Learning Japanese through Korean and Chinese

Considering that they're all Asian languages, many people would say that knowing Korean and Chinese facilitates the learning process of Japanese. Certainly, some similarities between the languages do exist. For example, the Japanese days of the week, which are named by the Five Elements, are surprisingly similar to the Korean names for weekdays. Then, certain Japanese words, such as "toshokan", "taishikan", and "denwa", are pronounced in a manner similar to Cantonese.

However, Japanese is still incredibly different from Korean and Chinese. Although Hiragana actually evolved from traditional Chinese characters, Japanese writing has evolved over such a long period of time. As a result, the form and sound of Japanese Hiragana no longer bear apparent similarities to their corresponding Chinese origins. This makes the Japanese writing system difficult to learn, not only for people of other foreign descent, but also for people of Asian descent.