[HN Gopher] The English Paradox: Four decades of life and langua...
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The English Paradox: Four decades of life and language in Japan
Author : pwim
Score : 162 points
Date : 2024-11-07 02:24 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.tokyodev.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.tokyodev.com)
| tkgally wrote:
| 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.
| rjrdi38dbbdb wrote:
| > I even wondered if it was a front for some other kind of
| business.
|
| Just curious what your suspicions were at the English
| conversation lounge and why it made you uncomfortable?
| tkgally wrote:
| Partly it was the location: An upper floor of a building in a
| neighborhood full of bars and pachinko parlors, which seemed
| much sleazier to me then than it would now.
|
| But more it was, I think, that I didn't understand yet why
| Japanese college students and office workers would pay money
| to practice English with me and a few other recent foreign
| arrivals. The fact that much of the conversation consisted of
| the customers asking me personal questions--"Where are you
| from?" "Why did you come to Japan?" "Do you like Japanese
| women?"--made me suspicious, too.
|
| In retrospect, the place was almost certainly _not_ a front
| for anything sinister but just a way for the owner to try to
| make some money from the shortage of opportunities to speak
| English in Japan. And the focus on personal questions was
| just a sign of the customers' limited repertoire of
| conversational English. But it took me a while to grasp all
| that.
| bitwize wrote:
| Spend enough time in Japan, and you realize that young to
| middle-aged Japanese people really do understand that
| competence in English will give them an edge -- but they
| don't know where or how to go about learning so they will
| try damn near anything, especially if they think it's easy
| or a "shortcut". There's potentially a big market for apps
| like Rosetta Stone or Duolingo over there, I don't know how
| things like that are actually doing among Japanese though.
|
| When I was hanging out in bars there, young women would
| approach me and beg: "Teach me Englishu!" They saw that I
| was white and foreign and figured I could just pour English
| fluency into their heads.
|
| As for the personal questions -- yeah, I've undergone
| enough foreign-language instruction to understand that
| these are things people resort to just to have something to
| talk about. One question that kept coming up was "Who is
| your favorite singer?" Just about everyone who asked me
| this also provided their own answer to the question and it
| was always the same -- Lady Gaga. (The album _Born This
| Way_ had just dropped in Japan at the time and Lady Gaga
| was _all the rage_ -- bigger than One Piece, even.)
| svilen_dobrev wrote:
| > so they will try damn near anything
|
| 2012.. i am not a native english-speaker but white, in
| Tokyo for 2 weeks, staying in friend's apartment, not
| knowing a word except "Arigato". One day, In some very
| big shop, i was looking for some locally made hand cream,
| and after walking the shelves with hundreds of things
| only labelled in japanese hieroglyphs, i asked the lady
| on the cash-desk "Where are hand-creams?" and she showed
| me to one shelf full of Avon stuff (which i saw but
| avoided), and eventually at its end there were some
| others japanese. So i looked at there and picked one or
| two, choosing by colorfulness of the bottle :) All that
| time, a student-age-girl was staying at next row, keeping
| and looking at some pocket device in her hands, and when
| i finally picked something, she approached me and asked,
| in not-that-bad-english : "Excuse me, did you ask for a
| "hand cream"?
|
| You know, this picking of _any_ opportunity to train your
| hearing /speaking is.. amazingly diligent. And their
| curiosity also amazed me.
|
| Ever since i'd like to try move and live there, but.. too
| bad it's very difficult to go to work or live there.
| Expensiveness is only one little part of it..
| bitwize wrote:
| Yeah, I went to a frozen yogurt place and scraped
| together enough Japanese to ask if there was an English
| speaker. They brought before me the store manager, a
| 22-year-old girl fresh out of college who'd spent a year
| in California as an exchange student and was super over
| the moon to be speaking to a real American once again. It
| was super cute, and we just stood there and talked about
| random stuff for several minutes before I realized I
| still wanted frozen yogurt and didn't know how to operate
| the machines or pay for my order.
|
| I did the same thing and seized any opportunity to
| practice. I spent a lot of evenings that vacation in
| bars, just speaking to locals so I could git gud enough
| in Japanese to... function at a basic level there. I
| think I gained more Japanese language levels during those
| two weeks than I did my three semesters of collegiate
| study of the language.
|
| It's lovely to visit, but unless Rakuten or Nintendo or
| somebody offered me a too-good-to-pass-up career
| opportunity, I couldn't foresee myself living in Japan.
| It's pricey, and as a white dude I would always be seen
| as an outsider (the literal translation of _gaijin_ )
| with attendant social disadvantages: I couldn't live or
| work in certain places, more paperwork and bureaucratic
| hoops I'd need to jump through, the funny looks and
| people hiding from me (not so much a problem in Osaka but
| I hear it happens in Tokyo a lot).
|
| Oh, you know those radio DJ booths in Splatoon where you
| can look through the plate glass and see the hostesses
| making their broadcast? Those are actual things in Japan.
| I passed by one in Doutonbori and the radio hosts started
| making remarks about the funny foreigner. Yay.
| YurgenJurgensen wrote:
| I've only visited once, but my impression of their urban
| areas was that Japanese zoning laws and planning permit are
| very different to even UK ones, and worlds apart from
| American ones. I assume there's some centuries-old
| historical reasons that I'm just not aware of.
|
| There are residential houses sandwiched between
| restaurants, perfectly legitimate businesses built on top
| of some 'perfectly legitimate' businesses and underneath
| other even shadier businesses. This definitely means that
| any district with a focus on entertainment will often seem
| sketchier than it really is.
| lmm wrote:
| A lot of english conversation in Japan functions as de-facto
| paid compansionship. It's not exactly a front for escorting,
| but it's not completely not that either. In the west there
| tends to be a clear sharp line between customer service and
| sex work, whereas in Japan there is much more of a sliding
| scale from paying by the hour to hang out in a bar with
| friendly bar staff, to having more flirty conversations with
| them, through clothed touching to what's essentially a strip
| club experience.
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| The states does have breastauraunts like Hooters where you
| can watch the game and the bartenders and waitresses happen
| to be flirty and buxom, but they're compensated by tips
| instead of by the hour.
| lmm wrote:
| 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.
