Interesting read. I have always heard that for English speakers Chinese pronunciation is hard but grammar is easy, while it's the opposite for Japanese: easy pronunciation and hard grammar. You seem to back up that "common knowledge". I enjoyed reading your comparison.
Before I moved to Japan some 20 years ago, I was really into Tai Chi which led to being interested in the classical philosophy and so on, so I did learn some Chinese. But that all went on pause when I moved to Japan and I've never returned to it. It might be interesting to return to again one of these days. I've always thought Korean would be the next language I want to learn, but maybe I should look at Chinese again. (and by Chinese I mean Mandarin of course)
You heard right then. But the pronunciation gets easy fast. I think it’s way easier than a lot of other languages, just not as easy as some European languages for an English speaker. Cantonese is wash more difficult pronunciation, forget about Vietnamese or Thai. Feel free to use Mandarin with me 😉