If you’re interested in Asian culture and are also interested in learning the language but you don’t know which language to choose, this is for you.

For Chinese, Chinese has an alphabetical system called Hanzi, or Kanji. The Hanzi is a collection of more than 7,000 characters that the Chinese use every day.You have to learn each of the 7,000 characters one by one to be able to navigate the Chinese world efficiently.

For Japanese 2,136 commonly used Kanji characters in the Japanese language. Along with Kanji there are Kana characters for vocal syllables that include 46 hiragana characters,  derived from Chinese characters, and 46 katakana characters.

Because of these three “alphabet” systems in Japanese,you can get away with learning only some of the  kanji characters plus kana and still be able to understand what you read or heard someone say without going back and forth with google translate.

Korean has 24 characters,unlike Japanese and Chinese that have thousands of characters. Hangul, the  alphabetical system in Korean, have 14 consonants and 10 vowels. On top of that, the writing system has spaces unlike Japanese and Chinese where in most cases you don’t even know where the word ends or begins, or even how to spell it for that matter.

In the end, the easiest language to read is Korean. Due to the small amount of characters that you have to memorize, if you want to pursue learning Korean, then you don’t have to spend too much time memorizing all of the characters.

The first thing you learn when you study Chinese is how to write the characters.I’m not just talking about the stroke orders, yes, you can’t just write the way you want to. Calligraphy is a huge part of  Chinese and Japanese. There is something called radicals in Chinese and Japanese meaning how each stroke is traced and most importantly where your pen should begin and end.

Since Korean is the easiest language to read due to small amount of characters . That also means Korean is the easiest language to write. If you want to learn a language where the reading isn’t so difficult than Korean is definitely for you.

China has 56 ethnic groups and more than 200 dialects. 

Almost every Japanese word has its own intonation, when alone, and a different one when put together with other words. The way you pronounce Japanese words won’t necessarily affect your communication skills to the same extent that Chinese does. In Japanese there aren’t any  alterations based on surrounding characters.There are some exceptions though.

For Korean it’s not as difficult as Chinese, but you will definitely experience more tongue twisters than in Japanese.

Unlike Japanese, Korean does have an“L” sound, ㄹ.  It’s like a classic “L” sound but you stop your tongue just before  the sound leaves your mouth. Also, sometimes you can have a classic “L” sound in words for example”달려라” or  run uses the classic “L” sound.There are also double consonants ㄲ (kk), ㄸ(dd), ㅃ(bb), ㅆ(ss), and ㅉ(jj) which may be difficult to pronounce right for foreigners.For example you want to buy some pants. 사다sada( “to buy”) and 싸다ssada( “to poop.”) sound closely related to each other to a foreigner. If you don’t pronounce sada correctly you might say  “I want to poop my pants,” instead of “I want to buy pants.”

In the end Japanese is the easiest to speak. Due to it’s easy sounding characters and no double consonants, Japanese is easier for a beginner, speaking wise.

Listening to Chinese is hard  because they have tones. Tones are essentially a phrase used to convey that if you say a certain word with a different pitch it can mean something completely different. Japanese is  more understandable when listening because it has 14 basic consonants.

Following the previous point about speaking, you will find different dialects and diphthongs used in Korean. If you don’t know that 먹다 means eat in Korea and let’s say you go to Busan, a state in Korea, which has its own dialect, then you’ll face some problems listening wise. K-dramas and K-pop though does help you get used to the sounds and it gets easier for you along the way. 

Japanese is the easiest listening wise, just like speaking, it’s easier for foreigners to understand.

For a beginner of foreigner who’s having a hard time picking between Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. The easiest one, due to this list, would be either Japanese or Korean. Korean is easy to write and read, Japanese is easier to speak and hear. Choose the best one for you!