Is Chinese easier to learn after learning Japanese or vice versa?
It’s hard to say for sure whether J then C is easier than C then J, as nobody can try both routes… but I have done J then C, so can make a few comments. Having learned Japanese (fluently) many years ago, and married a Japanese lady, we both started learning Mandarin just over a year ago. We both found that we had a great advantage over other people in the class because we could read many of the characters (and identify the ones different from Japanese more easily). Some parts of the grammar are similar, but Chinese word order is in general closer to English than Japanese (so in that sense, learning Japanese first could help as Chinese is *comparatively* easy). The pronunciations of most characters are fairly similar to Japanese on-yomi (again, as Japanese as multiple readings for most characters but Chinese seldom more than one, this means Chinese is *comparatively* easy). However, Chinese tones are difficult (you really need to make sure you learn them properly with each word, right
