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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

#151

Post by ghc »

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…

As a seed-stage VC who has had the chance to interact with a number of Japanese entrepreneurs spinning businesses out of research at Harvard or MIT, I haven't found the conversations more superficial than with American entrepreneurs.

Maybe there's large sums of money at stake, polite and superficial conversation is a way of mitigating risk? I won't pretend to know the answer, but as a deep technologist I find the fundraising conversations with entrepreneurs deeply dissatisfying on average. And as a multi-time entrepreneur myself, I have definitely felt the same way sitting on the other side of the table.

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

#152

Post by partdavid »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #100
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…

That sounds like a universal experience to be honest; a lot of English teachers (that aren't native English themselves) often over-estimate their own abilities.

And not just restricted to English; it's a very common experience in the U.S. for native speakers of, e.g. Spanish, to end up in Spanish-language courses with non-native Spanish teachers, with modest Spanish skills. I assume it's the case with all language teachers especially at a non-advanced level.

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

#153

Post by sjburt »

RandallBrown wrote: post #146
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…

> They sometimes modify their English pronunciation to sound "more Japanese" when they start English classes in school I saw a video where an American was trying to order a McFlurry at McDonalds in Japan and the worker couldn't understand "McFlurry" pronounced in English so they had to pronounce it in what (without context) would sound quite racist.

How is this any different from going into a Panda Express and trying to order in Mandarin?

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

#154

Post by nervousvarun »

sourcepluck wrote: post #138
lmm wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I almost mentioned Hooters, I think they're the exception that proves the rule - they're seen as unusual and seedy, whereas in Japan that's pretty much the norm for a bar.

The norm for a bar in Japan is to be like Hooters? Eh, what? This wasn't my experience at all. I didn't conduct a study, but I was in a good few bars over there, in three different cities. Can you elaborate on what you're referring to here?

Think the takeaway was more about the "seediness" aspect of Hooters do to it's being pretty exceptional/unusual in American dining culture.

Hooters is a pretty unique restaurant experience in the US and is therefore considered different/further from the norm and frankly by many seedy. If there were more places like Hooters in the US then this would probably not be true.

The comment was trying to explain that in Japan you have a lot of places that would be analogous to Hooters in the US...so it's not exceptional/not seedy. Maybe not quite the "norm" but common enough to not be really something that gets noticed or have a connotation like "seedy".

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

#155

Post by svachalek »

foobarian wrote: post #118
minebreaker wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, it's much easier to learn English if your mother tongue is a variant of Indo-European.

I don't know if it's the Indo-European thing or not, but it seems that the writing system is a huge obstacle. In Europe I don't even have to understand a language to be able to read text out loud, just learn a very limited set of pronunciation rules. Even Cyrillic/Greek is a more or less 1-1 phonetic mapping.

Japanese use 3 different writing systems but 2 of them are simple phonetic systems. The hard one is kanji which uses Chinese characters, there's really nothing you can do about that except memorize memorize memorize.

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

#156

Post by nervousvarun »

lmm wrote: post #69
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.…

> Is anime & JAV to blame here? Why "blame"? Isn't it perfectly reasonable for people to take more interest in a country that's supplied them with interesting cultural exports than one that hasn't? > 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. Only to the extent that you want to do business, d…

Hey not sure if you are a native-English speaker but considering the context of this thread you might not be and just wanted to clarify: "to blame" here might be a bit confusing as a common English expression "is X to blame for Y?" actually means "is X the reason Y occurs?".

It's confusing because "blame" can have a negative connotation...but in this instance it's used in an expression that basically means "the reason something happens".

Please ignore me if you already knew this but just wanted it to be out there in case you didn't.

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

#157

Post by onetokeoverthe »

famahar wrote: post #129
germandiago wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

exactly. the tamade checkout lady saying my hair is kawaii is enough acceptance.

but i wish whoever haunts craigslist japan did not constantly remove my language exchange posts.

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

#158

Post by teractiveodular »

nervousvarun wrote: post #154
sourcepluck wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The norm for a bar in Japan is to be like Hooters? Eh, what? This wasn't my experience at all. I didn't conduct a study, but I was in a good few bars over there, in three different cities. Can you elaborate on what you're referring to here?

Think the takeaway was more about the "seediness" aspect of Hooters do to it's being pretty exceptional/unusual in American dining culture. Hooters is a pretty unique restaurant experience in the US and is therefore considered different/further from the norm and frankly by many seedy. If there were more places like Hooters in the US then this would probably not be true. The comment was trying to explain that in Japan…

Japan has (had?) an exact analog to Hooters, namely "sexy izakayas" like Hanako, where pretty girls in very short skirts serve mediocre bar food. These were pretty much obliterated by COVID though, and were always a small niche.

Unlike the US, Japan has a highly visible and de facto legal sex industry, so if anything sexy izakayas are/were at the less seedy end of the scale.

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

#159

Post by MichaelZuo »

macintux wrote: post #142
MichaelZuo wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are Japanese diplomats with nearly flawless English skills though…

I would wager that most diplomats come from a very privileged upbringing. As the article indicates, wealthier families can afford private English tutoring, which causes some friction with proposed changes to testing standards.

So why can't Japanese companies hire the genuinely bilingual as employees/consultants/etc.?

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

#160

Post by imp0cat »

minebreaker wrote: post #96
card_zero wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh, Slavoj Zizek. Why should the Japanese learn English? To understand a Slovenian, naturally!

I'm not sure you are being sarcastic or not, but it is absolutely the best aspect of having the lingua franca. In an ideal world where I had an infinite time, I'd love to learn Slovenian, but obviously I don't, and my life is too short to learn so many languages. Some blame English for globalism and Americanization, and sure they deserve the blame, but I don't want to live in the world where the people stuck in their…

Once you master a few languages, learning the rest gets much easier - or so I've been told. ;)

Not sure if it applies globally, but in Europe it's definitely true.

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