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| "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")
| sosborn wrote:
| It's a folkism, but consider this: If a rule doesn't have
| any exceptions, is it really a rule? If a rule doesn't
| exist how could there be any exceptions?
| junkjunkjunkjun wrote:
| The expression is referring to an implicit or unstated
| rule. Defining it is hard but people know when it has
| been broken. Hooters is an exception, the rule is, don't
| be like Hooters.
| timknauf wrote:
| Thank you! I never understood the expression, but this
| explanation was immediately clarifying for me.
| card_zero wrote:
| I see from Wiktionary that it was originally a legal
| concept, expressed in medieval Latin.
|
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/exception_that_proves_the_
| rul...
|
| Just as you say, the point is that a rule is _implied_ by
| a specific exception, as in the example "free entry on
| Sundays", which implies the unstated rule "pay for entry
| on other days".
|
| The exception weakens the rule, it's true, but may also
| reveal the rule.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| 'Prove' was historically used as a synonym for 'test',
| which gives the phrase quite a different meaning. Like
| how 'result' is now sometimes used to mean 'positive
| outcome', as in a football fan saying 'we got a result'
| sourcepluck wrote:
| 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?
| nervousvarun wrote:
| 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".
| teractiveodular wrote:
| 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.
| laurieg wrote:
| 15 years ago I was a student in Japan and worked a part-
| time job at one of these conversation places. One of the
| successful teachers put it best: "You're not a teacher,
| you're a chat show host".
|
| You're doing entertainment first. A game here, a crazy
| story there. Nothing to challenging, people want to have a
| polite, entertaining experience. If they learn something
| along the way that's fine but they won't really care if
| they don't.
|
| There was a wide range of students. Some serious, usually
| planning to study overseas in the future. Some people just
| there for a hobby or an outlet. There were a few people who
| came to offload their problems to someone who they felt was
| outside the normal social structure (and therefore not
| going to judge them). I think people in general felt they
| were much freer to speak using English rather than
| Japanese.
| eszed wrote:
| > I think people in general felt they were much freer to
| speak using English rather than Japanese.
|
| That's true to my experience with Japanese ESL students
| (not in Japan). Some explicitly told me that themselves;
| many others had that vibe.
| gramie wrote:
| I likened it (and my later work a the token gaijin in a
| large company), as being a pet, or a zoo animal. Treated
| well, but never integrated. I was told that I could never
| be a manager in my company, because it would make
| Japanese people anxious to have a foreign boss.
| ch33zer wrote:
| Lovely article.
|
| I recently moved back to the US from Japan after living there
| for a year. My poor Japanese made life very difficult. Easy
| things like calling a restaurant for a reservation or visiting
| the ward office was always a major challenge. I second your
| point that Japanese is always useful regardless of official
| policies. What do you think Japan should do to encourage
| Japanese language learning among immigrants?
| tkgally wrote:
| Thanks!
|
| The government has been making efforts, such as trying to
| improve the training and certification of Japanese language
| teachers, making Japanese language ability a condition (or at
| least an advantage) for getting certain types of visas, and
| offering language support to immigrant children in public
| schools. They are also trying to promote the use of
| simplified Japanese--avoiding difficult vocabulary and
| indicating the readings of all kanji--in documents and
| services aimed at the general public, something that would
| help not only immigrants but also Japanese with lower
| literacy skills. I'm sure much more could be done, though.
| Phrodo_00 wrote:
| > What do you think Japan should do to encourage Japanese
| language learning among immigrants?
|
| It really boggles my mind how many immigrants to a place
| (because it doesn't just happen in Japan) are fine not trying
| to learn the language, especially if the place doesn't even
| understand the languages you know. You'd think living in such
| a place would be enough encouragement (it certainly would be
| for me), but I keep seeing stories about immigrants in
| several places not bothering to learn a common language of
| where they live.
| wdutch wrote:
| > The notion of "fairness" dominates English education policy
| in Japan. Because of the importance of educational credentials
| in Japanese life, any policy that seems to favor one group or
| another--the rich, the urban, children with highly-educated
| parents, or children who happen to have acquired English
| fluency on their own--will attract popular opposition.
|
| I teach ESL in Vietnam. The above quote boggles my mind. I've
| taught disadvantaged rural students and urban students with
| educated parents. Of course I tried my absolute best for the
| rural students, I worked a lot harder for them than for the
| privileged students. However, it would be madness to hamstring
| the students who happen to be privileged. Holding the whole
| country to the lowest common denominator doesn't benefit the
| country at all.
|
| I thought Vietnam was very Confucian and uniform but Japan
| seems even more extreme. Maybe Vietnam also applies Marx's
| doctrine of "From each according to their ability, to each
| according to their needs" to offset it.
|
| Thanks for your great write up on this topic. This was a very
| interesting read for me.
| sodfj11240 wrote:
| I think it's more apt to compare between Korea / China /
| Japan where the written language is not Latin-based.
|
| From my experience, most Vietnamese students catch up quickly
| with extra-curricular English class during their 4 years
| university.
| unrealhoang wrote:
| Not really, there's little to almost no difference in
| English literacy between Viet, Korea & China. Yet there's a
| big gap compare to Japan, the reason is either culture and
| economic incentive rather than because of the native
| script.
|
| In Japanese TV, you can even see that for influencers
| (idols, singers, comedians) being bad in English is
| considered a cute "feature", this is uniquely apply to
| Japan.
| mc3301 wrote:
| yeah, the novelty approach to English is one of the
| things that is inherently holding back Japan from any
| generally decent level of English.
| bitwize wrote:
| Japan was sealed off from the world by the Tokugawa
| Shogunate and only opened back up relatively recently
| (~150 years ago). So yeah, their culture is kinda built
| different to the rest of Asia, having evolved for
| centuries in isolation. They are still prone to
| exceptionalism: one story goes that European ski
| equipment manufacturers had difficulty exporting their
| skis to Japan in the 1960s because of a widespread belief
| that "Japanese snow is different" and Western skis would
| not work on it. So while the Chinese readily learn
| English in order to conduct trade with Westerners, there
| is an unconscious expectation among Japanese that
| potential foreign trade partners learn Japanese.
| cavok wrote:
| Japanese snow is different, it's predominantly powder.
| Different to ski on.
| TinkersW wrote:
| hardly unique..Colorado snow is also mostly powder
| gramie wrote:
| But that was used as a non-tariff barrier to prevent the
| import of foreign goods. If I remember correctly, certain
| groups also tried to stop the import of foreign beef,
| because "Japanese intestines were longer [shorter?] and
| couldn't absorb the nutrition well".
| einichi wrote:
| Bilingual in Japan, also studying Mandarin.
|
| Proficient English is just a "plus-alpha", as they say.
|
| You don't need it, but it might open up a few more doors.
|
| Then there's certain topics, like science/medicine where
| English to some extent is absolutely necessary to keep up with
| research. Even then, I find some of these people still struggle
| with speaking and listening, but reading and writing can be
| pretty solid.
| sien wrote:
| How do you think it compares to various European countries?
|
| Say, Germany, Spain, Italy (or any that you're familiar with).
|
| Northern Europeans seem to be fantastic at learning languages.
| It's surprising the rest of the world doesn't copy what they
| do.
| minebreaker wrote:
| To be fair, it's much easier to learn English if your mother
| tongue is a variant of Indo-European.
| tkgally wrote:
| Yes, I was about to say the same thing. The similarities of
| vocabulary and grammar among those languages make it easier
| for speakers of one language to learn another.
|
| Also, it seems to be easier for people to learn another
| language when they already know two or three. As Europe is
| more multilingual than Japan, more Europeans have a head
| start at acquiring additional languages.
