Chinese Hanzi vs. Japanese Kanji

[Zegpoddle]

I have a few questions for any forum members who have some familiarity with the writing systems in both Chinese and Japanese:

(1) How similar are the appearances of the Japanese Kanji and the Chinese Hanzi? Are they written exactly the same (i.e. same strokes), or were the hanzi modified in significant ways when they were imported into Japanese? In other words, if you have learned the characters in one of these languages, how easy is it to recognize and write the characters in the other language? (I’m referring to hanzi and kanji only, not to the hiragana and katakana syllable alphabets that are unique to Japanese.)

(2) Does the same hold true for the meaning as well as the appearance? If you can read Japanese kanji and you see the same (or a very similar) character in Chinese writing, or vice versa (you know hanzi and you see a similar-looking kanji), does the meaning also tend to be the same or closely related? Or is being able to read in one language of no help at all in understanding the written language of the other? In other words, if you read Japanese and pick up a Chinese newspaper, or the other way around, what percentage of the article do you estimate you would be able to understand? (I’m just thinking about silent reading here. Obviously the characters would be pronounced in completely different ways in the two languages.)

(3) In general, which style of Chinese characters are closest in form (appearance) to Japanese kanji: simplified characters as used in mainland PRC, or traditional characters as used in Taiwan and Hong Kong?

(4) If you studied both Japanese and Chinese as non-native languages, do you feel that learning the writing system of one of these languages gave you a significant boost or head-start in learning to read and write in the other?

[leosmith]

(1) How similar are the appearances of the Japanese Kanji and the Chinese Hanzi? Are they written exactly the same (i.e. same strokes), or were the hanzi modified in significant ways when they were imported into Japanese?

Most kanji (80%?) look exactly the same as traditional Hanzi, although some stroke orders are different. Some are similar to traditional but not exact. Some are the same as simplified. Some are unique.

(2) Does the same hold true for the meaning as well as the appearance? If you can read Japanese kanji and you see the same (or a very similar) character in Chinese writing, or vice versa (you know hanzi and you see a similar-looking kanji), does the meaning also tend to be the same or closely related? Or is being able to read in one language of no help at all in understanding the written language of the other? In other words, if you read Japanese and pick up a Chinese newspaper, or the other way around, what percentage of the article do you estimate you would be able to understand?

Characters that look alike usually have the same meanings. Some have several meanings, with both languages sharing at least one. Some don't share meanings at all. Native Japanese speaker say they can get the gist of a Chinese newspaper, but I don't know what percentage that means. I'm only an intermediate reader of both languages, so I'd rather not hazard a guess.

(3) In general, which style of Chinese characters are closest in form (appearance) to Japanese kanji: simplified characters as used in mainland PRC, or traditional characters as used in Taiwan and Hong Kong?

traditional

(4) If you studied both Japanese and Chinese as non-native languages, do you feel that learning the writing system of one of these languages gave you a significant boost or head-start in learning to read and write in the other?

Yes, it's a huge head start, but there is still a ton of work.

[Sizen]

An important note to make about Chinese characters is that there are tens of thousands and that in modern, practical use, only a small subset of these characters is ever used. On the one hand, the Japanese government recognizes 2136 regular-use characters to be taught in school, along with 862 characters for names. In practice, however, most Japanese people will come across many characters that do not fit into either category on a daily basis, especially if they are avid readers. In China, on the other hand, the government recognizes 8105 General Standard Chinese Characters (3500 taught in school, 3000 used in industrial publications and 1605 in names, scientific terms and traditional literature). This is once again not to say that characters outside of these lists cannot be found. I don’t have any specific figures for Taiwan or Hong Kong unfortunately, but it is likely a number of similar magnitude to Mainland China.

1) The characters can range from being exactly the same, to exactly the same but with different stroke order, to slightly different, to entirely different, to not existing in the other scripts. On the whole, a large portion of the shared characters are recognizable no matter which set you’re familiar with.
Simplified has a number of characters that are radically changed from their Traditional equivalents, but also has regular simplifications of radicals that only slightly change the appearance of a character.
Japanese is somewhere between Traditional and Simplified, sharing a number of characters with both. It also has its own Japanese-made characters that don’t appear in either Traditional or Simplified and its own way simplifying certain characters.

Some examples:
Green JP: 緑 SM: 绿 TR: 綠 All different. (Although the Traditional character can still be used in Japanese.)
Learn JP: 学 SM: 学 TR: 學 Both Simplified and Japanese are the same.
Justice JP: 義 SM: 义 TR: 義 Both Traditional and Japanese are the same.
Dragon JP: 竜/龍 SM : 龙 TR: 龍 Both Traditional and Japanese are the same, but Japanese also has a simplified variant that differs from the Simplified Chinese variant.
Kite JP: 凧 SM: N/A TR: N/A Japanese has its own character of unique origin.
To have JP:有 SM: 有 TR: 有 All are the same, but stroke order is different between Japanese and Chinese.

2) There are plenty of cognates and false-friends between the two languages, but whereas with Spanish and Portuguese, a knowledge of one will grant a very modest understanding of the other, this is not the case with Japanese and any Chinese languages. Knowing one will give you the occasional glimpse into the other, but no more. I would tend to think a Japanese person with an expansive knowledge of Chinese characters would, however, get more out of looking at a document written in Chinese than vice-versa.
There are two main reasons for this: 1) the two languages have no genetic relation. In other words, their grammars are very different and their vocabularies, too. 2) Much of Japanese is written using Kana, which is entirely opaque to speakers of Chinese languages, and much of Chinese is written using characters that are unfamiliar to speakers of Japanese.

3) Japanese contains many Traditional and Simplified character. I don’t have any hard data, but my experience going from Japanese to Mandarin was that Traditional made me feel more “at home” despite the differences.

4) A good knowledge of either Japanese or Chinese does without a doubt make learning to read/write the other easier, but not a walk in the park. Going from Japanese to Chinese, you’ll have to learn thousands of new characters alongside their readings, which luckily bear resemblance to the Japanese on readings of similar characters. Going from Chinese to Japanese, you’ll have to learn a small number of new characters and thousands of new character readings, known as kun readings, which bear no resemblance to the Chinese ones.