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The English Paradox: Four decades of life and language in Japan

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Re: The English Paradox: Four decades of life and language in Japan

#121

Post by MichaelZuo »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #77
SpecialistK wrote: post #65

I only speak English, but I have found and theorized that one's ability to learn and retain a L2 is heavily affected by your society's "need" to communicate outside of the national language. This article largely reinforces that theory. If people do not have a need to learn another language, it becomes an uphill battle. People in Finland report higher levels of English competency than people in France (despite French…

That's probably most of it, but the way Japan typically teaches English is sort of notoriously bad. That probably doesn't help either. > If people do not have a need to learn another language, it becomes an uphill battle. You do see some Japanese companies talking up the need for English competency; I suppose if more and more companies there use English competency as one thing they're looking for in job applicants, t…

There are Japanese diplomats with nearly flawless English skills though…

Re: The English Paradox: Four decades of life and language in Japan

#122

Post by numpad0 »

sprobertson wrote: post #63
olelele wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japan was occupied by America and the society forcibly reconstructed and aligned with the west whereas china is culturally independent and harder to access? Just a thought.

Japan is also very small which makes it easy to "understand"

Japan as "a small island nation in Asia" is such a warped perception. Really no offense intended as it is a globally accepted myth, but it doesn't check out when it's the fourth largest economy with 12th population count.

Japan just don't have powerful connections and/or contact surfaces with the rest of the developed countries. It's by no means small.

Re: The English Paradox: Four decades of life and language in Japan

#123

Post by Pamar »

jhanschoo wrote: post #110
bondarchuk wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least having English as an elite-signalling language is still quasi useful. Over here kids slave over ancient Latin or Greek to prove that their parents are elite.

As someone who enjoys languages, I observe with irony that in terms of proficiency per unit of effort spent, at least formal ancient language education isn't a such a waste of effort that formal language education is, in the sense that immersion will teach you language more painlessly, and with more velocity and distance than formal modern language education will; but immersion is quite inaccessible for ancient langu…

Disclaimer: I am European AND Old, so I studied Latin for 8 years (Middle School + High School).

I am not sure I really understand your comment here. If you are studying an ancient language you acquire zero fluency in it. At best you can read it, unless you were lucky enough to meet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reginald_Foster_(Latinist) (and this would apply to Latin exclusively).

So it is a bit like saying, I dunno, "in terms of proficiency per unit of effort spent" playing Street Fighter is more "efficient" than practicing a martial art in an actual gym/dojo.

Re: The English Paradox: Four decades of life and language in Japan

#124

Post by Shawnj2 »

ekusiadadus wrote: post #86

I'm Japanese. Speaking English in Japan is very challenging. All my friends and family speak Japanese, and everything from social media to news is completely accessible in Japanese. I'm an entrepreneur, and I use English when talking with international clients and overseas VCs. However, I lack confidence, and the communication tends to remain superficial, making it difficult to effectively do business internationally…

I think it’s interesting that there are signs etc. entirely in English in Japan though

Re: The English Paradox: Four decades of life and language in Japan

#125

Post by ecshafer »

tayo42 wrote: post #119
laurieg wrote: post #64

I've lived in Japan for over a decade and I think this article summarizes some aspects of English education well. I'd like to share a few of my thoughts and experiences too. English is often put on a very high pedestal. Speaking fluent English is associated with being "elite". A tech company in my city is slowly moving to doing all development work in English. I went to a casual tech talk event they held. Every talk…

> doing all development work in English. You need to do some development work in English. Programing language keywords are all English? Like there isn't really a python in Japanese?

Ironically, Ruby is a Japanese created language, and is outside of cobol the most English word heavy languages I've used.

Re: The English Paradox: Four decades of life and language in Japan

#126

Post by ecshafer »

TinkersW wrote: post #94
bulbosaur123 wrote: post #44

I will get downvoted and hated for what I'm going to say. What's with the west's pathalogical obsession with Japan and Japanese? Is anime & JAV to blame here? Look, you have Chinese spoken by 1.35 billion people. Foreigners who speak Chinese are way more rare than those who speak Japanese, therefore making it a more valuable language to acquire for business, diplomacy and travel. China is the new emerging superpower.…

Japan has been exporting its culture for decades with games(Mario/Zelda/Final Fantasy..the list goes on). And nowadays anime is also very popular. China has nothing really, can't think of a single interesting Chinese game/movie/TV show. If you include Hong Kong a few appear, but that isn't really China, and output has died since China forcefully took over. Maybe it is just me but I also find Chinese really annoying i…

Genshin Impact, and Black Myth Wukong are both extremely popular chinese video games with big penetration in the West, but this is extremely recent.

Hong Kong kung fu and crime dramas were pretty popular in the west in the 70s and 80s, but definitely a niche and nothing like Japanese Samurai films as far as popularity.

