Today, Japanese is about the only non-Chinese language that still uses Chinese characters (kanji) in everyday writing, with the slight exception of South Korea, where Chinese characters (hanja) are occasionally used. This sometimes raises the question: If both languages share the same characters, can Japanese and Chinese speakers understand each other?
The short answer: spoken, no — written, sometimes.
Why Spoken Japanese and Chinese Aren’t Intelligible
Although Japan and China are geographically close, their languages belong to entirely different language families. Japanese is part of the Japonic language family, while Chinese belongs to the Sino-Tibetan family.
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Word order: Chinese follows an SVO (subject–verb–object) structure, while Japanese uses SOV (subject–object–verb).
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Tones: Chinese is a tonal language, where pitch changes the meaning of a word. Japanese, by contrast, is not tonal in the same way.
As a result, when spoken aloud, the two languages are almost completely unintelligible to each other.
Written Language: Some Overlap
Since both languages use Chinese characters, there is some partial overlap in writing. A Japanese reader might recognize the basic meaning of a Chinese text, and vice versa — but only in fragments. In most cases, only a handful of words here and there are understood.
Kanji Readings: On'yomi and Kun'yomi
Another major difference lies in how characters are read.
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Chinese: In most dialects (Mandarin, Cantonese, etc.), each character typically has one fixed pronunciation, with only rare exceptions.
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Japanese: Most kanji have multiple readings — usually divided into on'yomi (音読み) and kun'yomi (訓読み).
The on'yomi are readings imported from Chinese at different points in history, adapted to Japanese phonetics. Some of these are said to resemble modern Cantonese. The kun'yomi readings, on the other hand, come from native Japanese words that were matched with Chinese characters.
This system puzzles some Chinese speakers who study Japanese, since the same character can be read in several different ways depending on context.
Kana: Another Layer of Difference
On top of kanji, the Japanese writing system includes two phonetic alphabets: hiragana and katakana.
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Hiragana is used for grammatical elements and native words.
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Katakana is used mainly for foreign loanwords, names, onomatopoeia, and technical terms.
This makes Japanese writing look very different from Chinese, even though they share kanji.
Example: Can You Spot the Similarities?
Here is an example sentence in English, Japanese, and Chinese (Mandarin):
English:
The shrine maiden got angry at the angels sitting carefree on top of the torii, enjoying the moon-viewing.
Japanese:
巫女は鳥居の上に座って呑気に月見を楽しんでいる天使達に腹を立てていた。
Traditional Chinese (Taiwan):
那位巫女對那些悠閒地坐在鳥居上賞月的天使們覺得很生氣。
Simplified Chinese (Mainland China):
那位巫女对那些悠闲地坐在鸟居上赏月的天使们感到生气。
You can see that while some words overlap, the sentence as a whole is not mutually intelligible.
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