Does knowledge of the written Chinese language assist when learning Japanese?
A knowledge of the written Chinese language does speed up the learning process quite substantially, but after reaching a certain level of proficiency, this ‘advantage’ levels out with, say, non-Chinese people at the same level. For example, whilst there is an advantage with the meanings of kanji words (kango), stroke orders, and the on (phonetic) readings of kanji characters, even people with a knowledge of Chinese may find it difficult to remember the kun (Japanese) readings of kanji characters, kanji characters unique to the Japanese language and so on.