nest0r Wrote:Interesting, I really do wonder what will happen as language-learning becomes more and more streamlined and accessible.

Language-learning has become as streamlined as it's going to get. There's only so much hand-holding you can do. The largest failure will always be people who don't want to do the work to get the reward of proficiency. There are tons of textbooks for beginner level, and there's more than a few for mid-level. After that textbooks are not really necessary as the student has the tools at that point to learn as much as they want from native Japanese sources.

I'm in Japan now. I have excellent teachers. I have great textbooks. I have the opportunity to practice all the time. By everyone's opinion my Japanese has improved by more than anyone thought it would. Some other exchange students, however, had exactly those same opportunities. They leave here not knowing how to have a simple conversation. They have little knowledge of kanji. Their reading speed and comprehension is low. They still confuse hiragana characters for each other. I was at their same level when I arrived. Their achievement is passing a practice 3-kyuu JLPT test in class, and my achievement is having a decent hope at passing 2-kyuu.

The truth is I am a little bit smarter than them, but not by much. They didn't use the opportunities they had to learn as much as they could. Even if you're in the states, because of the internet, most people can have most of those same opportunities at very little cost. It takes work, and as with most things, most people aren't truly interested in proficiency, even people who decide to study abroad. It's maddening, annoying, and perplexing but it is the case.

Because of this, I wish more American universities had stricter standards for study abroad. Japanese is my uni major for god sakes, but the people majoring economics or culture coming from Australia, Korea, New Zealand, and England are put in the higher level classes by default because their universities have higher standards. This means the students that do get to study abroad much more readily use the opportunity available to them.

Americans being adverse to hard work for a delayed payoff is not a new phenomenon, and I doubt it will change if textbooks were better.

erlog Wrote:

nest0r Wrote:Interesting, I really do wonder what will happen as language-learning becomes more and more streamlined and accessible.

Language-learning has become as streamlined as it's going to get.

Do you really believe this? Textbooks and university study are about as un-streamline as you can get. We can't even imagine what kind of new technology will be out there in ten years. It gets easier for each new generation. With all the motivation in the world, I could have never learned Japanese as a teen-ager in the 80's with the limited access available to electronic aids or the ease of travel we have now.

Dragg Wrote:@kaze

I get the point just fine. Bodhisamaya said that it was disrespectful to go to a country and not make an attempt to learn the majority language. And the specific example of Spanish recordings was used as a complaint.

I'm talking about your comment on the Tibetans. He doesn't want language to be dissolved, I was making that clear.

Regarding his original post, it makes sense. There are people who have there own spaces where their own languages flourish. But it would be nonsensical to frequent an establishment where their language is unknown without even a little knowledge of the language spoken within the establishment, especially when the language spoken in said establishment is the dominant language in that area. The name of the language is irrelevant.

I think the issue of expats and the issue of immigrants/minorities is a bit muddled?

As for expats - why so judgmental folks? There are many good reasons an expat might decide not to learn a local language - especially Japanese. I'm sure most wish they could speak the local language, but it's impractical in their circumstances or they've tried without success. Either way, it doesn't make much sense to judge them. I'd say intercultural mingling (even through foreigner-bubble-membranes) is good for the planet and should be applauded.

Activeaero: Superficial reasons for coming to Japan? Surely not technical specialists, foreign service, professionals, artists, researchers, international development, humanitarian assistance, multinational corporations, charities, athletes, educators, etc? Many of them don't speak Japanese. As for other people's personal interests, passions or goals, I wouldn't know how to judge their relative superficiality: supporting a family? pachinko obsession? hostess anonymously? sake tasting? escaping a humdrum life? anime fan? Language is a big investment that just isn't necessary for everyone.

Thora Wrote:Activeaero: Superficial reasons for coming to Japan?

