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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

#381

Post by BlueTemplar »

petodo wrote: post #238
ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

90% of people on the street won't speak English in big European cities, no. I'm sure you can find some cities where they do like Stockholm, but that's the exception not the rule. The rest of the things you said only confirm you have no intention to integrate and to be a pleasant addition to the community you live in. Your comments about people who don't speak English, and your attitude towards local workers are prett…

> 90% of people on the street won't speak English in big European cities, no. And who chose that percentage as some holy grail or something important? I'd say in big European cities at least 40-60% of people in productive age (18-60) will speak at least basic English, though not sure how is it relevant, even if only 1/3 of people in street spoke English it would be plenty. > The rest of the things you said only confi…

That community is the one where your kids will grow up and adopt at least some if not most of the values of.

You are deliberately deciding to exclude yourself from it, which is likely to have bad consequences for you and your kids (since you won't be competent to help them).

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#382

Post by rayiner »

epups wrote: post #351
rayiner wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I live in the country for 10 years, then it is my country too Lol no. You’re not a sovereign individual. You’re part of a society, and every society is the product of people who have a culture that’s been cultivated over generations. Japan is a creation of the Japanese—the fruit of generations of Japanese people building a society according to their culture—not some foreigner who’s lived there for a fraction of…

Japan is not a a lone entity as well. It exists in a concert of nations. It buys and sells products from elsewhere. If you showed how modern Tokyo looks like to a Japanese from only 100 years ago, they would have a breakdown. Meanwhile, to the average Westerner, Tokyo is perfectly understandable, although of course unique. Let's just take one example. John von Neumann - a gasp immigrant - may have more to do with how…

> John von Neumann - a gasp immigrant - may have more to do with how America looks like today than anybody alive in the 1800s

Not at all. Bangladesh, where I’m from, has computers too, but its government, institutions, infrastructure, constitution, etc., are still what Bangladeshis and the British created. Society is a product of culture, and culture runs deep and is extremely sticky.

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#383

Post by Pelayu »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #292
0xmarcin wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you in principle. In practice English is often all you need if you live in a big city. When I look at my country (Poland), I can see that a person can live in Warsaw (capital city) or any of the biggest 5 cities without knowing any Polish. Even having an appointment with english speaking doctor is not a problem. OTOH when you adventure outside of big cities you suddenly find yourself in a land where nobo…

English language is really a superpower. I speak a little Spanish and was chatting up with an Argentine couple in Thailand. They don't speak much English and were telling me stories of being stuck and lost and swindled while traveling abroad. I've managed to travel to 30+ countries and never felt out of place because most places will somehow accommodate English speakers. The only place I felt a little bit of language…

I think there’s a very big distinction between the usefulness of English for travel vs living in a country. Sure, English is a great for tourism, but outside of that I would not say it’s as useful as a lot of English speakers like to say. As someone who moved to Spain, I would say it’s pretty much impossible to get by (living) here with only English.

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#384

Post by pen2l »

bradknowles wrote: post #289
triyambakam wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a linguist, the evidence is simply that your wife (or whoever) simply did not get enough exposure to language she understood, at the level she was at. Unless someone has a true learning disability, the only way one doesn't learn the language is because they weren't able to get the right input. And I say that without any blame - for whatever reason it was, that is the cause.

My wife did much better than I did, even though she never became fully fluent. I will agree that I didn't go to a full immersion language school. But we did arrange for multiple tutors, some on our own dime and some paid for by her employer or mine. And we interacted with the people in our neighborhood on a daily basis. I found that those who were Flemish speakers would actively prefer to practice their English with…

How about Flemish then? It's one of the closest languages to English, so did you have an easier time with that?

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#385

Post by enlavinx »

genericlogic wrote: post #322
bradknowles wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife did much better than I did, even though she never became fully fluent. I will agree that I didn't go to a full immersion language school. But we did arrange for multiple tutors, some on our own dime and some paid for by her employer or mine. And we interacted with the people in our neighborhood on a daily basis. I found that those who were Flemish speakers would actively prefer to practice their English with…

This reminds me of a recent experience of mine. I was raised bilingual Greek and English (English is my primary language). For my entire life I heard both of these languages and use them both the same. What I had never heard, until recently, was someone who learned Greek as an adult. I was so excited to speak to them because it was something completely new to me. When they began speaking (Greek) it was like my brain…

It's always a balance between efficiency vs willingness to support their learning efforts.

This reminded me of an article written by an American living in China recounting his early days there. In it he describes the tricks he developed to practice the local language despite the higher interest of the locals to practice their English with him.

https://www.sinosplice.com/life/archives/2010/05/18/language...

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#386

Post by willbudd »

bcherny wrote: post #361
willbudd wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. I guess it depends on the situation. I assumed N3 was very easy, because I passed N1 with ease. I don't really like to bring it up, because it sounds like bragging, but that's my experience at least. Maybe using the language in a professional context on a day to day basis helps more than I appreciate. Then again, I'd expect some degree of familiarity to form naturally if you live here as a 社会人 of sorts. 2. True, b…

Any tips for passing the N1 with ease? It seems daunting..

Nothing special or insightful, but a few thoughts come to mind...

