throwaway66554

Or, more quantitatively, the Joyo Kanji has 364 simplified characters out of 2,136 (~17%) [1] while the mainland China simplified probably about 2,000 out of 7,000 common characters (~28%) [2].

It's 17% and 28%, but much, much higher for the most commonly used characters, which is where the divergence between simplified and traditional grows even more.

This divergence is not the biggest deal, but still big enough to refute the claim that Japanese is easier to learn because it's "non-simplified" (there may be other valid reasons though).

I didn't make that claim. Maybe your talking about another thread?

It's not that it's easier to learn, it's that the path of going Japanese -> Korean -> Chinese is the easier, most logical path. The diverging simplified Chinese standard characters being a large reason behind that.

Uh, both Japan and Chinese use different simplified glyphs.

Wrong. Though there are divergences, Chinese in mainland China use simplified Chinese characters (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Chinese_character...).

Kanji is more closely related to the traditional Chinese characters (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji#Local_developments_and_d...) than the mainland simplification.

I would be surprised if you indeed learned the traditional characters while learning Japanese.

Kanji is closer related, or exactly the same as traditional Chinese characters (used in HK, Taiwan, etc.) than simplified.

Because when you learn Japanese, you have to learn kanji, the more traditional strokes (non-simplified), both Japanese and Chinese sounds, and the grammar is closer to Korean (and closer pronunciation for a lot of words).

So, it's better to learn Japanese, quickly pick up Korean, then learn Chinese.

Chinese last since you have to learn simplified characters, the grammar is different, tonality is quite different, etc.

Learning Chinese is like learning Latin before learning a Romance language.

The added benefit is that Chinese isn’t a dead language.

I wouldn't go that far. It's more like learning Greek and hearing many of the same root words, sounds, etymology, etc. in English.

An Italian speaker can listen to Latin and grok maybe 25%. A Japanese speaker can listen to Chinese and get maybe 2%, max.

Words like "library" use the same Chinese letters, and have very similar pronunciations, but that's about the extent.

I'd say the best way to learn would be Japanese, Korean, then Chinese (what I did).

Source: I speak Japanese, Korean, and Chinese.