Advice Chinese (Mandarin), Japanese or Korean?

Chiarizka

Member
Hello everyone!
I wanted to ask your opinion on this topic, which is related to the film industry but at the same time to different cultures!
I really would like to learn an Asian language, but I want to make it to be useful for my future career as a screenwriter.
Which one do you think I should choose and why?
I'm currently struggling a lot because I can't decide... I really love Japanese movies and their culture, but I know that right now their industry is not great. From the other hand, I don't know much about the Chinese industry but it's growing a lot... but they have many restrictions and maybe the quality right now is not that great (??). And what about the Korean industry?
Do let me know what you guys think, it would be very helpful to know your thoughts!!
Thanks a lot :)
 
China has a bigger box-office market than the other the two... but I feel like Korea has produced some of the finest films in recent history
but you are right about the restriction in China, as I Chinese myself, i can tell you it is pretty bad... like they will cut all the censor even if it will make the movie illogical or like weird
 
First of all, I think it is not that important (nor efficient) to learn the language if you want to write stories that appeal to a certain cultural group. To be honest, recent efforts that try to appeal to Chinese audiences have mostly flopped (e.g. Mulan) because they 1. are not historically accurate 2. have strange perceptions of Chinese culture 3. try so hard to attract Chinese audiences that they even seem silly. So the best way I suggest is just to collaborate with artists from that background.
Secondly, Chinese movies suffer from a lot of restrictions :) Can confirm.
The 3 languages you mentioned are very different, though they are kind of related to Chinese characters (Hanzi, 汉字). Japanese is easiest in terms of pronunciations, then Korean, then Chinese. Grammarly, I do not know Korean, but Japanese has quite a strict grammar system, it has tenses, inflictions and follows an SOV-pattern which was very different from English. But I have heard of tales that Japanese and Korean are grammatically similar. For vocabulary, they are just difficult for everybody :).
 
Hi everyone,

Thanks a lot for all your answers! As I wrote this in August, I've already chosen my language and, in the end, I decided on Mandarin :) I asked my AFI's professors (screenwriting course), and they all suggested Mandarin for a lot of reasons (if you're interested, I'll be more than okay with sharing them with you all).

So thanks again for all your answers!! I hope you're safe during these crazy times... Happy a wonderful week ahead!
 
Hi everyone,

Thanks a lot for all your answers! As I wrote this in August, I've already chosen my language and, in the end, I decided on Mandarin :) I asked my AFI's professors (screenwriting course), and they all suggested Mandarin for a lot of reasons (if you're interested, I'll be more than okay with sharing them with you all).

So thanks again for all your answers!! I hope you're safe during these crazy times... Happy a wonderful week ahead!
I'd love to hear your professor's reasons for Mandarin!!
 
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