|
| There may be other factors--stronger attachment to one's
| native language and culture, resistance to seeming
| different from one's peers--that make it harder for people
| of some nationalities to acquire foreign languages. But
| such claims are difficult to verify and can easily sink
| into superficial stereotypes, so I will be a cowardly
| academic and decline to take a position.
| euroderf wrote:
| My kid is being raised bilingual English-Finnish. I hope he
| acquires an interest in linguistics, because when he
| examines his own language facility he will find fertile
| ground - a car crash of deeply different languages.
| foobarian wrote:
| 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.
| svachalek wrote:
| 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.
| DrNosferatu wrote:
| Germany has very similar problems.
|
| But unlike Japan, the education system is the antithesis of
| fair - as, if I understood correctly, your 4th grade teacher
| will decide which of the 3 tracks you will follow at 10(!)
| years of age. This obliterates the possibility of social
| elevator through education.
|
| I wonder how it is in Japan? Is it common to have class
| movement between generations?
| SiVal wrote:
| Ah, I thought your name sounded familiar! In 2008, I bought
| "Reading Japanese with a Smile" on a trip to Japan and loved
| it. It was very well done and perfect for me. I ended up buying
| two copies and for years I kept checking on Kinokuniya visits
| hoping it would become a series. No such luck, but my guess is
| it was just too much work for too little reward. But you should
| know that a HN reader still remembers your work fondly after 16
| years.
| tkgally wrote:
| Thank you for the kind words! I am glad to hear that you
| found that book useful.
|
| The editor and I did discuss a sequel and I started
| collecting material for it, but I had changed careers by that
| point and no longer had the time or motivation to see it
| through to completion. And now I'm not sure if there's a
| market for such books anymore. At least, if I were learning
| to read Japanese myself now, rather than buying a book of
| annotated readings I would choose my own texts and ask
| ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini about the parts I don't
| understand.
| SiVal wrote:
| It's a little sad, but you're right of course that many
| books no longer make business sense now that everything
| they offer is online and free. Well, when the AIs put us
| all out of business and we're home all day in our rabbit
| hutches, we'll have plenty of time and free content to
| read.
| CarVac wrote:
| I just visited Japan and found the language situation around
| tourists was frankly perplexing.
|
| With some tourists, English was a lingua franca. I ran across
| some Chinese tourists asking some non-English speaking white
| tourists (French maybe?) a question in English and not being
| able to communicate.
|
| With others, Japanese was the interchange language of choice,
| such as with some Taiwanese tourists.
|
| For native Japanese people speaking English, it was invariably
| a huge relief for them to fall back to speaking in Japanese
| with me. Even those with excellent English pronunciation were
| like this too.
|
| Only once did I feel weird speaking Japanese, with a hotel
| receptionist who turned out to be Korean.
| skhr0680 wrote:
| Until Japanese have an economic reason to learn English, they
| will continue to participate in the educational equivalent of
| get-rich-quick schemes instead of actually getting good. It's a
| great example of the "Galapagos syndrome".
|
| There is English education at school, but it is based entirely on
| rote repetition and exercises instead of y'know, understanding
| the language. There are "English Conversation Schools", but they
| are mostly scams whose goal is your continued participation,
| rather than having an end goal of comprehending English.
| lmm wrote:
| There is a very strong economic incentive to do well on
| university entrance exams - they pretty much determine the
| course of a Japanese person's life - and thus both schools and
| outside tutoring focus on teaching students to score well on
| the English section of those exams, to the exclusion of
| learning to understand or speak English.
|
| Similarly, it can be beneficial to one's someone's career to
| get a high score on TOEIC, so adult classes prioritise teaching
| people to get high scores on TOEIC. The "education" system is
| extremely well aligned with the economic incentives.
| skhr0680 wrote:
| That is exactly what I meant by Galapagos syndrome. I should
| have written external(= business conducted in English)
| economic incentive.
|
| The elephant in the room is that 6/12 years school here are
| focused on rote remembering for the next entrance exam rather
| than learning.
| lmm wrote:
| Meh. Poor priority in schooling and teaching to the test
| are hardly unique to Japan.
| skhr0680 wrote:
| "Other countries have problems too"
|
| OK, let's just give up trying to improve then.
| lmm wrote:
| "Japan has the exact same problem as many other
| countries. This is a perfect example of Galapagos
| syndrome"
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| Do you think English language conversational AI tutors could
| have a positive impact on a nation like Japan (which tends to
| be a little more introverted)?
| mym1990 wrote:
| Time will tell, maybe for the people that can create feedback
| loops for themselves where AI fills the gaps, but at the
| aggregate level I don't think AI will move the needle. More
| likely people will use AI translation as a crutch, rather
| than learning to communicate without assistance.
| gramie wrote:
| I was a teacher at an English Conversation School, more than 30
| years ago, and I think that there is more to them -- or at
| least there was.
|
| Where I lived, this was one of the few places to interact with
| a foreigner and practice English (often before going on an
| overseas holiday or work contract). Even better, it was a safe
| and controlled environment.
|
| One of the crucial hurdles for Japanese people learning English
| has always been a lack of confidence and fear of looking
| foolish in public.
|
| It didn't do much for English ability, because how could it
| when the class is only one hour a week?
|
| Many of the schools were get-rich-quick schemes, as you say,
| but that doesn't mean they didn't provide a valuable function,
| even if they didn't contribute directly to English ability.
| yowayb wrote:
| I spent 4 years in Istanbul and paid for Turkish classes at a
| popular English school chain. Their English was bad, and all
| the classes were full all day.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| I believe that reason is increasing at a higher pace in the
| last few years and will only keep increasing. Japan continues
| to bring in more foreigners both for work and as tourists, and
| their usual tactics of dealing with foreigners and other
| "problems" by cutting off the nose to spite the face (Gion, Mt
| Fuji Lawson, Shibuya Halloween etc.) won't work forever.
| shermantanktop wrote:
| 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?
| rjrdi38dbbdb wrote:
| In my experience, exceptional English-learners almost
| exclusively learn independently, from consuming English media
| or interacting with native speakers, not from courses.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| IMX, exceptional ${LANGUAGE}-learners almost exclusively
| learn independently, from consuming ${LANGUAGE} media or
| interacting with native speakers, not from courses.
| yurishimo wrote:
| I think this tracks in most adults who learn a foreign
| language. Within six months of moving from the US to a
| Western European country, I could read and understand enough
| spoken language to get through the day (commuting, groceries,
| restaurant, etc) and since then I've met a lot of people who
| have been here for a decade and still struggle with those
| things. The difference I believe was that I was highly
| motivated.
|
| Not to toot my own horn, but I moved solely on my own accord.
| Sure, I have a work visa, but that was for convenience, not
| necessity, whereas many immigrants come for a short term job
| that turns into something more or because they are fleeing
| from war or disaster. I entered with the mindset that I need
| to learn the language and putting it off is just hurting my
| future self.
