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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

#181

Post by tkgally »

KTallguy wrote: post #177
tkgally wrote: post #2

I am the author of this article and will be interested to read HNers’ thoughts and discussion about the topic. I will also be happy to respond to questions.

Thank you for the article! I’m an American who’s lived on and off in Japan for around 10 years, currently in Tokyo working in game development. I related to many parts of your article, especially the later part about foreign devs working with Japanese executives. My work environment aims to be multilingual (Japanese/English) but creative conversations are inevitably stymied by pauses for translation. Machine translat…

Thanks for the comments! I have been following developments in MT and AI as close as I can and have been interested in how well MT works—or doesn’t—in real-life situations, but I don’t get much opportunity to experience such situations myself. Your description of your work environment is really valuable to me.

Your report about some of your non-Japanese colleagues not making much progress with Japanese matches my own experience in academia. A few years after I started working at the university, we began hiring a steady stream of youngish academics from around the world to teach academic writing classes in English to undergraduates. Some of them already had good Japanese ability, and the others all started out wanting to learn. But being busy with teaching and research and being able to get by in Tokyo with just English meant that few of the latter group made much progress beyond basic conversation. The language is hard, adult life is busy, and acquiring languages gets steadily harder for most of us as we get older.

I also wonder about how Japan will change and adapt as the native population continues to decrease. At the government and business levels, the overall response to the growing foreign population seems to be a slow shift toward adaptation. Among the general population, it’s hard for me to tell.

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

#182

Post by germandiago »

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…

We were talking about integration. If you are happy more or less ghettoing yourself that is right.

But we were talking about being accepted. It os really difficult to be accepted in japanese circles as one more. But it is not the case, for example, in Spain in comparison.

I was not talking about having the apprpval of others. I do not really care. But in order to get integrated there are cultures that are really flexible, others are more stiff and others it is almost impossible.

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

#183

Post by germandiago »

expatjapan121 wrote: post #112
germandiago wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not saying your experience must be the same. According to the three japanese people in my group here and some other feedback from people living there before, same as you I guess, and they speak japanese quite ok, our conclusion is that being one more is not as easy as in other countries. I say this from the strictest respect to japanese. I like them, I like their culture. If you live there you must know perfectl…

> If you live there you must know perfectly that just bc they act politely does not mean they are thinking you do not bother them. Since this makes a strong assumption on how people "think", I really don't know how to respond to this. > If you live there you must know perfectly No I don't.

If I tell you tgis it is because I have japanese friends who live outside of Japan, who are more open than the average and it is them who tell me: a japanese will not tell you what they are thinking and will not project "negativity" on you.

Said in another way: they will just tell you the positive stuff and will discard negative things. Why? Because for them "projecting negativity" is something plain bad and wrong. This is the reason, for example, why it is almost impossiboe to see a japanese crying in public. That is projecting negativity. They will not go and tell you: "man, how did you comb today you look crazy", even if it is what they are thinking. And like this, millions of things. So maybe you think they are polite or even they like you just bc u dnt get any of this, but observe further: they put distance, they do not make you into their groups except for really formal appointments (business, work), etc. No, it is not easy to get integrated in Japan. It is just not easy.

That they are amazingly polite when dealing with you does not mean you are fully integrated at all.

It means they are polite. Nothing else. If you do not believe me, try to make yourself the person in a group surrounded by japanese. It is very likely, to say it plainly, that you are not just accepted as one more in their circles. For business yes, for close friendship, I doubt it in most cases though this varies a bit in bigger places.

It is really tough.

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

#184

Post by germandiago »

tokinonagare wrote: post #131
expatjapan121 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 think you answered yourself that if you _can_ speak Japanese, things are different. The reality is that if you can speak Japanese, it's quite easy to be well integrated with the people. In your example, I don't know if the Romanian le…

> Please stop telling people "they will never be Japanese" since it's blatantly wrong. You are wrong here. You will indeed never be Japanese if you haven't both 2 ethnic Japanese parents and raised in Japanese (second-generation raised abroad, for instance in South American are out). You can't rewrite all your DNA and go back in time to have a Japanese education in Japan. The real issue is why caring so much about "b…

I should have been clear. As a spanish, we consider spanish anyone with spanish culture. We do not care that much about the ethnic group. I think that is different from North America, where the ethnic group determines a lot what kind of "american" you are.

That said, when I say "you will never be a japanese" I am not talking ethnic groups. I am saying that even if you speak japanese and try to be japanese, people in Japan will always see you as an outsider. This is not the case, for example, for a black african raised in Spain who speaks spanish perfectly. They just become a fully integrated part of Spain and noone even questions that as long as he adopted the language and culture.

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

#185

Post by adiabatty »

BrandoElFollito wrote: post #45
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 exception that proves the rule" is such a terrible expression. I do not understand why people use it. At some point I thought that it absurd on purpose but I had some people explaining me the rationale behind it (there is no rationale - if there is an exception it at best weakens the "rule")

This phrase only made sense when it was explained to me that it’d be better phrased as “the exception that proves the existence of the rule”.