Yes. As in going there for reasons that you have a very shallow understanding of or that you do not really support as much as you pretend to. The field you are in really doesn't have all that much to do with it IMO, with some exceptions of course, because if a person is truly that devoted to their field then I'm going to go out on a limb and say that knowing the native language of the country they live in would be a huge benefit in whatever area they pursue.

And BTW it doesn't mean someone is a bad person or anything lol. I'm just saying if some random person comes up to me and tells me that they were so interested in some aspect of Japan that they decided to go there, no matter what the field, yet then go on to reveal that they have almost no understanding of the language then there is a little switch in my brain that is going to go off and say "well I guess you weren't really THAT interested".

Thora Wrote:Language is a big investment that just isn't necessary for everyone.

That should be in a quotes book

activeaero Wrote:And BTW it doesn't mean someone is a bad person or anything lol. I'm just saying if some random person comes up to me and tells me that they were so interested in some aspect of Japan that they decided to go there, no matter what the field, yet then go on to reveal that they have almost no understanding of the language then there is a little switch in my brain that is going to go off and say "well I guess you weren't really THAT interested".

Nah - there could be many people who are interested in anime, manga, budo, or some other aspect of Japanese culture, but isn't particularly interested in the language.

Or there could be people who tried (many times) to learn the language and gave up? Japanese isn't exactly a "Mickey Mouse" language to learn, as we all know.

I agree with Thora - no need to be judgmental.

kfmfe04 Wrote:- no need to be judgmental.

Always true, even when I know I falter at it at times.

Too little, too late, but may I just humbly point out that the U.S. has no official language whatsoever? Of course English is the default national language, but really that's just a matter of convenience than anything else. There are even laws stating that ballots have to be printed in other languages if speakers of those languages (at this point it's really only Spanish) constitute a sufficiently high percentage of the population of a district/constituency (fuzzy on the details, but it's beside the point).

On the disrepectful/personal choice debate - I personally can't imagine living here (been here since Aug 2007) without learning Japanese, but that's because (a) I love learning languages, (b) I can't stand not to be able to take care of myself, and © I can't stand not being able to read everything that's around me. I think for some people, though, part of the appeal that comes along with living temporarily in a foreign country is that feeling of not knowing WTF anything is. It's kind of like a personal challenge - at least that's the impression I've gotten from my non-Japanese-speaking expat friends. I totally agree with the comment about language being an investment that not everyone needs to make - in fact, I sometimes get the feeling that my school wishes I spoke Japanese because they want me to pronounce Japanese words like a clueless American. There's a time and place for all types, and I think it's a little bit anal to run around worrying about whether and why everyone else is studying the language, especially because it's so hard to really accurately assess how well someone does or doesn't know the language. Some people I know who "know" Japanese couldn't speak to save their lives but can read novels, whereas others couldn't read their ways out of a kindergarten hiragana textbook but can school me in conversation. Live and let live.

Just hopping in here to go back many many posts about the comment about Spanish becoming an offical language, the US has no official language. We've gone a couple centuries without declaring English as the official language, so I doubt that would change for Spanish.

Evil_Dragon Wrote:Living in Kawasaki until July 09. And although I visit language courses at university it never stops to amaze me, how horrible some students speak Japanese - especially the pronounciation. Other than that it's pretty nice.

I think we Germans have it easier with Japanese pronunciation. Japanese and German pronunciation is much closer than ... let's say English and Japanese. All my English speaking coworkers do have quite an American/English accent in their Japanese.


@topic: I've met quite a lot of people, mainly guys, who have been living here for 5, 10, 15 years. Of course they're married and have children. They've completely settled down here. Do they speak any Japanese? Well, yes. At a high level? Hell, no! Almost all of them sucked more than me! I was really shocked. Well, most of them came here for no special reason, found a Japanese wife and that's it. They're still watching English movies, read books in English, listen to English music. If there's anything to do where you'd need Japanese they have their wives do it for them.

I personally have been here for ... uhm 10 months now and my Japanese is only slowly improving. I wasn't a complete beginner when I came here and I came here in order to improve my Japanese anyway. It's progressing so slowly because I have a full-time job right now.