|
| When people ask me how I learned so fast, I told them the
| truth. I don't have much else to do in my free time so I
| "study". These days, I even browse Reddit in my target
| language. I believe people are really quite capable of
| learning language, especially adults! But it requires
| intentionality and practice be develop proficiency, like
| anything really. If you want to get good at languages, you
| have to speak, read, and write every day.
|
| To bring it back around, many of the best English speakers I
| have met engage parts of their life in English that they
| don't need. Leisure and entertainment are the top
| contributors but depending on your profession, it could be
| required to speak/read English at work as well. It goes to
| your point of how the excellent students learn and I think
| everyone can apply to these ideas to learning across a wide
| range of topics.
| sdrothrock wrote:
| They'll look for external options whether they're paid lessons
| somewhere, English-related events, or online chances to talk to
| native speakers. Many will also go on to look for jobs in
| companies that involve English.
|
| It's also worth noting that most public schools have (short)
| study abroad programs that will allow excellent students to
| apply for a few weeks in Australia or New Zealand as well.
|
| One other interesting part of the uniformity is that perhaps
| because of the English focus, there's no real exposure to other
| foreign languages in public schools before the high school
| level (and sometimes not even then). Whereas in the US, I think
| most people have the option to study something from middle
| school or junior high.
|
| I'm excluding Mandarin from this discussion, which is sometimes
| touched on superficially in Classical Japanese.
| AlienRobot wrote:
| 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!
| minebreaker wrote:
| A few random thoughts from a Japanese programmer: (warning: not
| gonna be fun read)
|
| * As far as I can tell, most Japanese programmers can read at
| least some portion of English software documentations
|
| * English in Japan is always about the U.S. Not the U.K, not
| South Africa, not Singapore. I still remember my English teacher
| in the university, who was from South Africa, complained about
| that he was always assumed to be American.
|
| * I find it interesting that, your article doesn't mention on the
| Japan's political dependence and subordination to the United
| States. The people who study at Tokyo Univ. are not commoners at
| all. They're the political and economic ruling class elites, and
| don't give a shit to the median Japanes people. They don't have
| to learn English because...why do they have to?
|
| * English is basically for the elites. As Tatsuru Uchida pointed
| out, most of LDP elites have learned in American universities.
| [0] They're literally colonial elites.
|
| > Ni ni, Zhi Min Di De Yan Yu Jiao Yu deha, Yuan Zhu Min noZi
| domotachinihatekusutowoDu muLi hadekirudakeFu kesasenaiyounisuru.
| utsukariDu muLi gaShen niZhao kuto, Zhi Min Di noXian iZi
| domotachiha, Zong Zhu Guo noZhi Min Di Guan Liao gaDu
| manaiyounaGu Dian woDu mi, Bi ragaLi Jie dekinaiyounaZhi Shi
| yaJiao Yang woShen niFu keru[risuku] gaarukaradesu. Zhi Min Di
| noZi domogaWu Jiao Yang naZong Zhu Guo noDa Ren niXiang
| katsutesurasuratoshiekusupiawoYin Yong shitarishite, Zong Zhu Guo
| Min noZhi De You Yue Xing woXie kasutoiukotohaHe gaatsutemoBi
| kenakerebanaranai. dakara, Du muLi hatsuneniHua suLi yorimoLie
| Wei niZhi kareru. [Nan shiiYing Yu noBen nankaDu metemoShi Fang
| ganai. soreyoriRi Chang Hui Hua da] toiuyounakotowoPing Ran toYan
| iFang tsuRen gaimasukeredo, korehaGu noSui made[Zhi Min Di Ren
| Gen Xing ] gashimikondaRen Jian noYan iCao desu. [1]
|
| So, that's the reason why they focus on the conversational
| English instead of reading/writing. Seriously, "you can teach
| tourists how to get to the station" as a motivation to learn the
| language is insane. And that's the elites want us Japanese
| commoners to learn in English education.
|
| * My university English teacher (not the guy I mentioned
| earlier), who was a former bureaucrat who worked for the Ministry
| of Economy IIRC, told us that the Japan is a unique nation state,
| unlike the Western countries, that have kept single people and
| single language through the history. This _is_ the Japanese
| ruling class. It was the most disgusting time I ever had in the
| univ, and that may be the reason I still feel very uncomfortable
| with English education.
|
| * Although I'm very against the current English education, I
| genuinely believe learning English have improved my life. I can
| watch 3Blue1Brown on YouTube, I can read the books from Slavoj
| Zizek not translated in Japanese, and of course, I can post on
| HN!
|
| * It's important that, the means to fight against colonialism is
| _not_ blindly praising the native culture (see how Japanese have
| internalized "Japan is unique! Japan is cool!" bullshit), but to
| understand the relativism of the history and cultural
| development, and take universal values like democracy and human
| rights seriously - more seriously than their inventors. While
| American politics is becoming a kind of tragic farce, I hope
| Japan will present itself as a _true_ representative of those
| values. It 's unlikely to happen, but I hope so.
|
| [0]: http://blog.tatsuru.com/2024/10/11_1037.html [1]:
| http://blog.tatsuru.com/2018/10/31_1510.html
| tkgally wrote:
| Thank you for your thoughts. They were indeed fun--and
| interesting--to read.
|
| A couple of comments:
|
| > English in Japan is always about the U.S. Not the U.K, not
| South Africa, not Singapore.
|
| That is not quite as true as it used to be. The government-
| approved textbooks ( _kentei kyokasho_ ) for elementary and
| junior-high schools include characters and situations from
| outside the Inner Circle English-speaking countries more often
| than they used to, though they still have a slant toward the
| U.S. and toward white people:
|
| https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jacetkanto/11/0/11_46/_...
|
| I used to subscribe to two Japanese magazines for English
| educators, _Eigo Kyoiku_ published by a commercial publisher
| and _Shin Eigo Kyoiku_ published by an organization with a
| mission focused on democracy and justice in education. The
| former magazine often had articles with an American focus and
| photographs of white kids with blond hair, while almost every
| issue of the latter had a cover photograph of nonwhite children
| in a developing country and articles emphasizing the diversity
| of English.
|
| I have been involved with the writing and editing of English
| textbooks, and there is often a tug-of-war between the Japanese
| writers and editors who want to emphasize the diversity of
| English and English speakers and those who prefer to stick to a
| focus on either the U.S. or U.K.
|
| > I find it interesting that, your article doesn't mention on
| the Japan's political dependence and subordination to the
| United States.
|
| That is an important topic, and I should have mentioned it as a
| major reason for the exclusive focus on English. Maybe I can
| discuss the issue in more detail in another article.
| minebreaker wrote:
| Thanks for your reply.
|
| > That is not quite as true as it used to be.
|
| Interesting, let's see how it will change or not.
|
| > Maybe I can discuss the issue in more detail in another
| article.
|
| I definitely look forward to it.
| cen4 wrote:
| What do you feel about the LDP loosing? Step in the right
| direction?