(if there were no rule, there wouldn’t be any exceptions to it, or nothing would seem exceptional with respect to the (previously unstated) rule)

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

#186

Post by andxor »

saithound wrote: post #175
riizade wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> normally, you can visit the PRC for 15 days, you're railroaded throughout your whole trip, and you're required by law to stay in a select few hotels where the staff speak English anyway Huh? The tourist visa is I believe 90 days per entry (as it is for most countries), and valid for 10 years. There has been no foreign guest licensing requirement in the PRC since 2002, as far as I can tell, and even then it didn't s…

15 days is the duration for visa-free entry available to the citizens of the 54 "Western" countries. Only Singapore nationals get more than that. The validity of a tourist visa is 90 days - it doesn't mean that presenting a 90 day itinerary is accepted upon application with a Chinese consular office. And as a general rule, it's not. If yiur itinerary includes any destinations outside approved areas, certainly not. As…

With all due respect, I don't think you know what you're talking about. =)

My personal experience as a Western tourist is that I could travel all around China for 2 months with no real issues. The provided itinerary was mostly a formality (and I didn't have to stick to it strictly). I managed to book hotels, trains, I even got a permit to go to Tibet (although a guide was required for that portion of the trip). It's true not all hotels can host foreigners, but in practice that's rarely a problem.

Although I personally wouldn't live there long term, China has actually a lot to offer as a tourist destination. It's very safe and there's lots of interesting history and beautiful nature to explore. It can obviously be challenging to move around without speaking the language, but some spirit of adventure goes a long way.

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

#187

Post by germandiago »

expatjapan121 wrote: post #113
germandiago wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you got wrong what I said. I said that becoming part of a group of japanese people where japanese people accept you is more difficult than in other countries. That is different from going around and just interacting with them, which I found smooth and polite. If you think that interacting eith japanese at work or shops or restaurants is the same as becoming part of them, well, that is ok, you seem to live the…

> For example, far fewer japanese speak english than other developed countries My point was specifically about decoupling culture from language. And notably you didn't clarify about the Romanian who I guess must have spoke Spanish. Sorry but there are many eastern countries that are considered "developed" while the English speaking population is nothing compared to Western countries like in the Europe. Of course I wi…

Language and culture are intimately tied. You cannot just make them separated things.

You can pretend to do it. In some way it is similar to religion: you can pretend the westerner world has no religion. However, in our conduct and behavior, there is a huge christian remnant.

The same, in some way, happens with languages: the words used, the words that exist in one language and not in another, the connotations a word has... there is lots of culture embedded in a language and when you change language, culture cannot stay the same anymore. It varies bc the culture itself is embedded in languages.

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

#188

Post by jhanschoo »

Pamar wrote: post #123
jhanschoo wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dunn…

Indeed, I agree that you acquire hardly any fluency in classical languages with formal education. I suppose that I don't express this well, but I was trying to say that a natural language formally taught does not readily give you much fluency in it either, whereas immersion would give you fluency more readily and pleasurably.

My analogy would be more like this: learning dead languages in the classroom is to playing arcade flying games like how learning modern language in the sterile classroom is to a flight simulator, and immersion is pilot hours spent.

That is, with respect to acquiring skill in flying, time spent in a simulator is inferior to immersion-dominant learning, even with respect to acquiring skill for the simulator. It is in respect to the accessibility of immersion that I say that there is waste in classroom-dominant modern language learning. With arcade flying there is no such thing as arcade physics in the world, so with respect to acquiring what little skill is realistic, there is no better realistically accessible way.

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

#189

Post by saithound »

andxor wrote: post #186
saithound wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

15 days is the duration for visa-free entry available to the citizens of the 54 "Western" countries. Only Singapore nationals get more than that. The validity of a tourist visa is 90 days - it doesn't mean that presenting a 90 day itinerary is accepted upon application with a Chinese consular office. And as a general rule, it's not. If yiur itinerary includes any destinations outside approved areas, certainly not. As…

With all due respect, I don't think you know what you're talking about. =) My personal experience as a Western tourist is that I could travel all around China for 2 months with no real issues. The provided itinerary was mostly a formality (and I didn't have to stick to it strictly). I managed to book hotels, trains, I even got a permit to go to Tibet (although a guide was required for that portion of the trip). It's…

We're not talking about whether China is worth visiting. I think so, my tourist visa experience was in fact applying to walk a part of the Chinese Silk Road in 2019 with my (Cantonese-speaking but non-Chinese national) wife and we were politely told to shelve that particular idea permanently. There was no visa-free entry at all back then. We ended up going to Macao instead, and had a good time, though not at all what we originally planned.

In any case, the question was whether learning a Chinese language allows you to go on unique tourist experiences that would otherwise be unavailable. And the answer is that it doesn't, certainly not to the extent that it's worth learning a language, because, as you yourself state, you don't need to know the language to visit the approved destinations, and while there are some experiences that would require you to know the language, they are anyway outside the approved set of destinations and you'll be blocked using all bureaucratic systems from visiting them anyway.

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

#190

Post by andxor »

saithound wrote: post #189
andxor wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With all due respect, I don't think you know what you're talking about. =) My personal experience as a Western tourist is that I could travel all around China for 2 months with no real issues. The provided itinerary was mostly a formality (and I didn't have to stick to it strictly). I managed to book hotels, trains, I even got a permit to go to Tibet (although a guide was required for that portion of the trip). It's…

We're not talking about whether China is worth visiting. I think so, my tourist visa experience was in fact applying to walk a part of the Chinese Silk Road in 2019 with my (Cantonese-speaking but non-Chinese national) wife and we were politely told to shelve that particular idea permanently. There was no visa-free entry at all back then. We ended up going to Macao instead, and had a good time, though not at all what…

Point taken with regards to the language.

I was also there in 2019 by the way. Out of curiosity, which part of the Silk Road did you want to walk? I can see why you would get denied permission to hang out near the Taklamakan desert.

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