I'm thinking a lot about going to a language school full-time in about 1 year. It's expensive, though and a LOT of people say that language schools only slow you down or are not worth the money etc.

Activeaero: I see. You had written that foreigners who come to live in Japan and don't even attempt to learn Japanese must have come for superficial reasons. I mistook that to mean, then, that coming to Japan to learn Japanese is the only serious reason to come to Japan!

I now understand you meant specifically foreigners coming to Japan for a particular reason (an interest in some aspect of Japan), and "superficial" referred to their level of commitment to that reason. Thanks for explaining. But I wouldn't be too quick to measure someone's commitment or potential by their language skills. So many factors...

As far as the official language of the entire U.S., you guys were right that there isn't one. However, 30 states do have official languages and my state of California in particular has ammended the State Constitution to make English the only official language. That means that official state documents are not required to be in any language besides English. When all states that have official languages also add Spanish, it will be safe to say that Spanish has been officially accepted by most of the US.

@kaze,

Although bodhisamaya may not be directly supporting the dissolution of language, I would argue (but it would take pages) that his stances lead the eventual dissolution of language. I don't what you mean by the word "establishment", but if you are referring to things like restaurants, there is nothing nonsensical about ordering in many restaurants even with huge language barriers. Even in some Sacramento Chinese restaurants, we have waiters that only understand item numbers on menus and drink names. If you have a question that requires a conversation, they call a manager over.

As long as you stick to restaurants that have at least some menu pictures (or in Japan some even have physical models right?), you should be just fine.

skellyfish Wrote:Too little, too late, but may I just humbly point out that the U.S. has no official language whatsoever? Of course English is the default national language, but really that's just a matter of convenience than anything else. There are even laws stating that ballots have to be printed in other languages if speakers of those languages (at this point it's really only Spanish) constitute a sufficiently high percentage of the population of a district/constituency (fuzzy on the details, but it's beside the point).

In my high school history class, the teacher gave a lecture on the Founding Fathers. In that lecture, he told us English was adopted as America's official language over German by one vote. That always stuck out in my mind because of what might have happened if we had become a German speaking country. How would that affected our view during both World Wars due to the uniting effect a language has?

I just googled it and in fact this never happened. The "English over German by one vote" is a wide-spread myth. It came about because twice in the 1700's congress rejected the idea of publishing government documents in English and German citing the cost of printing in multiple languages and the confusion that might result from problems in translation. Continuing this English only policy early in our history, in 1811, James Madison signed the Louisiana Enabling Act that required the laws, records, and written proceedings of the new state to be in English.

You never stop learning. For 20 years I have believed that English was, by law, our official language

Dragg Wrote:As far as the official language of the entire U.S., you guys were right that there isn't one. However, 30 states do have official languages and my state of California in particular has ammended the State Constitution to make English the only official language. That means that official state documents are not required to be in any language besides English. When all states that have official languages also add Spanish, it will be safe to say that Spanish has been officially accepted by most of the US.

That's not really how official languages work though. Finnish is an official language in Sweden, that doesn't mean Finns can get around without learning Swedish, it's impossible. All it means is that official documents can be acquired in that language, it doesn't mean you're supposed to live in Sweden without learning Swedish. When you live in a country, you SHOULD learn the de facto language so people can communicate with you even if your native tounge is considered official. Why? Because when I go to the store to buy clothes, I expect the clerk to speak Swedish to me since we're in Sweden. I don't expect him to talk back in Finnish just because Finnish is one of Swedens official languages and I wouldn't find it acceptable. I'm fine with a foreigner not speaking native Swedish, but if you can't communicate in a de facto language, you shouldn't live in the country.

@tobberoth

I understand how official languages work. I never said you should expect a person in a store to speak any other language beside the majority one. I don't agree with "should/should not" type references in the personal scope of learning. I think adults should be free to speak however they want; it's their own personal responsibility if it makes their life harder. The only reason I got started on the "official language" tangent was because bodhisamaya specifically complained about Spanish recordings on American call lines.

