two). that said, japan only has one city in my eyes. i know many people would kill me for saying this, but i doubt id spend much time in any other city than tokyo if i was in japan. to be honest, they all look exactly the same, anyway.. tokyo just looks like a bigger and therefore better version than the others.
Japan is developed. it makes the country more safe and less scary. its not really such a huge plus, though, as id never consider raising a family in any of these nations, or anywhere non-western for that matter. also, coming from norway id find it interesting to live in a place that wasnt all wealthy and stuff. itd be a new and possibly exciting experience for me.
Japan has a lot of crazy things. from looking at pictures and reading stuff on the internet it seems like a fantasy world.. it doesnt seem like another country - it seems like another planet. this is obivously a HUGE plus in my book, but at the same time it might just be japanophlies hyping it up. maybe chinese is just as, if not more exciting? itd make sense as its a bigger nation, but its all a matter of opinions i guess.
Another pro is that i've heard japanese SOUNDS cooler.. i havent really listened to them much. i guess this is all a matter of opinion as well, though.
Chinese
pros:
China is bigger than japan and thus chinese is a more useful language in the sense that it allows me to communicate with more people than what japanese does.
In china, however, you have loads of different and unique cities, it seems. Hong Kong looks like the most exciting chinese city to me.. and im sure it is a fantastic place, though i doubt it can compare to tokyo. the thing is, though, that in HK they dont speak mandarin (which will be the dialect of chinese that id learn), they speak cantonese which is entirely different.. surely, much of the population probably know how to speak mandarin pretty properly, as well.. but i feel thatd be like learning spanish if youre going to stay in southern california. also, they speak english in HK, anyway, so i dont quite see the need to know chinese.. especially mandarin. the second most exciting chinese city seems to be shanghai, but here they speak shanghainese, which is different from mandarin.. i know i could most probably get by with mandarin here, but again it seems a little complicated.
Another thing about china that seems to me like a HUGE plus is that, well, the nation is BOOMING.. economically speaking. I am guessing this means i can get a lot of good jobs there in the future, right? that sounds like a good reason for me to learn the language. japan is already developed, which is good in many aspects, but have you seen all the crazy things going on in china right now? with shanghai and everything.. its just insane. I find it soo hard to make this choice!
NOTE: i know that this is a gaming forum and because of that there will be many anime freaks here, and also many video game lovers who obviously will pick japanese.. this is NOT(!!!) reason enough for me to learn japanese. as a matter of fact, i DESPISE anime. i would NEVER learn a language because the country they speak it in produces good video games or something like that. actually, the only video game series from japan that i enjoy is resident evil. so basically, JAPANOPHILES STAY OUT OF THIS THREAD.. or give me GOOD reasons as to why japan/japanese would be a better choice than china/chinese.
So yeah, which one do i pick? and why? Id love it if i could get some good and serious answers here :) thank you!!
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