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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

#301

Post by lelanthran »

triyambakam wrote: post #296
lelanthran wrote: post #157

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. How many languages do you know? I live in a country with 11 official languages; please come stay for half a decade.

And no one is expecting you to know all 11. But I'm sure on average most people know more than ONE. which country anyways, India?

> And no one is expecting you to know all 11.

TBH, there's only one you need to know in order to feel like a native - english.

> But I'm sure on average most people know more than ONE.

Guilty, unfortunately. The non-english one I know is pointless, useless and has too much emotional baggage attached to it to make me happy about speaking it.

> which country anyways, India?

South Africa.

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#302

Post by vintermann »

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…

Hayes said he didn't speak much Japanese. That he speaks any at all, is probably evidence that he tried.

People vastly underestimate how hard it is to learn languages. A few people seem to have the knack for it, but the large majority of us don't. Especially not when we get older. Japanese is also famously hard for native English speakers.

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#303

Post by silvestrov »

cr1895 wrote: post #232
0xmarcin wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>learn Danish to B2 level, just in case e.g. an accident to be able to call a police or an ambulance. I don’t think Denmark is the best example here. English competency is _extremely_ high and Danish is quite a difficult language to grasp (as far as I know as an A2/B1 Swedish learner).

Danish is not difficult to grasp as it is mostly a mix of English and German words.

Pronunciation is a very difficult ballgame as Danish has sounds not in any of those languages. E.g. stød: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stød

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#304

Post by astrange »

jakobnissen wrote: post #250
astrange wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yes.

Oh, and forests are growing back some places too, though I don't know about the US on that one. (That's why technological advances are good - it's harder to get clean energy than is it to burn wood for warmth, but it's worth it once you have it.)

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#305

Post by luckylion »

pell wrote: post #280
trompetenaccoun wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Berlin is full of people with attitudes like that (both local and foreign), and that's part of the reason why the city is in such a sorry state. It's funny, in addition to those expats who only speak American/British you get a ton of immigrants who speak neither English nor German in a way that any sort of meaningful conversation would be possible. But it doesn't matter because no one cares, not even the government.…

>And then every other week in a moment of brief clarity, some of them wonder why nothing works, from mail delivery over construction to even just holding an election. Berlin has plenty of issues. But I don't think the points you raised here are meaningfully connected with people's language skills.

It's not about skill, it's about willingness to learn the language. It's about people not caring to learn the language and choosing to not be able to communicate with the people around them (except for that small bubble of their friends and the wait staff they expect to adapt to them).

That willful ignorance to anything around you is typically not limited to learning the language, and I agree that it seems to be at the core of Berlin's identity. Berliners love it. I loathe it, and I'd prefer not to send money to Berlin each year so they can continue in their ways.

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#306

Post by vinay427 »

moltar wrote: post #191
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…

What if a country has two official languages (Canada) or three (Switzerland) or eleven (South Africa)? Do you need to learn them all, as a foreigner? What about as a naturalized citizen? What about as a born citizen? What if a country has adopted English as another official language (Hong Kong, Malaysia). Do you still need to learn the other languages?

Switzerland has four official languages (Romansh was added in 1996 and was a "national language" since 1938).

In any case, particularly in Canada and Switzerland the official languages tend to be far more geographically divided than the unofficial languages in those countries, or the many languages in South Africa or much of India, or even Chinese in Singapore, Spanish in the US, etc. It's usually clear which subset of languages, official or otherwise, are useful for the city/region in which you live.

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#307

Post by vintermann »

haspok wrote: post #221
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…

Are your friends journalists whose job is literally to understand and translate what is happening around them? There is a guy working for the BBC in Budapest, Hungary, who learned to speak Hungarian quite well in the past ~3 decades. That shows dedication and enthusiasm, because Hungarian is one of the most useless languages to learn (in terms of the number of people you can speak with). Compared to that, learning Ja…

The US State Department classifies Japanese as a category IV language, "Super hard languages", languages which are exceptionally difficult for native English speakers. They estimate that you need 88 weeks, or 2200 class hours, to reach professional working level in it. That's if you're young, well-educated and very motivated.

By comparison, they estimate Romanian, Swedish and Spanish take 24-30 weeks, or 600-750 class hours.

Ten years is not much to just "pick up" Japanese, unless you're an exceptional linguistic talent.

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#308

Post by luckylion »

petodo wrote: post #204
ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

> 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…

> And why would I wanna speak with baker, cab driver, public transport workers, convenience store workers, deliverymen, etc.?

Yeah, why would you ever want to speak to people who aren't important. Fucking serfs, they should stay in their place and silently serve you.

I agree, that kind of person's opinion on the country around them can safely be ignored, because it's based on ignorance.

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#309

Post by tsukikage »

skhr0680 wrote: post #274
amrocha wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Vietnam and Korea have mostly dispensed with Chinese characters and are doing fine

Strangely enough, the official languages there are Vietnamese and Korean respectively, not Chinese or Japanese.

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#310

Post by petodo »

thablackbull wrote: post #293
petodo wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> I really wish Chinese switched completely to pinyin Perhaps Americans would take the first step and switch from imperial to metric, then we can discuss and tell everyone what to do.

Yes, they should, but not sure how is it relevant to what I WISHED for, I didn't tell anyone what to do and I'm clearly not an American.
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