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Japan has changed in important and visible ways

noahpinion.substack.com

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Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#171

Post by graymatters »

hogepiyo wrote: post #92

It's difficult to take the author of the article being repudiated (Wingfield-Hayes) seriously when he has lived here for over 10 years and doesn't speak the language. Any other person who lived in a country for a decade and can't converse in the language would be (rightfully imo) shamed for it. Idk, say what you like about how journalists operate but living somewhere for a decade and not speaking the language doesn't…

Ability to learn new languages (as an adult) follows normal distribution. Moreover, the further the new language is from one’s mother tongue the more difficult it is. Furthermore, people who excel in mother tongue (with enhanced writing and expressive abilities) often fall on the lower end of the spectrum with the ability to learn new languages. Shaming people over that is quite … shameful.

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#172

Post by perryizgr8 »

> Basing wealth on productive assets instead of unproductive land

Land that is used for housing or industry is the opposite of "unproductive". In fact, next to intellectual property, I would argue that land is the most valuable asset. I feel if it true that land and house values in Japan always depreciate, we must investigate why. It might tell us the root cause behind the country's decline.

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#173

Post by petodo »

noch wrote: post #147
sho_hn wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Any other person who lived in a country for a decade and can't converse in the language would be (rightfully imo) shamed for it. I'm German, living in Berlin, and have wonderful friends who fit that description. They live full lives, and I couldn't care less about their German levels. They do enough good things with their time they put their energy into instead. People should learn languages if they feel a reason t…

> They live full lives, and I couldn't care less about their German levels. They do enough good things with their time they put their energy into instead. What an odd mindset. Anecdotally, prior generations of Europeans (and expatriates) valued being multilingual. Having a working knowledge of German, Italian, French, English was fun, valuable, and normal especially when doing business in diverse countries and with d…

> Having a working knowledge of German, Italian, French, English was fun, valuable, and normal especially when doing business in diverse countries and with diverse peoples.

That's nice with all these very similar languages using latin alphabet and now try it with Chinese characters and tones in China or at least kanji/hiragana without tones in Japan. Characters are huge barrier when learning the language, because you don't see words to memorize everywhere you look, you see just bunch of strokes. I really wish Chinese switched completely to pinyin as Vietnamese did (and Chinese intended, but didn't finish), it would remove huge barrier in communication (and also tehcnologically wise, after all most of the Chinese already write pinyin anyway on smartphones/computers, which just transcribe their pinyin back to characters) and people would realize Chinese is actually very simple language, where you don't have tenses, plural, etc.

As someone speaking English/German and my other two mother languages I can still understand some Italian, French or Dutch (which is basically English mixed with German by drunk sailor), because of how similar these languages are, so picking up some of them would be very easy compared to Chinese/Japanese (well at least Japanese has much more loaned words from English than Chinese).

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#174

Post by petodo »

ManuelKiessling wrote: post #161
hogepiyo wrote: post #92

It's difficult to take the author of the article being repudiated (Wingfield-Hayes) seriously when he has lived here for over 10 years and doesn't speak the language. Any other person who lived in a country for a decade and can't converse in the language would be (rightfully imo) shamed for it. Idk, say what you like about how journalists operate but living somewhere for a decade and not speaking the language doesn't…

It’s the one thing where I’m That Old White Man by now. My favorite is user groups meetups in Germany where there are one or two people who don’t speak German, and then request the talk to be held in English. Imagine me attending a meetup in London as the only German and requesting to have the talk held in German. It would be ridiculous.

German is not lingua franca spoken by people all around world, so yes, this comparison is ridiculous comparing lanugage taught everywhere in world with niche language, which is less popular than Chinese as foreign language.

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#175

Post by astrange »

timr wrote: post #166
astrange wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a popular Japanese streamer who had a whole mental breakdown character arc since she was studying abroad in Australia and couldn't go home for a year or two because they wouldn't let her back in if she did. And being in Melbourne she couldn't leave the house for some of that either.

I assume you mean that Australia wouldn't let her back in. Japan never closed the borders to citizens. They did make it annoying to come back, however. Several different friends had to do long quarantines in not-great facilities.

Right, if she wanted to finish school she couldn't leave Australia.

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#176

Post by djtango »

0xmarcin wrote: post #153
hogepiyo wrote: post #92

It's difficult to take the author of the article being repudiated (Wingfield-Hayes) seriously when he has lived here for over 10 years and doesn't speak the language. Any other person who lived in a country for a decade and can't converse in the language would be (rightfully imo) shamed for it. Idk, say what you like about how journalists operate but living somewhere for a decade and not speaking the language doesn't…

I agree with you in principle. In practice English is often all you need if you live in a big city. When I look at my country (Poland), I can see that a person can live in Warsaw (capital city) or any of the biggest 5 cities without knowing any Polish. Even having an appointment with english speaking doctor is not a problem. OTOH when you adventure outside of big cities you suddenly find yourself in a land where nobo…

It's about making the effort to assimilate with your host country. Embracing and empathising with their way of life which begins with learning their language.

I've always found it frustrating whenever I meet people who don't try to integrate with the country they're living in - both when I've lived at home and in foreign countries...

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#177

Post by petodo »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #3

I thought this was a good read, but I think there are some things he minimizes. For example, he talks about increasing foreign worker visas, but only has this sentence about citizenship: > Permanent residents are allowed to apply for Japanese citizenship after five years. I recall reading a news article from a few years ago that said that the Japanese citizenship test is almost impossible to the point that few people…

> Permanent residents are allowed to apply for Japanese citizenship after five years.

Is it really strange though? It's same in Czechia, first you must hold temporary residency for at least 5 years before gaining permanent residency, then after 5 years of permanent residency you can apply for Czech citizenship, so it takes minimum 10 years to apply for Czech citizenship, by then most foreigners who moved here are already gone.

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#178

Post by robocat »

onethought wrote: post #167
defrost wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

English speakers are notorious for not bothering to learn local languages, eg: Migrants failing to assimilate, 200-year-study finds Migrants to Australia have displayed an inability to assimilate with local values and refuse to speak anything but their native tongue, a study covering the last 200 years has found. The study confirms a popularly-held belief in parts of the country that migrants simply refuse to fit in.…

This is about non English speakers not learning English. I’m missing some sarcasm?

It is referring to English colonisation of Australia a few hundred years ago. The English did not learn the indigenous languages there, and they brought English law with them. It also refers to the fact that a lot of convicts were sent to Australia.

Joke: An Englishman gets off the plane, and immigration asks him if he has any criminal convictions. He replies “I didn’t know you still needed one”.

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#179

Post by MrBuddyCasino »

> In recent years, the Abe administration has adopted major changes that will probably sustain the influx of immigrants.

Imagine seeing Japan, a still functioning high civilization, and thinking it needs to import all the west‘s problems. Imagine visiting Paris, and thinking it has improved instead of deteriorated compared to its 1900s version.

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#180

Post by ad404b8a372f2b9 »

314 wrote: post #143
donw wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If one can't bother learning the language of the country in which they live, any opinion one might have on that country can be safely discarded.

This take is a bit basic.

It's not verbose but it seems pretty self-evident to me. In Europe most people speak only the local language and little English, if you don't speak the language you're not integrated.

Your local businesses won't speak English, your baker, the cab drivers, the people working the public transport, at your local convenience store, the government officials, the deliverymen, your child's school-teacher, other parents at school, 90% of the people you will cross path with on the street, most written and recorded information about local events...

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