[Johnngnky]

I read that for an English speaking person to speak Japanese fluently, it'd take 22,000 hours of studying.

I guess, because you also have to learn kanji.

Similarly,
The word for I/me

Mandarin 我 wo
Cantonese 我 ngǒ
Japanese kanji 私 (I don't know how to pronounce, but in Chinese it's si )
Hak-kâ-ngî 雁 ngan/ngaan


That shows that they are quite different.
Altough all came from Chinese.

If my memory serves me well, I believe 私 is pronounced, Matashi (Mahtahshee) which is obviously very different from Si.

Ah. 私， meaning "private" in Chinese.
Chinese characters are all monosyllabic, further proving my point that the Japanese has evolved from the classical Chinese language, mainly using pronunciation. (I have never studied Japanese)

On the other hand, Cantonese, ngǒ, has not as much difference than Mandarin Chinese.

Recently, I saw an article, saying beard cognates between Cantonese and English, altough being a language spoken the other side of the world. I found one that stuck to my mind;
附祿 ( fu lùk) means "fluke"(in a sense that you didn't mean it to happen, but fluked it)

Or

實Q （sǔt kiu) means "security guard"

Or

茄汁 (Kè jup) means ketchup ( 茄 means tomato, and 汁 means condiment)

I found that particularly interesting.

(I love talking about chinese, mainly because how interesting it is; no tenses, verbal aspect, voices etc.)

[Bobll]

English, French, Ukrainian, Russian.
Want to learn Spanish and German.