Re: The English Paradox: Four decades of life and language in Japan

#127

Post by ehnto »

tmtvl wrote: post #114
bulbosaur123 wrote: post #44

I will get downvoted and hated for what I'm going to say. What's with the west's pathalogical obsession with Japan and Japanese? Is anime & JAV to blame here? Look, you have Chinese spoken by 1.35 billion people. Foreigners who speak Chinese are way more rare than those who speak Japanese, therefore making it a more valuable language to acquire for business, diplomacy and travel. China is the new emerging superpower.…

> Foreigners who speak Chinese are way more rare than those who speak Japanese Obligatory 'Chinese ain't a language, you probably mean Mandarin' comment aside, part of the issue may be that Chinese languages are (mostly?) tonal, which for many Westerners is quite a blocker. N=1, but when I see a down-and-then-up tone, my brain just goes 'nope'.

Japanese is also accented by tones, but it's pretty robust even if you get them wrong thanks to context.

The common example of hashi (bridge) and hashi (chopsticks) demonstrates that. If a foreigner asks for a bridge to eat their ramen with, they probably meant chopsticks.

Re: The English Paradox: Four decades of life and language in Japan

#128

Post by numpad0 »

bulbosaur123 wrote: post #44

I will get downvoted and hated for what I'm going to say. What's with the west's pathalogical obsession with Japan and Japanese? Is anime & JAV to blame here? Look, you have Chinese spoken by 1.35 billion people. Foreigners who speak Chinese are way more rare than those who speak Japanese, therefore making it a more valuable language to acquire for business, diplomacy and travel. China is the new emerging superpower.…

The fact that anime & JAV can be blamed is an outlier behavior, China had been investing a lot in anime-game directions but so far don't seem like they're on track to be as dominant as Japan is; there hasn't been significant CAV/TwAV/KAV/PhAV/VAV movement yet(partly because "blurred porn is not porn" defense isn't valid in most Asian countries?)

I'd note that some of Chinese(including Taiwanese) fringe content do seem to resemble that of Japanese ones from couples of decades ago, so there is possibility that this apparent anomaly is just phase errors. Or not, we'll see...

Re: The English Paradox: Four decades of life and language in Japan

#129

Post by famahar »

germandiago wrote: post #88
ekusiadadus wrote: post #86

I'm Japanese. Speaking English in Japan is very challenging. All my friends and family speak Japanese, and everything from social media to news is completely accessible in Japanese. I'm an entrepreneur, and I use English when talking with international clients and overseas VCs. However, I lack confidence, and the communication tends to remain superficial, making it difficult to effectively do business internationally…

I have been a couple of times in Japan, have some Japanese friends here in Vietnam, where I live. I am spanish. In my humble opinion, japanese society is very kind and well-behaved, but, if you cannot speak japanese and you live in one more-or-less big city, according to all the feedback I got, then, you are basically out. And anyway, you will never be a japanese. I mean, there is much less difference between foreign…

This strong need to be accepted by a whole country is something I see mentioned a lot by a particular group of people that have never really been "othered" in their life. Coming to Japan is quite a shock for them because they experience being a minority for the first time in their lives. I was born in Canada and have dealt with micro-aggresions and blatant racism my whole life there. Living in Japan I can say I feel no strong desire or care to be accepted. I'm not here to win over the acceptance of a country. I live my own life quietly with the small group of strong friends and community that do accept me. I'm perfectly happy and would definitely be much less happy if my goal was to be seen as Japanese (with all the rules that this also entails). Integration to me is simply respecting everyone. There really is no big song and dance needed to be seen as the "accepted foreigner". Just live your life.

Re: The English Paradox: Four decades of life and language in Japan

#130

Post by AlienRobot »

shermantanktop wrote: post #6

I’m struck by the uniformity described. I've known people with a knack for languages, and in the US system they can opt to take more courses or go further. What do exceptional English-learning students do?

I had access to the Internet. The whole thing was in English! Can you believe it? I had no choice but to learn English.

In hindsight, I'd say the most important for learning English was that I was an ignorant teenager. I just... typed completely broken sentences into forums that today I wouldn't even be able to fathom how could I get the grammar so wrong. I got banned several times from Freenode channels, for pestering people with unintelligible questions and then not being able to understand the answers.

I was unaware and shameless and that shamelessness allowed me to make progress. Were I to learn English today, I'd probably be too self-aware to embarrass myself trying to use a language I can't use, and that would make it far more difficult to learn anything.

I suppose that's a good life lesson in general. You can't get good at something without being embarrassingly bad at it at first. If there was a pill to make you unaware of your own embarrassing self, that would be a learning pill. In fact, I guess we should really be learning new things while drunk!

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