1) Having a limited vocabulary was one of the more long term challenges. What worked was simply developing a habit of consistently looking up any unknown words overheard or read. Whether jisho.org via Google or Google Translate or a dedicated app doesn't really matter. Either way the meaning should become clear within a few seconds. Don't wait. Just immediately look it up as soon as your hands are free. Want to speed things up? Read more. Start with manga or light novels. A bit frustrating and slow going at first, but certainly effective.

2) Train your ears with random entertainment. Configure Netflix to play Japanese content as-is without subtitles. Hear something new? Immediately pause, and apply 1) above.

3) For reading kanji the same principle applies, except looking them up can be a bit more cumbersome. There are dedicated apps (phone camera -> OCR) and tools (browser extensions) out there that automatically show furigana, which can be a life saver. (I'm hazy on the details, because I haven't had a need for them for a number of years.)

BTW, I wouldn't consider any of the above to be test preparation. Just day to day habits of living your life in a foreign country. That should get you about 80~90% there.

For the final 10~20% (test prep): 1) Use a spaced repetition program such as Anki to fill any Kanji and vocab gaps remaining. 2) Buy and read a grammar text book for some of the old-fashioned/clunky expressions that you're less likely to encounter in daily life, but nonetheless show up on N1 (and N2 to some extent).

Finally: probably best not to bother learning how to handwrite kanji. Huge effort. Not much reward or need in digital times. And of course, not part of any standardized tests either.

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#387

Post by noisy_boy »

triyambakam wrote: post #296
lelanthran wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. How many languages do you know? I live in a country with 11 official languages; please come stay for half a decade.

And no one is expecting you to know all 11. But I'm sure on average most people know more than ONE. which country anyways, India?

India has double of that - 22 scheduled languages[0]

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_with_official_status...

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#388

Post by petodo »

meowfly wrote: post #323
tsukikage wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's one thing to see everywhere words you can memorize when seeing it every single day in shops and online and very different thing when you see just bunch of strokes. They become much, much easier to grasp once you notice they're nearly all composed of the same hundred or so radicals and you can break them down and memorise them that way. > and honestly I was not really interested in people who don't learn at lea…

Going to China for that long and not trying to learn Mandarin is a misstep. Chinese is spoken by a lot of people, but spoken fluency isn't that high. Moreover, outside of the major cities, you will meet very few English speakers. Where I lived, Shanghai, there was a western community that essentially interacted with each other in their enclaves and never developed any meaningful relationships outside maybe dating som…

> Going to China for that long and not trying to learn Mandarin is a misstep.

I went to China with intention to stay there one year to save some money and continue travelling. Then after less than a year I met my future wife.

> Where I lived, Shanghai, there was a western community that essentially interacted with each other in their enclaves and never developed any meaningful relationships outside maybe dating someone who was Chinese. In Shanghai at least you can get along just fine without learning the language, but you will miss out on so much because most people around you can't hold conversations in English.

I lived in Beijing and avoided foreigners outside work enviroment (well we had drinking lunch breaks and ocassionally drank even during dinner after work), didn't frequent bars/clubs for foreigners and first few years even avoided western food. In my first three apartments I had Chinese flatmates (no foreigners, always only me) and we had no problem to communicate in English. The problem in general are different hobbies and culture, not really the language, most of the westerners will have more to talk with other westerner even in broken English than with Chinese who is perfectly fluent in English, it's just fact and speaking Chinese won't change a thing about it.

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#389

Post by petodo »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #381
petodo wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 90% of people on the street won't speak English in big European cities, no. And who chose that percentage as some holy grail or something important? I'd say in big European cities at least 40-60% of people in productive age (18-60) will speak at least basic English, though not sure how is it relevant, even if only 1/3 of people in street spoke English it would be plenty. > The rest of the things you said only confi…

That community is the one where your kids will grow up and adopt at least some if not most of the values of. You are deliberately deciding to exclude yourself from it, which is likely to have bad consequences for you and your kids (since you won't be competent to help them).

For starters I speak local language of country where I live and this dumb discussion is hypothetical when I defend people unwilling to learn local language, because they can get by with English which is perfectly fine and I have urge to have small talk with other people while they work even in my home country.

But yes excluding myself from sheep in whatever community whatever language they speak whether my mother tongue, English or language I don't speak, is perfectly fine with me, I have no urge to belong somewhere to some category you can put me for your convenience and that's how I (will) raise my kids to be independend and have critical thinking instead just doing same as everyone else just because everyone (dumb) is doing it.

Not sure why would I be not competent to help my kids because I don't do same things like everyone else with need to belong to some community, they seem to be doing fine already in elementary school.

Re: Japan has changed in important and visible ways

#390

Post by anthk »

modo_mario wrote: post #314
epups wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s a lose-lose situation for everyone involved, really. The German speaker is limited in what she or he can express, the German audience is limited in what they can understand, the English audience doesn’t progress in learning the language of their new home country. Maybe, but by not learning German they expats miss out on access to about 40 million Germans/Austrians/Swiss who don't also speak English (and they a…

So I take it you took it upon yourself to learn Mandarin and perhaps also Spanish?

With Spanish and English you can communicate from Canada to Patagonia except for Brazil (and the Brazilians will understand an 80% of spoken Spanish and a 90% of written one because of Romance similarities), among UK, Spain and Scandinavia. Also a good part of France, Portugal and lots of Southern Italians will understand you in Spanish too.
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