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Japan has changed in important and visible ways

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Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#241

Post by asimpletune »

notch656c wrote: post #222
Aaronmacaron wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really believe this. Of course some people have more of a tendency to be good at languages than others but I think the guy from you story probably didn't try hard enough or maybe had a completely wrong approach. There are many countries where virtually all people speak a foreign language which shows that it is possible for almost anybody to pick up another language.

There is a theory that children have a "language acquisition device" that goes from muscular brawn to a flubby dough-boy with age in most people. IDK if that's accurate but there does seem to be something to it. The countries where everybody is multi-lingual this almost assuredly happens in middle to early childhood.

I think one of the problems is that many people know about this child super power and then give up. OTH, I live in Italy which is full of adult African immigrants, and they all speak Italian.

The fact is any adult can learn any language, they just either don’t have to or don’t want to. I’m not saying it’s easy or it’s the best decision for every situation, but it’s definitely possible. This is true even more so if it’s a popular language with a lot of resources to learn it, and you live in the country where practice is virtually free.

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#242

Post by petodo »

zirgs wrote: post #236
petodo wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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... And why would I wanna speak with baker, cab driver, publi…

In many countries governments are only allowed to communicate in the official language. So stuff like tax forms or whatever will not be available in any other languages. You'll have to get a translator yourself.

> Honestly only place where you need to speak local language is communication with gov officials

That's what I wrote. But how often you deal with gov officials and various forms, on average once or twice a year? Is it worth learning whole new language to fill bunch of forms, which can be filled with help of friend within few minutes?

Btw. officials are not allowed LEGALLY communicate with you in other than official language (in letters, official forms). In spoken language it's their word against your word in case of argument, so there is no reason (other than being lazy) to not hold informal communication in English, if the official is nice/welcoming person (and it's actually required in some positions with foreigners, despite legal documents being only in local language).

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#243

Post by makeitdouble »

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…

You’re right that one might only need English to live in a given country.

But then how much insight has that person into how other people think (they can’t hold a conversation with the vast majority of non english speaking people), or access to local news and studies...

I think many Spanish speaking countries are in the same boat: not speaking the local language means you end up in a foreign friendly bubble with limited access to anything that didn’t get picked up by that english speaking sphere, which will often include the really interesting stuff.

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#244

Post by Broken_Hippo »

rullelito wrote: post #96
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…

> 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. You haven't been to Sweden then.

Same for Norway.

If your Norwegian isn't good enough (even if it is just that one day or you are having a moment), folks quickly switch to English.

Some Norwegians have trouble understanding other Norwegians as well and wind up using English. Dialects vary greatly from the written language and they just sound... different. Children start learning when they enter school (6 years old) and I think half of the graffiti is in English.

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#245

Post by peoplefromibiza »

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…

> I agree with you in principle. In practice English is often all you need if you live in a big city

that might be true in Europe (not everywhere though) or in the US, it is certainly not true in Japan.

There is also a fatigue associated to speaking English for non native speakers that often leads to being identified as the "foreigner" and in practice you end up hanging out only with other English speaking "foreigners".

You also miss a lot about the local culture, because the language barrier forces you to only visit places where people speak English.

It is like living in Poland and never eat pierogi.

> 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

Poland is good (but not great) in that sense, a lot of people speak English, many of them don't speak it well enough to actually hold a meaningful conversation with a native speaker. I understand them as a non native speaker, but I also recognize many of the mistakes in the construction of the sentences they make (and that I make as well).

But that's not true in general, not even in rich and well educated Europe

See

https://cache.eupedia.com/images/content/English_speakers_Eu...

Now the real advantage of speaking some local language is knowing a lingua franca.

It's not uncommon here in Italy to witness a conversation between immigrants coming from wildly different backgrounds (say, for example, North Africa and Eastern Europe) happening in Italian. Their version of Italian, of course, but it's good enough to communicate and they also can practice the language they actually need to interact with Italians.

Of course it takes a lot of time to learn a new language, especially if the language doesn't even have the same alphabet you already know, but after 10 years I would expect to actually have learned at least the basics of it.

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#246

Post by [deleted] »

asimpletune wrote: post #241
notch656c wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a theory that children have a "language acquisition device" that goes from muscular brawn to a flubby dough-boy with age in most people. IDK if that's accurate but there does seem to be something to it. The countries where everybody is multi-lingual this almost assuredly happens in middle to early childhood.

I think one of the problems is that many people know about this child super power and then give up. OTH, I live in Italy which is full of adult African immigrants, and they all speak Italian. The fact is any adult can learn any language, they just either don’t have to or don’t want to. I’m not saying it’s easy or it’s the best decision for every situation, but it’s definitely possible. This is true even more so if it…

[deleted]

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#247

Post by amrocha »

petodo wrote: post #173
noch wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Do you actually speak Chinese or Japanese? Because either of those languages with phonetic characters would be a nightmare imo.

The characters actually make it easier to learn the language imo, and anyone who claims otherwise hasn't actually tried to learn seriously

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#248

Post by paganel »

hogepiyo wrote: post #124
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…

I've lived in Germany myself (NRW). Idk, from my experience it's cool if you're in the young professional tech bubble but when you step outside of that it didn't feel good to me personally. Going out into smaller towns / cities to me at least it rapidly became evident that you're missing something. Maybe I'm old fashioned or something. I still think there's something to be said for learning the local language (and c'…

Especially as the guy was a journalist, he was supposed to go into "smaller towns / cities" and write about the people in there.

Surprised though that the BBC hasn't put that as a requirement before sending him to Japan for a 10-year stint. Afaik The Economist requires of their potential correspondents that they know Chinese before posting them to China, and this is why many of their Chaguan China-focused editorials are really interesting (for example in the latest one [1] the Economist journalist takes a train ride before the Chinese New Year and talks with Chinese people with whom he shares the ride)

[1] https://archive.is/85RX3

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#249

Post by petodo »

mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #226
petodo wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I spent about half my year in Japan and half my year in Sweden and I speak both languages. Yeah, I really doubt that you can move to Japan with zero Japanese and in half year learn enough to hold normal conversation and be able to read/write Japanese, all that while working full time and not being immersed every day in Japanese language course.

It's perfectly possible to learn a language in 6 months if you spend a lot of your time conversing in it, avoiding English as much as possible. They also said "speak", not "write". It's possible and even natural to learn one and not the other.

Almost anything is possible, even time travel, it's just not very realistic under certain circumstances. In case of learning Japanese in 6 months while working full time in English speaking enviroment with 0 Japanese foundations to start with.

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#250

Post by jakobnissen »

astrange wrote: post #135
Xixi wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading "The Limits to Growth" and having a passing understanding of the consequences of global warming will have you start to ask these kind of questions fairly quickly. The Shift Project [1] did exactly that for France: they elaborated a plan to completely transform the French economy with the explicit goal of not wrecking climate further, aptly called "Le Plan de transformation de l'économie française" (I assume t…

Degrowth is completely false and is basically cope invented by the British to explain why it's actually good that their economy is so bad. Economic growth does not mean using more resources (because that's expensive), it means more productive use of the same resources. The US emits less carbon and uses less water than it did in the 60s with a much larger economy. (70s US degrowth environmentalism, like Limits to Grow…

Does that also factor into account that manufacturing has largely been moved to other countries? That is, does the average US consumer spend fewer resources than in 1960, taking imports into account?

I'd guess resource usage has grown a LOT

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