Japanese vs Chinese: which is the best sounding?

[curupira]

Nicer or not, Chinese sounds more different and unusual than Japanese since it is a tonal language...

[Hubal]

Japanese sounds like Finnish

[Insuperable]

Japanese to me, but both languages are quite interesting.

[Guapo]

i'd like to hear what Ainu sounds like

[Selurong]

Japanese sounds more hawkish IMO.

Japanese


Chinese

I pick Chinese, why? Chinese has many sub-languages, Shanghainese, Cantonese and etc.

While Japan only has one language. Sure people can just pick out Mandarin alone and compare it to Japanese but what about the other Chinese languages? I am very sure that some other Chinese languages sound more refined and gracely than mere Japanese.

[Kemalisté]

Chinese (Mandarin) sounds a little bit like Turkish to me.

[Goujian]

Phonemica is down so I don't have much to show because there are plenty of regional dialects


Start off with northern dialects of Wu Chinese
Wu Chinese is the least tonal of the Chinese languages other than Old Chinese. There are usually three tones with a complex tone sandhi system, some of which are devolved into a two-tone Japanese-like pitch accent system such as Shanghainese. While being phonetically divergent from most Chinese varieties, a lot of its basic vocabulary originates from the Northern-Southern dynasties period. During the fall of the Western Jin and Northern Song dynasties, many refugees from an area covering northern Jiangsu, Shandong province, northern Anhui, Henan, Shanxi and Hebei province fled to the area between the Huai and Yangtze rivers. Eventually many of them also fled south of the Yangtze, to what is now southern Jiangsu, northern Zhejiang and Shanghai. At that point, the northern dialects started to diverge from the more southern and western dialects since it has an old Mandarin substratum which are still preserved in Jin Chinese of Shanxi, Jianghuai Mandarin and some southeastern dialects of Sichuanese Mandarin.

Suzhou dialect





Followed by Shanghainese





Ningbo dialect, language of most of my greatgrandparents


Hebei Mandarin vs Wuxi dialect - Narrator is from Wuxi and speaking in Wuxi dialect

[viro7872]

Japanese actually does have a ton of dialects too. Check out this map, every shaded area is a totally different dialect group: http://www.osakaben.jp
Grammar and words can differ considerably, as well as intonation. The Ryukyu dialects, and Kagoshima are almost completely incomprehensible compared to standard!　But even when comparing standard Japanese vs the kansai dialect which is relatively not that far removed, there are hundreds and hundreds of different words. There are even small differences between varieties of speech within the same dialect group. For example: Kyoto-ben and Osaka-ben are both classified as Kansai dialect, but even then there are some differences between the speech of each city. (ironically, the thing that stays exactly the same between dialects of Japanese is Sino-Japanese words).

Here's some examples:

"do not" is "shinai" in standard Japanese, but "sehen" in Kansai dialect.
"am doing" is "shiteiru" in standard Japanese, but "shitoru" in Kansai dialect.
Welcome is "oidenasutta" instead of standard "irasshaimase".
The word "desu" is "dosu" in Kyoto, and "dasu" or "da" in Osaka!
Osaka plain copula = "ya", polite copula = "da", "dasu"
Tokyo Standard plain copula = "da", polite = "desu"
The word "dakara" meaning "because" is "yasakai" in Kansai dialect.

Here's some phases for direct comparison:

言う　とい　たって　や
▽
　言っ　ておいて　あげて　ね
"tell him"
yuutoi tatte ya Osaka
itteoite agete ne Tokyo
変わら　へんね　やった　ら
▽
　変わら　な　かった　ら

kawara henne yatta ra Osaka
kawara na katta ra Tokyo
"if it doesn't change"
　あかん　ね　や
▽
　ダメ　なん　だ

akan ne ya O
dame nan da T
"It's no good"

ええ　ね　や　った　ら
▽
　いい　ん　だ　った　ら　

ee ne yatta ra O
iin datta ra T
"if it's okay"

　えらい　風邪　もろて　まんねん
▽
　大変な　風邪を　もらって　いるのです

erai kaze morote mannen O
taihen na kaze wo moratte iru no desu T
"I've got a terrible cold."

　はよう　しとくんなはれ
▽
　早く　してください
"Please hurry and do it."
hayou shitokun nahare O
hayaku shite kudasai T

And here's a simple Q&A in some Japanese dialects.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cmUKpiRU_M

And here's another video, where Japanese guy explains how Japanese 方言 hougen have completely different sets of words sometimes, rather than just different accent like English.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ph3CsQrvzwc

[zhaoyun]

Japanese actually does have a ton of dialects too. Check out this map, every shaded area is a totally different dialect group: http://www.osakaben.jp
Grammar and words can differ considerably, as well as intonation. The Ryukyu dialects, and Kagoshima are almost completely incomprehensible compared to standard!　But even when comparing standard Japanese vs the kansai dialect which is relatively not that far removed, there are hundreds and hundreds of different words. There are even small differences between varieties of speech within the same dialect group. For example: Kyoto-ben and Osaka-ben are both classified as Kansai dialect, but even then there are some differences between the speech of each city. (ironically, the thing that stays exactly the same between dialects of Japanese is Sino-Japanese words).

Here's some examples:

"do not" is "shinai" in standard Japanese, but "sehen" in Kansai dialect.
"am doing" is "shiteiru" in standard Japanese, but "shitoru" in Kansai dialect.
Welcome is "oidenasutta" instead of standard "irasshaimase".
The word "desu" is "dosu" in Kyoto, and "dasu" or "da" in Osaka!
Osaka plain copula = "ya", polite copula = "da", "dasu"
Tokyo Standard plain copula = "da", polite = "desu"
The word "dakara" meaning "because" is "yasakai" in Kansai dialect.

Here's some phases for direct comparison:

言う　とい　たって　や
▽
　言っ　ておいて　あげて　ね
"tell him"
yuutoi tatte ya Osaka
itteoite agete ne Tokyo
変わら　へんね　やった　ら
▽
　変わら　な　かった　ら

kawara henne yatta ra Osaka
kawara na katta ra Tokyo
"if it doesn't change"
　あかん　ね　や
▽
　ダメ　なん　だ

akan ne ya O
dame nan da T
"It's no good"

ええ　ね　や　った　ら
▽
　いい　ん　だ　った　ら　

ee ne yatta ra O
iin datta ra T
"if it's okay"

　えらい　風邪　もろて　まんねん
▽
　大変な　風邪を　もらって　いるのです

erai kaze morote mannen O
taihen na kaze wo moratte iru no desu T
"I've got a terrible cold."

　はよう　しとくんなはれ
▽
　早く　してください
"Please hurry and do it."
hayou shitokun nahare O
hayaku shite kudasai T

The difference is that the Japanese dialects are more like different heavy accents, while the Chinese dialects are in fact different languages altogether (as separate as the Latin languages are to one another).

Anyways, I think Japanese in general sounds more pleasant. Standard Mandarin also sounds good. The eastern Wu dialects are also pleasant sounding. Most of the Southern Chinese languages are annoying sounding to be honest.

[Kalimtari]

Chinese is softer, more poetic/suitable for poetry