In virtually all circumstances, to learn about China, Korea, or Japan is to inevitably learn about the other two countries too. These three East Asian nations have a complex, deeply intertwined relationship with one another; throughout millennia, they’ve exchanged and influenced each other’s territory, religions, and customs, and naturally, language is no exception. Despite their fascinating linguistic differences and unique expressions of culture, there are inseparable similarities between Chinese, Korean, and Japanese rooted in centuries of mutual interaction. Below is a brief overview of each language and their similarities and differences.
Chinese
Chinese is the oldest of the three languages; in fact, it’s considered the oldest spoken language in the world, as experts claim that its origins date back to 3,000 years ago. Unlike in English, where a limited set of individual letters are constantly merged and rearranged to formulate different words and ideas, this can be achieved within a single character in Chinese—these characters are known as Hanzi. Due to the language’s longevity and China’s vast influence as a whole, Chinese has dramatically influenced the vocabulary and structure of both Korean and Japanese; in fact, linguists believe that around 60% of Korean words and 50% of Japanese words come from Chinese.
Japanese
Japanese developed independently of Chinese, but before the 4th century AD did not have its own writing system. To address this, the people adopted the Chinese script and gradually modified it until it evolved into the kanji used today, which encompasses many nouns and verb stems. Later, the two native scripts of hiragana and katakana were developed: Hiragana represents native Japanese words—such as あなた (anata, meaning you) and いえ (i.e., meaning house)—whereas katakana is used for purposes such as writing loanwords, foreign names, and adding emphasis. Today, all three scripts are used in conjunction with one another.
Korean
Until 1443, Koreans used a Chinese-based writing system called Hanja. Although Korean was an independent language, similar to Japan, their lack of a written system led them to adopt Chinese symbols; however, only the upper class could afford the education necessary to use it, rendering the majority of the population illiterate. To address this, King Sejong invented Hangul, the current Korean alphabet, to promote literacy among the common people. Deliberately made to be easy to learn, Hangul is highly phonetically regular—in other words, once the basic letters are mastered, pronunciation, in general, should come rather easily—and can be learned within a few hours.
Bonus: Similar vocabulary
As mentioned above, many Korean and Japanese words have Chinese roots. Therefore, having some knowledge of Chinese can help you make an educated guess on the meaning of some Korean and Japanese words and vice versa. Below are three examples of Chinese root words appearing across all three languages.
Chinese: 巨人 (jùrén)
Korean: 거인 (ko-in)
Japanese: 巨人 (kyojin)
English: Giant (literally ‘big person’)
Chinese: 人气 (rénqì)
Korean: 인기 (inki)
Japanese: 人気 (ninki)
English: Popularity (literally ‘person energy’)
Chinese: 人口 (rénkǒu)
Korean: 인구 (ingu)
Japanese: 人口 (jinkō)
English: Population (a combination of ‘person’ and ‘mouth’. Each person’s mouth equals one member of the population)