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| I've been assuming the
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_Course is part of what
| gave Japan the heavy rural electoral weighting that's powered
| the LDP during nearly the entire postwar period. What do you
| all think?
| minebreaker wrote:
| I'm not sure. I really don't think LDP has lost. They're
| still the most popular party. Ishin and Guo Min Min Zhu (I
| don't know their English name) are basically the same
| neoconservertives as LDP. More liberal parties, CDP,
| communist party, or Reiwa are all unlikely to get majority
| support.
|
| (BTW, you may be surprised, but Japan Communist Party has a
| small but solid supporters, and I'd say there's a good reason
| for that)
|
| The most likely scenario for the next election is that LDP
| will regain the majority again, and nothing will change.
| aapoalas wrote:
| huinrandoRen nopuroguramadesu. Ri Ben de2Nian guraiZhu
| mimashite, Ying Yu nokotoya, Ri Ben noeritonokotoha[Zhi Min Di
| ] tsuteYan warerunogaChu Er desuga...souYan waremireba,
| sonoTong desune. Ri Ben moQue kani, Yan waretaTong , yunikutoTe
| Bie namonodehanaidesu. mochiron, Te Bie natokoroaruga, Ge Guo
| gasorezoredeYang "naMei Li yaGe Xing gaarimasu.
|
| Da Bian Xing Wei Shen inaShu kiIp mideshita.
| arigatougozaimashita.
| imp0cat wrote:
| Seriously, "you can teach tourists how to get to the station"
| as a motivation to learn the language is insane.
|
| :) Ok that is kinda funny, but having experienced Japan as a
| tourist, I must say that it has made the trip much easier.
| I genuinely believe learning English have improved my life.
|
| Absolutely.
| card_zero wrote:
| Heh, Slavoj Zizek. Why should the Japanese learn English? To
| understand a Slovenian, naturally!
| minebreaker wrote:
| 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 own language and cannot
| communicate.
| svilen_dobrev wrote:
| as someone from a very minor east-euro country (~7m people
| overall) - but having its own language AND alphabet) - one
| has to invest in some lingua-franca languages in order to
| be world-compatible :) and to have access to (quality)
| translations of whatever-other-language-media. For me those
| have been English and Russian, covering maybe 30-50% of
| world, as _culture_ (or at least the accessible world). i
| 'd love to have one more covering the east-asia.. but it's
| a somewhat too late, and nowhere to do it..
|
| i mean, for me, translations of Tao-Te-Ching in english are
| different from those in russian.. general idea is same but
| kind-of emphasizing different
| aspects/interpretations/connotations of the original. IMO
| English is much more perpendicular to east-asian thinking
| than russian.. which has its pros and cons.
| imp0cat wrote:
| 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.
| majikaja wrote:
| The finance industry in Japan is such a wasteland.
| bulbosaur123 wrote:
| 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.
|
| Yet people will obsessively focus on Japan? At this point it
| starts to seem like NPC behavior.
| okeuro49 wrote:
| People don't find authoritarian communism aspirational.
| tigrezno wrote:
| same will be said about conservative authoritarians in the US
| for next 20 years lol
| jsemrau wrote:
| I have lived in Japan for many years. There is a certain
| phenomena where foreigners when they meet each other in the
| supermarket experience a moment of awkwardness like we entered
| each others TikTok feed. You don't know if one should smile or
| not, nod, or ignore. One of the main reasons here is that
| foreigners in most non-tourist parts of Japan stick out like a
| sore thumb. Therefore, you are quickly falling into a main-
| character type of mindset. Then, for decades Japan has been the
| embodiment of the future. Most of William Gibsons cyberpunk
| work is build around Japan. That Tokyo in particular is a huge
| concrete Moloch that constantly bridges centuries old history
| and neon lights and tech underlines this. Anime/Manga have
| established Japan as a new cultural leader as the west has
| falling behind telling engaging stories. The recent Netflix
| success of OnePiece and the Korean Squid Games are just two
| data points on this. Japan is mysterious.
|
| With all that said, it may be the last true adventure into a
| unique culture that is challenging yet safe and accessible.
| twiceaday wrote:
| If I were to guess, Japan has a huge cultural presence in the
| west via comics, cartoons, and video-games. It is also "good
| weird." And historically it had a legendary reputation for
| electronics. That is a lot of western mindshare, especially
| amongst nerds. Chinas historic reputation is cheap crap and
| oppression. It has almost zero cultural presence in the west. I
| suspect between kpop and Korean dramas, westerners consume more
| Korean than Chinese media.
| kredd wrote:
| You're thinking about power and money, but also should consider
| culture exports. I'd say it's a combination of being a friendly
| nation to the west, being different, actively promoting culture
| internationally through media and, you know, still 3rd/4th
| largest economy. An extreme amount of recent travel in Japan
| also shows people some unique perspectives that people haven't
| seen in their home countries (cleanliness, public
| infrastructure and etc.). I understand you can experience some
| of it in China as well, but there's a massive difference
| between visiting Tokyo and Shanghai/Hong Kong.
|
| Also add millions of people who grew up with anime in
| 1990s/2000s who are professional adults now. That helps as
| well.
| tjpnz wrote:
| >China is the new emerging superpower.
|
| Japan is the regional cultural superpower - that doesn't
| require they have the largest economy or military.
| olelele wrote:
| 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.
| sprobertson wrote:
| Japan is also very small which makes it easy to "understand"
| lmm wrote:
| Japan is actually quite large - its land area is about the
| same as Germany, and it's the 11th most populous country in
| the world.
| olelele wrote:
| Except for that large parts are mountains and not
| inhabitable, there is a reason why so many people live in
| Kanto region.
| numpad0 wrote:
| 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.
| lmm wrote:
| > 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, diplomacy, or
| travel with China. More people are interested in Japan.
| nervousvarun wrote:
| 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.
| EdiX wrote:
| > Is anime & JAV to blame here?
|
| Yes, people are going to be interested in a culture based on
| its cultural exports and Japan punches way above its weight in
| terms of cultural exports. And it's not just anime and JAV,
| it's also literature and music. Having content that you want to
| consume will make it easier to get motivated and to stay
| motivated. On top of that intermediate and advanced language
| learning is, to a large extent, driven by media consumption so
| the availability of a large amount of interesting content
| simply makes Japanese easier to learn than many other
| languages.
|
| This is also how nearly everyone learns English.
|
| When China will start exporting interesting content more people
| will want to learn Chinese and succeed in learning it.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >What's with the west's pathalogical obsession with Japan and
| Japanese?
|
| The first thing to point out is that this goes both ways which
| goes a long way to explain why Japan is more accessible. As
| someone who is German, the amount of anime that features
| vaguely German settings and names (sometimes extremely
| grammatically broken) for no good reason has always been funny
| to me. Influential popular media figures like Kojima are
| obsessed with Western pop culture in their own right, etc.
|
| Even the more literary or nationalistic Japanese cultural
| figures are often steeped in European culture, see Yukio
| Mishima. You can recognize Kafka in Kobo Abe's books, so as a
| Western reader it's both different and familiar. Chinese
| culture is harder to get into and in particular traditional
| Chinese culture is more impenetrable yet.
