I've been trying to learn Mandarin for awhile -- ploddingly so -- but still trying. And I hope that someday my Chinese-born daughter will learn too. Right now, we have the chance to enroll her in an immersion language school. The problem is that the only languages offered are Spanish and Japanese. I'm inclined to pick Japanese. I'm wondering if there's some benefit, even beyond the hanzi / kanji, to moving between Japanese and Mandarin. Are there some grammatical structures that would ease the learning process? I'm basically interested if people feel like learning Japanese provides a benefit for later attempting Mandarin.

It's obvious that as different as the Japanese can be from the Mandarin, it's still definitely closer than the spanish will ever be. But in my experience, our japanese classmates are having as harder time than us to learn mandarin.

Spain is one of the major language in the world and it's one of the easiest (ok I speak french, it helps a lot), I guess she will have plenty of time later to learn it :)

Unfortunately the grammar is very different. My teachers say that Chinese grammar is more like English grammar than Japanese grammar. The hanzi/kanji are the biggest similarity and would be the biggest advantage (it's an advantage for my Japanese classmates studying Mandarin).

The grammar is definitely the biggest difference between the two and was the most frustrating part to study for me (much like Russian conjugations). I would definitely say I've heard more about Chinese people quickly picking up Japanese than the opposite direction. That being being said here are some of the advantages I've noticed:

1.) Kanji: will definitely speed things up and breaks away from the western latin barrier

2.) Phonetic: Japanese people tell me there is no relation and Chinese people tell me there is. I personally was constantly finding phonetic pronunciations that were close enough to give me an edge (or at least help me guess). For example, 新 is romanized as "xin1" in Chinese and "shin" in Japanese.

I actually went through a similar route. I had studied Chinese as a younger child, then had all of it expunged through studying Spanish in middle school. In high school I wanted to pick it up again. Unfortunately, Chinese wasn't offered - but Japanese was! I basically had the same thoughts you're having right now.

I have to say that beyond a slight help from learning kanji, it really did absolutely nothing for learning Chinese for me. Grammatically, Chinese is more similar to English and Spanish than it is to Japanese, and in terms of the phonemes you need to learn, Japanese and Chinese have almost nothing in common.

I would honestly pick Spanish, and here's the justification: Because the main help from learning Japanese is in learning the kanji, and I'm guessing your child is still fairly young and (if my experience is to go by) won't actually be grinding down the several hundred kanji it would be necessary to know to be remotely useful, this benefit might not be realised. Beyond that, Japanese has little in the way to help with later acquisition of Chinese (from my experience).

I see the main benefit of learning Spanish (if you happen to reside in the U.S.) is that there are lots more opportunities in daily life to experience the language, reading from bilingual signs, watching movies that automatically come with Spanish subtitles/dubbing, practicing at restaurants or people on the street etc. If you want your child to go on to later learn Chinese, you don't want to scare them away from language learning altogether, and you want to get them engaged. I feel like Spanish will provide this more than Japanese will.

So that's my two cents as a person who has studied in school all three languages. Of course, if you really want them to learn Mandarin, it might just make the most sense to get some textbooks and start homeschooling them - substitute languages are still other languages.

@quimby Unfortunately Japanese is not even remotely related to Chinese. There's a tentative theory that it's related to Korean but this is not at all agreed upon by linguists. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classification_of_Japanese

@蓓蕾 yeah that's the main question, where they live. In the U.S., Spanish is by far the most useful language to study. However, Spanish is easily learned (it's one of the easiest languages for native English speakers) and Japanese is supposed to be quite difficult to learn as an adult, so on that basis it might make sense to send her to the Japanese school.

I would note that, among my friends and acquaintances who are not native English speakers, without exception those who came to the U.S. before 11 years of age have no accent, while those who came after 11 have a distinct accent regardless of their fluency level. So if it's important to you that your daughter speak a certain language without an accent, she should be exposed to it before she's 11, but ideally much younger.

Here's an interesting article about a Hebrew-language school here in New York City which has attracted many black and Latino students:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/25/nyregion/25hebrew.html?ref=nyregion

James

Quimby,
Our daughter was also born in China and we spoke no Chinese at the time but when she was 3 we started some family lessons at home. At some point our teacher told us our daughter had no accent. We have continued lessons and she is fairly fluent verbally. Reading and writing is a very different question; acquiring those skills requires a significant investment of time and effort, one reason why Chinese children have so much homework.

We decided our goal was that she could speak easily and right now we are in China and she's playing with 3 other Chinese children who speak almost no English. However, the majority of her language ability has been acquired in our small US city where we have found Chinese teachers that she spends several hours a week with. We don't regret omitting her reading and writing, figuring she can take that challenge on later, if she chooses.

I wonder whether the Japanese immersion school teaches reading and writing at the pace of an ordinary Japanese school. Immersion is certainly great, in whatever language, and Spanish is widely spoken in the US and beyond. I don't have particular insight to shed on that choice, perhaps the environments of the schools themselves would sway your decision.

We parents have both continued to study, ploddingly for those first couple of years and more seriously lately. Someday we may reach her fluency but, for now, she has to help us understand the real (local) language Chinese here. Having an 8 year old translate for you is humbling!

best wishes

Thanks for all the information. If Chinese grammer resembles English, I can only imagine how different Japanese must be. We'll likely choose Japanese for the reasons noted (with Mandarin studies on the side). The school will go K through 8 using immersion so I imagine learning the kanji will be a necessary part along the way.