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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

#401

Post by bobthepanda »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #101
bobthepanda wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japanese university entrance exams are also notoriously difficult; if it weren’t for the declining birth rate, the exams would probably be a push rather than a pull factor for students, the same way large numbers of South Korean and Chinese students try and opt out of their similarly hard exams.

> the same way large numbers of South Korean and Chinese students try and opt out of their similarly hard exams. Chinese university entrance exams can be hard or easy, but in either case it doesn't really matter because admissions are done on a quota system. When I was looking at score data a few years ago, the threshold for being admitted to a second-tier (二本) university was around the 40th percentile, which is to s…

The difficulty is not necessarily just the test but its structure.

Gaokao et. al. are held once a year, if you want to retry you need to wait a full calendar year, and the single-time test covers all subjects simultaneously. To compare to SATs, those can be retaken multiple times a year, and the non-core subjects are separate, so any individual sitting is much lower stakes.

It is not exactly a secret that a big push factor for Chinese and South Korean university students is how competitive their local systems are.

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#402

Post by argiopetech »

jhbadger wrote: post #357
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…

Japanese is rated as either the #1 or #2 hardest language for a native English speaker to learn (and the reverse is true which explains why you often run into people with little or no English there as opposed to in, say, Western Europe, where many people are practically natively fluent in English). People can and do learn Japanese, but it isn't something that one can easily learn in their spare time the way English s…

I hear this frequently, but disagree strongly, at least regarding the spoken language. As a native English speaker who learned Japanese easily to the "could get by as a tourist" level with two semesters of college classes and minimal self study, I find French much harder (and I took 4 years during high school).

Unlike many southeastern Asiatic languages, Japanese doesn't have any sounds that the average English speaker doesn't already know how to make (possible exception in the 'l' sound, but, if you can roll your 'r's, it's the same tongue position). There are no articles, only two tenses, relatively normal conjugations (though adjective conjugation is odd relative to English), no declension, and sentence structure has strong hints of Latin. The simple-polite forms of verbs are sufficient for daily use. Pitch accent and ga vs. wa are hard to pick up without immersion, but neither are necessary to be understood.

The written language is a different story. Lots of memorization. The hiragana and katakana come quickly, but there are a lot of kanji. Probably not needed for tourists (particularly in the day of image translation on phones), but still a factor. Arguably still easier than Mandarin in that regard, though.

Additionally, there are an overabundance of resources for Japanese learners. The economic potential of American occupation under MacArthur and the subsequent boom years, the enduring popularity of Zen Buddhism, and the rise of anime's popularity in the West have likely all contributed to Japanese being one of the best-supported Asiatic languages in academia and self-study courses. Its support in the USA is exceeded (in my estimation) only by Mandarin due to the large immigrant population and ongoing trends in trade.

In short, I'm sure the number of native English speakers who can "get by" in Tokyo eclipses the total number of native English speakers with basic Lao, Thai, Khmer, Vietnamese, and probably even Mandarin skills.

Just one datum.

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#403

Post by nequo »

vintermann wrote: post #307
haspok wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 clas…

I can’t help but think that the interaction between you and parent is based on a misunderstanding. By “no brainer,” I think parent didn’t mean that Japanese is easier than Hungarian but that Japanese is much more useful than Hungarian in that you can speak it with around 10 times more people on Earth.

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#404

Post by brigandish »

flippinburgers wrote: post #359

It seems disrespectful to not learn the language to a passing degree.

I might say that if you tried learning it then you'd realise that it's very difficult, but the real reason is that in most cases it's just not worth it. Virtually useless to know outside of the country, and if you're inside you either know it well enough or you have a job that doesn't require it (like all the English teachers and programmers) and enough support to get by without it.

I say this as a resident who is grinding his way through the language daily because I want to, but I am aware it's really a bit of waste of time like any other hobby.

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#405

Post by monting »

AlchemistCamp wrote: post #67
monting wrote: post #56

I recently spent 3 months in Tokyo and I have say, that the quality of life, service, food, consumer products, safety, air/noise pollution, are the best I've seen anywhere. It's especially pleasing given that the prices are very low in comparison to other world-class cities. I did, however, witness prices rising during the time I was there. It's hard to see how Tokyo might have been stagnating given the quality of li…

In the 90s, Taiwan was much poorer than Japan, but its per capita GDP is now at parity with Japan and likely passed it last quarter. Occasionally, I’ll visit an area I knew from 15 years ago and it will feel like a completely different city. In particular, it’s shocking how much better the infrastructure and transportation has gotten. The cities have a lot more green areas interspersed into them also.

It brings me no joy to say this.

Taiwan's numbers looks good on paper (until you dig further), but the reality on the pavement, or lackthereof, is dire. The noise, air, visual pollution are as bad as it was from 30 years ago, maybe worse. Traffic is bad, and salary to cost of living is extreme.

Japan's numbers look bad. But its quality of life is one of the best in the world.

Has there been progress in infrastructure/housing in Taiwan? Sure, in small areas, such as new housing developments, where all the capital sits, extracting rent or sitting empty, contributing nothing.