| mchaver wrote:
| You are also missing that American soft culture is even
| stronger than what Japan exports. It's just been around longer
| and normalized for so long it is just normal to consume
| American media outside the US. I've ran into people that know
| more about US laws than the laws of their home country just
| from watching US television
|
| As for Japan, it's not just the western nations. Taiwan also
| has a huge fascination with Japan. Many Asian nations have like
| Japan for their strong soft culture, but detest the Japanese
| government for historical treatment of these nations. Japanese
| and American governments are heavily invested in soft power.
| Here is a long but interesting video discussing Japanese soft
| power https://youtu.be/IM2VIKfaY0Y?si=H0gRcyKtu4kMUaCj
|
| South Korea has also had a lot of success with soft power. It's
| just had a later start than Japan and the US.
| dominostars wrote:
| > I will get downvoted and hated for what I'm going to say.
|
| If you do, it's not because of the question, but the
| condescending way you're framing it ("Pathological"/"NPC
| behavior"/etc.) If you're curious you could simply express your
| curiosity and people will be happy to share their thoughts.
|
| > What's with the west's pathalogical obsession with Japan and
| Japanese?
|
| Certainly cultural exports play a role just like they do with
| any country. Lots of folks are obsessed with the USA and New
| York City because of USA cultural exports.
|
| Anime plays a big role in this, but it's not the only major
| export. Cars, video game consoles, video games, cameras,
| movies, music, art, food. Food! Japan's reputation across all
| of these things is very high, or at least has been at some
| point. There's a lot that's come out of Japan that has captured
| a lot of peoples interest and imagination as a result.
| TinkersW wrote:
| 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 in
| the way that it sounds, very harsh and unpleasant, something
| about the tones gives me a mild headache.
| ecshafer wrote:
| 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.
| tmtvl wrote:
| > _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'.
| ehnto wrote:
| 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.
| saithound wrote:
| > therefore making it a more valuable language to acquire for
| business, diplomacy and travel
|
| Learning a Chinese language for the business, diplomacy or
| travel opportunities is a stupid, stupid idea. In the English-
| speaking West, bwtween 1.6% and 5.0% of the population are
| native speakers of both some Chinese language and English. The
| business and diplomacy opportunities that require a Chinese-
| speaker all go to these people*.
|
| Nobody's going to hire some rando to speak Mandarin when it's
| equally easy to hire a person who's as good as the natives, and
| got to spend the 3 years of effort one needs to learn Mandarin
| on picking up some other useful business skill.
|
| Travel opportunities are not great, either: 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. If you're looking
| to learn a language for the tourism opportunities, you're much
| better served by learning Spanish, Russian, or for that matter
| Japanese, which allow you to visit a lot more otherwise hard-
| to-access destinations.
|
| * You have a slight edge if you also speak some obscure
| language in a country with few English-speakers who nonetheless
| want to trade with China. There are very few such countries.
| All of Africa is out (English and French have very high
| penetration), as is South East Asia (Chinese itself has a high
| penetration), as is the Arab world: a few Eastern European
| countries such as Hungary might qualify, but guess what,
| Hungary also has a sufficient number of native Chinese speakers
| to saturate the demand in that niche market.*
| riizade wrote:
| > 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 seem to be a
| "select few" hotels, it was something any hotel could get,
| but probably a lot didn't because international tourism to
| China wasn't as big then. Some hotels will refuse foreign
| guests, apparently, but that's the hotel's individual
| decision and it doesn't seem to be widespread.
|
| I know several non-Chinese people who have traveled
| extensively throughout China via simple tourist visas, there
| were no restrictions as far as I could tell, and I've never
| heard of any.
|
| Are you confusing the PRC with the DPRK?
| numpad0 wrote:
| 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...
| majikaja wrote:
| I don't think there is much to gain from intelligent Japanese
| people from becoming fluent in English, other than maybe leaving
| the country. They can already make a good living by climbing the
| ladder in a large firm.
|
| It is unrealistic for the average person in the country to become
| fluent in English reading/writing - lots of people are barely
| literate in their original language. Even if everyone became more
| skilled and wealthier, what would that achieve? Import more junk
| from overseas? Increased wealth will just be funneled into land
| or spent on smartphone games and prostitutes.
| laurieg wrote:
| 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 was given
| in Japanese and most of them started with a joke along the lines
| of "[In English] Hello everyone, good evening! [In Japanese]
| Hahah, of course I'm not going to give the whole talk in English"
| 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.
|
| Some of my friends have kids with mixed-roots. They have grown up
| speaking English and Japanese. They sometimes modify their
| English pronunciation to sound "more Japanese" when they start
| English classes in school. They don't want to stand out amongst
| their peers.
|
| I remember one kid, who was tri-lingual. He told a story about
| being called upon in English class to translate the Japanese word
| for "great-grandfather". He translated it correctly but his
| teacher said "No, it's grand-grandfather". They teacher and the
| class laughed at him. Of course, there are bad teachers
| everywhere but one wonders if the teacher would have tried to
| take him down a peg so much if he fit in a bit better. He ended
| up moving to Germany with his family. It makes me feel quite sad
| that a kid born and raised here can end up feeling more at home
| in a place he has no connection to.
| anal_reactor wrote:
| > 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 still a foreign
| language, so it's a mental hurdle. I can compare it to talking
| to a friend in a casual setting vs having a work meeting.
|
| > He translated it correctly but his teacher said "No, it's
| grand-grandfather".
|
| It's a trait of hierarchical societies. Questioning your
| superior is a bigger threat to the society than saying things
| that are objectively wrong.
|
| While it's a fair argument that English became the lingua
| franca and if you don't speak it, you will be left behind, 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.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| > those who do, simply use local words to express their
| American thoughts.
|
| I feel like there's almost the reverse stereotype of this for
| Americans living in Japan. Like, that they're weirdly
| obsessed with Japanese culture and try too hard to become
| more Japanese.
| eszed wrote:
| > Having someone speak your native language makes things
| infinitely easier to understand and more engaging.
|
| I don't really disagree with this. However, it's only
| axiomatically true if you hold teaching skill constant. I
| once learned far more on Tuesdays and Thursdays from a
| _brilliant_ teacher who spoke no English than I did on
| Mondays and Wednesdays from a perfectly bi-lingual instructor
| who was only _meh_.
|
| When I taught ESL I held onto English-only except _in
| extremis_. Knowing (though only a bit of, in my case) the
| other language, could otherwise become unproductive. As the
| teacher, it was on me to find the four or five (or however
| many were necessary!) ways to get to the concept in English.
| Hearing all of them may have only been necessary for a few of
| the students, but hearing them was re-inforcing for the
| students who had 'got it' first time.
| bondarchuk wrote:
| 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.
| jhanschoo wrote:
| 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 languages.
| Pamar wrote:
| 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.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| 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.
