I've heard that apparently, Japanese pronunciation is simpler to pick up (anime, games, etc). when you hear it spoken. As in, when foreigners learn it: they find that easier to listen to than spoken Mandarin since there's no tones in Japanese (rather pitch accent, but it's not the same as it could be understood based on context even if said wrong) while Mandarin places a huge emphasis on tones that change the definition completely.

Also, how does spoken Japanese sound to the ear when you either watch subtitled anime when you compare that to anime being dubbed in Mandarin? I know that one of my friends watches Asian dramas and prefers either Japanese or Korean audio over Mandarin for some reason (I'd assume it has to do with accent and how a language sounds when spoken). Is Mandarin dubbed anime even good or does it sound bad?

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[–] 2 points 5 hours ago

It depends on what you already know, if you don't know any tonal language already then learning your first tonal language will obviously be an additional hurdle.

That said, Chinese is considerably easier to learn than Japanese in many other ways, such as the basic grammar being remarkably straightforward.

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