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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

#191

Post by hiAndrewQuinn »

qingcharles wrote: post #170
hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suomi mainittu. As an English speaker who moved to Finland and has been steadily learning Finnish over the last few years, I definitely have to agree: My progress would probably be faster (and more painful) if I actually had any immediate need to speak Finnish. Don't twist my words here, I am still extremely grateful that Finns speak such excellent English. It's the only reason I felt like I could make it finding a j…

How hard have you found Finnish? As a language addict, I've always heard (and seen) that it is very hard. Hungarian hard. I worked for Nokia for a while, but was lucky that everyone I spoke to in Finland spoke perfect English.

It's about as hard as you think, yeah. Its quasi-isolate nature means that both its vocabulary and its grammar structure are pretty alien to anyone from the outside looking in.

On the other hand, Finns are super active on the Internet. There's a lot of Finnish content out there if you know where to look. ChatGPT writes passable, if clearly English-word-ordered, Finnish, as confirmed by my native speaker wife. So it's a long climb to the top -- but at least you have a lot of comprehensible input to work with. Can't quite say that for, say, the Algonquian languages.

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

#192

Post by owenversteeg »

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 an interesting observation, and entirely correct from my experience in the Netherlands and other countries. Thank you for making me think!

In a more general case: it is hard to do hard things without a true need, and people consistently underestimate this. Learning a language is a great example; virtually everyone that moves to the Netherlands does not learn Dutch, because there is no need, but the Dutch speak English, because as a society we must. Many people that get rich, particularly in sales or banking or business, do it because they "have to" - socially or even financially. Plenty of people in relationships have problems and promise change to their partners - but don't really change until they must, when the divorce or breakup looms - and by then it's too late. Or, people wait until right before a deadline to do things; for more mundane daily things like work or cleaning, until it's late at night.

If you really want to do something, you need to be conscious about the doing. Routine and desire are important, but the best is to structure your life such that you must have the thing. You want to start a business? Schedule meetings, sign deals, find a cofounder that will get on your ass. You want to learn French, move to rural France and you simply will learn because you must. You want to get in shape? Join the military or the fire department. Extreme, yes - or not extreme enough? Shackleton, Grant's memoirs, Apollo 13 - Time and time again we as a species see that man rises to the challenge. One must only put the challenge in front of the man.

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

#193

Post by Pamar »

qingcharles wrote: post #171
Pamar wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm also old enough to have been forced to study Latin for years at school, on equal par with Spanish and French. I'm sorry I didn't take it seriously. Latin underpins so many languages, and a basis in Latin can help enormously figuring out strange words.

In my home country (Italy) the "usefulness" of teaching Latin in non-technical schools (i.e. High School, basically) has been debated for at least one century now.

I do not regret having studied it, especially because I had good grades with little effort, but I came to the conclusion that yeah, maybe it would be better to devote more hours to general purpose stuff (think logic, statistics, basic accountancy and and stuff like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow) which would probably be more useful for people who need to operate in modern society.

If you really want to study Latin or Greek (or anything like that) you can do it as a hobby, or choose a University track that includes those. But as an average citizen I think that an understanding of the numbers published by media, or the ability to manage your own budget with a spreadsheet would be definitely a better investment in terms of time.

EDIT: forgot to add that I am talking specifically of high school in Italy, I do not know if other countries already provide more "practical" forms of education to their general population.

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

#194

Post by autumnstwilight »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #159
macintux wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.?

They can and do, but struggle with the following problems: - Assessing English proficiency. It's hard to do if you can't speak English yourself, and so they tend to fall back on numeric measures like test scores (which someone who has grown up overseas and speaks English at a native level might not bother to take, and someone who has grinded for a test might pass while having mediocre communication ability).

- Paying fluent English speakers enough to attract and keep them. Japanese salaries are low, and they tend to start all new hires at the same level and give gradual raises over time, with little consideration for special skills such as English ability. Fluent English speakers often either go overseas or work at international companies that pay more and also have better work-life balance.

- Many Japanese companies are rigid and formal in culture. Japanese people who have spent significant time overseas struggle to adjust, and they are not given the cultural leeway that a foreigner might be given.

- Control. There's a significant number of managers who are either micromanage-y or insecure about their own English ability and therefore can't just let a fluent speaker do their job without burdening them with nitpicky rules or insisting on rewriting things themselves.

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

#195

Post by lmm »

TimK65 wrote: post #84
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…

I have a somewhat related theory about English in Europe: The smaller countries are better at English partly because they subtitle rather than dubbing. That means that when they see English-language movies or watch English-language television, they're hearing English rather than their native language. I think this helps people maintain some level of English proficiency years after they leave school. (I'm American, li…

AIUI the available evidence is that that doesn't help (and that matches my experience of watching a lot of Japanese content with subtitles in my younger years). What goes into memory is the semantics you understood, and when you're taking in translated content you take in the version in your native language and discard the foreign sounds that didn't contribute to the part you understood.

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

#196

Post by lmm »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #159
macintux wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.?

The usual reasons organisations find it impossible to do things: inability to maintain incentive alignment within the company, manifesting as unwillingness to reward genuine bilingualism with enough money/status to incentivise it.

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

#197

Post by lmm »

mike50 wrote: post #167
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…

French is widely spoken throughout the world. If you speak French you can travel to Canada, the Caribbean, Africa and parts of South America without needing to speak another language. Also French is an official language in Belgium, Switzerland and Luxembourg as well as being widely spoken and taught as a second language in contentental Europe. Japan is spoken mostly in Japan and expat communities.

Ok, but what difference does that make in practice? Japanese people do not feel any compelling need to go outside Japan (many do not have passports) - they go on holiday within Japan (which has ski resorts, tropical islands, and everything in between) and consume entertainment in Japanese. I suspect many French people would still content speaking only French even if it wasn't spoken outside France, for the same reasons.

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

#198

Post by lmm »

sjburt wrote: post #153
RandallBrown wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Because it's called a McFlurry on the menu. Japan is very fond of taking loanwords from English but changing the pronunciation and meaning, which can be one of the hardest parts of any language.

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

#199

Post by lmm »

anal_reactor wrote: post #71
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…

> It makes sense to give all the talks in Japanese to a Japanese speaking audience, but the whole vibe was that English was so impossible that the idea of giving a talk in English was absurd. When I was a student I took some classes in English, and some in my native language. Having someone speak your native language makes things infinitely easier to understand and more engaging. Even if you're a fluent speaker it's…

> I feel like most Americans are completely oblivious to the idea that other cultures might exist. I work for an American company in Europe, and most of Americans don't do any effort to learn the local language, and those who do, simply use local words to express their American thoughts.

Yeah. As a Brit living in Japan, the Americans are often a more foreign culture than the Japanese, and far less willing to work to bridge the distance and avoid misunderstandings.

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

#200

Post by expatjapan121 »

germandiago wrote: post #183
expatjapan121 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. T…

> try to make yourself the person in a group surrounded by japanese.

I don't need to try to do this, close friendships with Japanese people and integration in social circles where I'm the only non-Japanese has not been hard. The strategy is just not to have your own preconception of outsiderness.

I see many that complain about difficulty integrating similar to your comments, blaming it on something about the Japanese people. But they themselves didn't make the effort to learn the language or make friends in a more casual way, so it just seems like a responsibility deflection. Maybe this is what you mean by it being really tough, but it seems a pretty normal amount of effort when immigrating to me. Pushing this narrative that it's really hard (some of the language even made it sound like implying impossible) doesn't help make it easier since then people get this preconception of being an outsider, and yes that will do a good job of preventing integration.

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