| partdavid wrote:
| 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.
| tayo42 wrote:
| > 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?
| ecshafer wrote:
| Ironically, Ruby is a Japanese created language, and is
| outside of cobol the most English word heavy languages I've
| used.
| epoxia wrote:
| > He told a story about being called upon in English class to
| translate the Japanese word for "great-grandfather"
|
| Very similar/relevant shimura ken skit.
| https://youtu.be/67KlmXYDom4
| RandallBrown wrote:
| > 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.
| huehehue wrote:
| For the curious, it would be something like "makku-fu-ruri"
|
| This was my experience in Japan as well. So many words we're
| used to saying in English use mouth shapes that the Japanese
| language does not, so you really have to tweak how you say
| things to align with what's available.
|
| "Coffee" is a fun one for the tired westerner
| sjburt wrote:
| How is this any different from going into a Panda Express and
| trying to order in Mandarin?
| SpecialistK wrote:
| 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 being
| much closer to English than Finnish is) because there are so many
| fewer Finnish speakers. Finns wanting to experience warm beaches
| or global cities need to communicate when traveling to those
| places outside of Finland. France meanwhile has mountains,
| beaches, a big domestic market, ample media, and international
| reach.
|
| Japan is much more like France than Finland - the geographic
| diversity allows one to ski or sunbathe within the same country.
| The domestic market for goods and services is huge. Japan creates
| and exports so much culture that English speakers wish to learn
| Japanese to consume more of it. When there is little "need" to
| learn another language, it is not only less enticing but actually
| harder to do so.
|
| This culminates in anglophones being at a disadvantage in
| acquiring a L2 compared to nearly anyone else. A lot of people
| worldwide do want to practice their English with a native
| speaker. Many international institutions use English as the
| lingua franca. Even during a layover in Montreal, my (then)
| girlfriend ordered a smoothie in French and was replied to in
| English (this could be a commentary on Canadian bilingualism, but
| I'll leave that for another day) - it's _hard_ for an anglophone
| to practice and perfect another language when the world around
| them already speaks better English than their L2.
|
| So considering Japan's strong domestic market, culture, and the
| stark differences between the languages, it was never a shock to
| me that their English proficiency isn't where one would
| immediately expect it. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and
| the deep experience behind them.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| 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, that might cause a shift elsewhere, as suddenly
| there's a 'need' (and thus a motivation).
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| There are Japanese diplomats with nearly flawless English
| skills though...
| macintux wrote:
| 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.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| So why can't Japanese companies hire the genuinely
| bilingual as employees/consultants/etc.?
| DanielHB wrote:
| That is my experience with Brazil as well, it is very uncommon
| to find people who speak good english there in part because
| nobody ever travels outside the country.
| TimK65 wrote:
| 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, living in Stockholm, by the way.)
| rjsw wrote:
| I felt this from working in the Netherlands. One thing that
| may change it in larger countries is digital TV, the
| broadcast can have both original and dubbed soundtracks
| available.
| hiAndrewQuinn wrote:
| 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 job here after moving right
| after completing college. And it's definitely a cornerstone of
| Finnish success in international markets. I would very, very
| gladly take this tradeoff again. But, yes, trial by fire
| usually sets learning alight.
| m463 wrote:
| > A few days after I arrived, the landlord introduced me to an
| English conversation lounge in Takadanobaba. I would go there,
| chat with the customers in English for a few hours, and get paid
| 5000 yen. I quit after a couple of sessions, as the place made me
| uncomfortable; I even wondered if it was a front for some other
| kind of business.
|
| I wonder what kind of front it could be?
| tkgally wrote:
| It probably wasn't a front after all; I just didn't understand
| the situation. I wrote more in another thread:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42073152
| baruchthescribe wrote:
| Very interesting observations. My sister lives outside Tokyo and
| is an assistant English teacher under the JET Programme which is
| a government initiative to bring language teachers to schools.
| Her Japanese is very good - as part of being selected she was
| interviewed in Japanese by the local embassy so it had to be -
| and she reports a strong willingness in her students to learn at
| least some English for pragmatic reasons.
| ekusiadadus wrote:
| 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.
| In this environment, it's hard to feel a real necessity to
| communicate in English. Since elementary school, we've been told
| that being able to speak English is extremely important, and I
| studied hard. Yet in this environment, there are rarely
| opportunities to actually use English.
|
| When foreigners tell us about the importance of English, they may
| not fully understand that it doesn't really matter much to most
| Japanese people. Japanese people might start speaking English
| when they truly need it.
|
| Rather than that, I'd be happier if AI could provide real-time
| translation for everything.
| tomcam wrote:
| Your written English is excellent. You are underestimating your
| skills, I think. Is there a world in which you could simply
| pause and plan out your words before speaking? Westerners won't
| mind. Elon Musk often pauses noticeably in interviews when he's
| discussing something controversial or novel, for example. I
| retrained myself how to speak in my 20s and went through a
| similar process.
| Aeolun wrote:
| In general just pausing without saying eeuuh will make you
| smarter.
| germandiago wrote:
| 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 foreigners entering Spain, in general
| terms, and foreigners entering in Japan.
|
| I love Japan, but I am not sure it would be a particularly
| comfortable place to live since Japanese have a very
| traditional culture and habits, so being part of the group is
| not an easy task. In fact, I think you will never be a part of
| the group as I would understand it in spanish terms, when, for
| example, an argentinian or a romanian becomes in Spain over
| time.
|
| The japanese culture is one one of the cultures I admire the
| most in many aspects: disciplined, orderly... but one thing is
| that and a very different thing is living there and becoming
| fully integrated. I think that's tough.
| expatjapan121 wrote:
| > 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 learned Spanish or everyone is speaking English but
| there is likely a common language. Making the reason
| "traditional culture and habits" and just not a lack of a
| shared language seems wrong to me, at least I feel quite
| integrated. Please stop telling people "they will never be
| Japanese" since it's blatantly wrong.
| Aeolun wrote:
| I think the OP is correct, though probably not in the way
| they mean.
|
| I love living in Japan, but I'll never be able to adopt
| that mindset, or be able to eat all those disgusting fishes
| they love.
|
| That's fine. A lot of Japanese people think it's valuable
| to have different perspectives too, even if they could
| never convince themselves that it's ok to just walk up to
| someone and ask them what their problem is.
| expatjapan121 wrote:
| IIUC you are saying OP is correct in that culture exists
| in the world. And you are affirming that Japanese people
| believe this too and are fine with people that don't eat
| "disgusting fishes", like me (cooked I can't do, sashimi
| I'm fine).
|
| So the sentiment that somehow Japanese are incompatible
| for culture reasons, which is the message I got from the
| thread I replied to, is not correct in your opinion too,
| right?
| germandiago wrote:
| 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 there. I think
| it is more difficult than in other countrues and by this
| I am not meaning they are bad.
|
| For example, far fewer japanese speak english than other
| developed countries, which is a trait of ehat they care
| about.
