I’ve just finished learning hiragana and katakana and the next logical step for japanese would be learning kanji. However, I’ve been learning mandarin chinese since I was young and am curious how much easier it will be for me to learn kanji, compared to someone who does not understand mandarin and is also starting out in kanji
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Have you studied Chinese characters along with learning Mandarin? If so, then you’ll definitely have a head start on the reading / writing, and a good deal of the vocab.
It’s a big advantage imo. When I took Japanese class for group projects there was a rule that every group should have at least one Chinese speaker to help with kanji.
Pronunciation wise for kanji not too much help
If you know mandarin. There are some similarities. But most of the onyomi or “Chinese readings” of the characters came from around the earlier Tang Dynasty so they have changed. I think Cantonese preserved these pronunciations more. Like 国 being guo in mandarin and like kok in Cantonese and koku in Japanese.
100% makes it easier.
first youll generally be able to predict on’yomi readings after encountering the possible on’yomi readings for different characters (youll get what i mean if you speak two chinese dialects and can sorta “predict” how to pronounce a character in one dialect based on the other). ex. 平ping = hei in kan’on on’yomi. so 瓶ping is also probably hei in kan’on on’yomi (it is).
it also makes understanding written japanese a lot easier. when i took placement tests for japanese in university i could cheese most of the questions wrt translating jp -> eng because i already knew what the characters meant in chinese l o l
I know Kanji and have easier time understanding written Mandarin. So I guess the converse proposition should also be true.
I read and write Chinese, speaks Cantonese and Mandarin. I can say it definitely helps knowing Mandarin before learning Japanese Kanji. But as some mentioned already, only partially. From my point of view, it might even be confusing sometimes.
As On’yomi being rather close to Cantonese and some what recognizable to Mandarin, I sometimes get confused for a split second with which pronunciation is for which language.
For writing, sure it gives a head start knowing written Chinese before hand. But if only knowing Simplified Chinese characters, then have to be careful of not mixing up the less simplified Japanese Kanji with what was known before. While Traditional Chinese characters are much closer to Japanese Kanji, minus the few thousand slightly simplified ones and the few hundreds of [Japanese invented Kanji](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%92%8C%E8%A3%BD%E6%BC%A2%E5%AD%97), which can still be confusing, at times. Then we have the slight difference of stroke order add to the mix.
I’ve been learning Chinese for about 5 years and Japanese for only 1. I’ve found at first it’s very annoying because I want to use Chinese pronounciation everytime I see Kanji, but it’s also nice because I can understand the Kanji ~80% of the time. It will also help with memorizing Kanji that Chinese doesn’t use, you’ll be used to the stroke order thing and radicals. The learning curve will definitely be smaller for you.