We need to do better, raise our standards. Otherwise we're going to get left behind even further.

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#406

Post by notch656c »

monting wrote: post #405
AlchemistCamp wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the 90s, Taiwan was much poorer than Japan, but its per capita GDP is now at parity with Japan and likely passed it last quarter. Occasionally, I’ll visit an area I knew from 15 years ago and it will feel like a completely different city. In particular, it’s shocking how much better the infrastructure and transportation has gotten. The cities have a lot more green areas interspersed into them also.

It brings me no joy to say this. Taiwan's numbers looks good on paper (until you dig further), but the reality on the pavement, or lackthereof, is dire. The noise, air, visual pollution are as bad as it was from 30 years ago, maybe worse. Traffic is bad, and salary to cost of living is extreme. Japan's numbers look bad. But its quality of life is one of the best in the world. Has there been progress in infrastructure…

I would think fear of being blown up by mainland China at any moment is bad for capital investment... meanwhile you have a highly skilled and educated workforce vying to man the capital in the country. I would think that would make labor artificially weak.

IMO Taiwan needs world recognition and solid assurances their capital investments won't end up in the opium pipe of some CCP party man. Until then you'd have to be kind of insane to bet the farm providing jobs to Taiwan.

Taiwan offers a really easy "gold card" for Americans that I considered getting but I realized what they needed wasn't my labor but lots of foreigners from powerful allies living in the crosshairs to make sure allies will get really really pissed if they get blown up.

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#407

Post by HKH2 »

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…

> I really wish Chinese switched completely to pinyin

That's like wishing English would switch to IPA because English spelling is wildly inconsistent - which English would you choose? People who speak different dialects can still understand each other using written Chinese, whereas Pinyin is for Mandarin only.

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#408

Post by vintermann »

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.

I suspect that most people who proclaim sentiments like that in this thread (of course, just learn Japanese!) do not speak a second language at a conversational level at all.

That people grossly underestimate how hard it is to learn languages, is why Duolingo is in business. And Berlitz, Pimsleur, and Rosetta Stone before them.

The guy didn't say he spoke _no_ Japanese. He said he spoke _little_ Japanese. And for an adult native English speaker, who probably could not get very good social immersion even if he wanted, that is not surprising. No, not even after 10 years.

Two of my friends were into Japanese culture in a big way when I was young in the 90s. Both watched a lot of anime, obviously. Both had excellent second language (English) grades and at least decent third language (French) grades, so it's safe to say both had above average talent for language acquisition. Both went to study Japanese at university. Both moved to Japan. Both struggled with the language.

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#409

Post by com2kid »

jeffbee wrote: post #72
com2kid wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Microprocessors: Is this even market? There's 3, Intel, AMD, Arm (I know ARM is a standard) but I don't get what makes Japan's "failure" here special. Japan used to be on the leading edge of microprocessor design. They aren't anymore. > semiconductor foundries: Why should Japan have excelled here vs any other country? Because they used to be a contender. > smartphones: Japan led the world until iPhone then everyone…

> Because they used to be a contender. Yeah and it's easy to forget. Every big Japanese company used to make their own silicon. It was easy for them to make knock-off 6502s and the entire Texas Instruments product line at half the price (See: Nintendo). Japan had almost the whole global DRAM market by the end of the 1980s. Americans, in a panic, formed a quasi-governmental bailout scheme called SEMATECH to re-establi…

> People seriously feared Japan was going to eclipse the American economy.

California is the only thing that keeps America competitive.

Without doing any research to back it up, I'll gladly claim that Silicon Valley (along with Microsoft[1] throughout the 90s/early 2000s) has driven the majority of the world's GDP growth in the last 30 years. The VC funding model for companies, the willingness to take risks, and the insane (over)work ethic, is why technology has exploded and impacted every aspect of life.

[1] Love it or hate it, a single unified target for business and consumer computer applications was a huge boon to the world. Just look at all the massive efficiency losses having to support 2 smartphone platforms, and that is with each having addressable markets in the billions. Now imagine if there had been 5 different PC platforms in the 90s to write for, with only hundreds of thousands of users on each one worldwide.

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#410

Post by JBlue42 »

Nathanba wrote: post #325
eloisant wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think we should shame people for not speaking the language of the country they live in, however it's important to stress that you're really missing out when you don't speak the local language. It will vary a lot by countries, because in some of them (i.e. northern european countries) everyone will be able to speak English so not only you have less incentive to learn the local language but it will be very diff…

I think we should shame people for that: A nation is like a big family. You're essentially saying that you don't think that you should be able to talk to your own family in their language.

I don't think this sentiment would go over so well if I expressed it to people here on the West Coast of the US. Not to mention that there are people that will send their kids to bilingual schools for (and this is conjecture) either lefty political points or potential socio-economic reasons (dual language or Chinese immersion).

I personally love learning languages and am that person that tries to learn a little bit and communicate wherever I go. I does seem to be a hot button issue here in the US. I think people have different expectations. You hear stories of immigrants from the early 20th century that would force their kids to only speak English so that they would get on well in society. It seems like a difficult topic here around heritage vs managing in a society, especially for kids.

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