|
| Also, when working or interacting with japanese myself, I
| found they follow rules really strictly compared to the
| "flexibility mindset" that westerners tend to have when
| solving problems.
|
| They will not go and correct their bosses if they see
| mistakes because "they will notice themselves". So there
| is a lot of room to make innocent mistakes when
| interacting with them and many, face it, are not even
| that interested beyond a trivial and polite conversation
| and I am not meaning bad. Every culture has their
| priorities and taste.
| expatjapan121 wrote:
| > 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 wish they taught if better to
| open global opportunities but that doesn't mean anything
| in terms of culture. It's a language issue and luckily AI
| is much better at dealing with them than culture.
| numpad0 wrote:
| I kind of suspect it might be worth clarifying what a
| language is and how it's differentiated from culture.
| I've heard that honorifics works differently in Korean
| language e.g. for a supervisor in work situation where
| one is not expected to use one for his own supervisor in
| Japanese, while one absolutely is in Korean, and I feel
| that's more towards culture while also possible to
| include in grammatical ruleset.
|
| > cooked I can't do, sashimi I'm fine
|
| btw completely understand this. My technical brain says
| just pure NaCl and pure heat for a whole fish as caught
| with absolutely no herbs allowed is technically crazy. I
| hated the brown _chiai_ regions in _buri_ slices growing
| up. It 's crazy that yaki-zakana, literally "roast fish"
| is one of characteristic dish of the country.
| germandiago wrote:
| 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 perfectly that just bc they
| act politely does not mean they are thinking you do not
| bother them. A japanese would rarely tell you that. And if
| someone did, it is likely to do it in an indirect way, as
| most asians do. Japanese are in the extreme of that polite
| behavior.
| expatjapan121 wrote:
| > 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.
| helboi4 wrote:
| If you speak Japanese you will have a waaaaaay better time
| in Japan. But no they will not ever accept you in the same
| way you could be accepted in a European country. If you're
| Korean or Chinese you might get away with it with the
| younger generation. But ethnicity is still a big barrier
| there. Source - I speak Japanese.
| svara wrote:
| > But no they will not ever accept you in the same way
| you could be accepted in a European country.
|
| I've lived in Japan for many years and speak Japanese
| alright (disclaimer, that was a long time ago though, in
| the 90s) and now live in Germany. I travel a lot.
|
| I think what you're saying is directionally correct, but
| really more of a difference in degree.
|
| For example, I've often seen Asian-Germans being
| addressed in broken English by older Germans, even though
| German is their strongest language. Or being complimented
| on their fluent German. That's got to feel pretty
| "othering".
|
| And don't tell me the country that just elected mister
| Trump is as open to the world as is often claimed.
|
| This may all feel completely different if you're around
| the right group of people, and I imagine that's similar
| in Japan today, though I haven't been back in a long
| time.
| mapt wrote:
| That is the situation right now.
|
| It's not necessarily going to be the situation forever.
|
| Every demographic crisis involving low birthrates is an
| immigration melting pot waiting for the population to get
| desperate enough to change policies.
| thfuran wrote:
| Changing policy to admit more immigrants is easy.
| Changing culture is hard.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Depends how long they wait. Unless something changes in
| the next decade areas producing excess population are
| going to be in demand and they may find it difficult to
| attract people quickly enough.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > Every demographic crisis involving low birthrates is an
| immigration melting pot waiting for the population to get
| desperate enough to change policies.
|
| Unless people accept the reality that perpetual growth is
| impossible, and that the economy will shrink as the
| population does. The UK austerity years provides a decent
| example of such a "managed decline", albeit with more
| immigrants, but that's not assured when the next
| conservative government comes to power.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| maybe in the west, but asia is pretty racist, and the
| japanese have resisted until now pretty well. we'll have
| AI before they'll capitulate for any real migration
| tokinonagare wrote:
| > 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 "becoming"
| Japanese? You can integrate in Japanese society as a
| foreigner, and being treated as an outsider also has its
| perks. Typically you are not expected to follow some of the
| rules, and thus has less bullshit to deal with. Just be
| careful of not becoming too good in Japanese (or at least
| pretend not to be), so you can maximize the benefits of
| speaking Japanese while minimizing the expectations.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| > You are wrong here. You will indeed never be Japanese
|
| I think you are assuming they share the same definition
| of "Japanese" as you. Even the Japanese government does
| not agree with your definition.
| famahar wrote:
| 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.
| onetokeoverthe wrote:
| 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.
| Neonlicht wrote:
| Tolerance sounds good on paper but it can so easily become
| complete and utter indifference. And you should never make
| the mistake of thinking that it implies respect. I know
| deeply unhappy expats in Amsterdam who are faced with such
| an English speaking but very cold and alien society. The
| globalisation lie is that the world is the same everywhere.
| Shawnj2 wrote:
| I think it's interesting that there are signs etc. entirely in
| English in Japan though
| nayuki wrote:
| Which interestingly is illegal in Montreal / Quebec in
| Canada. (Signs must contain French text and the French text
| must be no smaller than other languages.)
| siver_john wrote:
| This is extraneous to your comment, but as someone who speaks
| some Japanese, if you ever want someone to practice English
| with, I am more than happy to lend a hand.
| FredPret wrote:
| If your spoken English is 10% as good as your comment, you're
| way ahead of the average English speaker.
|
| That said, I can't wait for AI earbud / smartglasses Babel Fish
| [0] to become a reality.
|
| [0] https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Babel_Fish
| ghc wrote:
| 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.
| throw78311 wrote:
| I posit that Japan is able to keep its "exoticness" (to much of
| the world) as a culture _because_ the cultural osmosis that comes
| from having a populace with good English skills promotes
| homogenization. I imagine a Japan that 's highly fluent in
| English will look a lot more similar to S. Korea.
|
| I might go to extend this theory and say the quality of English
| literacy in Japan is intentionally kneecapped at some level in an
| attempt to retain their cultural identity, even if unconsciously.
| CarVac wrote:
| I just went on vacation to Japan and it was fascinating how much
| relief even the competent English-speakers there seemed to show
| when I would speak with them in my semi-fluent (vocab-deficient
| though) Japanese.
|
| There are translations everywhere, on signs and in museums (those
| are fascinating because the translations omit 80% of the detail
| since foreigners will lack historical contextual knowledge) but I
| got the feeling that with the exception of accommodating
| tourists, there's never any use for most natives to ever speak
| English.
| ggm wrote:
| "Year of living Danishly" [0] is this but for English -> Denmark.
|
| Neighbours who knock on your door to explain you are putting the
| rubbish bin out wrongly in the street and it concerns them.
|
| My sense of Denmark changed after reading this book, to one which
| included 'very high expectations of social conformity' which in
| some ways, matches Japan.
|
| (ok. not this exactly because not primarily language focussed but
| there is topic drift in this thread)
|
| [0] The Year of Living Danishly: Uncovering the Secrets of the
| World's Happiest Country - Helen Russell
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