BTW, in the US store clerks are being gradually being replaced by machines anyway. Sometimes it's nice to be able to ask a clerk a question, but it's very rarely necessary.

Dragg Wrote:@tobberoth

The only reason I got started on the "official language" tangent was because bodhisamaya specifically complained about Spanish recordings on American call lines.

That was kind of an after thought not realizing this would turn into a debate. I would have cited better reasons if I had know it would have. I will go back and edit it now

Dragg Wrote:@tobberoth

I understand how official languages work. I never said you should expect a person in a store to speak any other language beside the majority one. I don't agree with "should/should not" type references in the personal scope of learning. I think adults should be free to speak however they want; it's their own personal responsibility if it makes their life harder. The only reason I got started on the "official language" tangent was because bodhisamaya specifically complained about Spanish recordings on American call lines.

This goes beyond personal scope of learning. If you don't know the de facto language, you can't work or function in society. If you can't, you're a drain on it. If you are, you shouldn't be there.

I realize English teachers are in a bad situation since their work is done in English and they're forced to work in another country (well, not forced, but you get what I mean) so it's not very nice to say they have to learn the language of every country they are going to teach in... I'm almost ready to even say that they are allowed to be an exception.. but honestly, if you're staying for more than 2 years and can't even reach basic converstional level... I'd probably recommend said person to stay in their own country.

@ Tobberoth

Sure, you can work and function in a country without knowing the majority language. You could design websites, sell stuff on Ebay, work in a digital sweatshop like Amazon Turk, work at high end hotels that cater to English speakers, practice English conversations with natives for cash, or work in a Sacramento Chinese restaurant. I could go on and on....

As long as you pay your taxes, who cares what you do?

As a whole, those who don't speak English in America receive more in government services than they pay in taxes. Most foreigners in Japan have a college degree so it is probably different.

If a person is living in a country other than the one they had original citizenship in, it is because somehow their life is better than it was back home. It is respectful to learn the majority language of ones new residence.

Dragg Wrote:@ Tobberoth

Sure, you can work and function in a country without knowing the majority language. You could design websites, sell stuff on Ebay, work in a digital sweatshop like Amazon Turk, work at high end hotels that cater to English speakers, practice English conversations with natives for cash, or work in a Sacramento Chinese restaurant. I could go on and on....

As long as you pay your taxes, who cares what you do?

You're talking about making money, I'm talking about functioning. Stuff like voting is of course out of the question, so you can't contribute to the democrazy. When your neighbourhood has things planned, you can't join because you didn't understand the note about it and you don't understand what anyone there is saying anyway. The clerks at any store you go will go "geeze, not that dude a gain.. YES. WANT. POINT. 20 DOLLARS. NO. NOT FREE. 20 DOLLARS." I'm just grabbing the examples from the air so not all of them might be relevant, the point is that when you're actively living somewhere, you're a part of that country. IMO, it's your duty to learn the language and there's nothing wrong with natives expecting you to do that. If I have a foreigner living next door to me, I expect to be able to go over there if he's playing loud music and tell him in Swedish that he needs to keep it down. I don't want to have to buy a translator to deal with the problem.

It might sound like racism, but personally I think it's common sense. Just like I demand people living in Sweden know Swedish, I learn Japanese if I'm to live there. I would also learn Hindu if I expected to live in India.

Tobberoth Wrote:

Dragg Wrote:

You're talking about making money, I'm talking about functioning. Stuff like voting is of course out of the question, so you can't contribute to the democrazy.

I voted last month in Hawaii and ballots were available in five languages. A person can vote but I am not sure how aware he/she would be of the issues as the debates are only in English. Tax dollars of course were used to pay for the translations. I have not see the state budget though so it might have been an insignificant amount of funds use.

bodhisamaya Wrote:

Tobberoth Wrote:

Dragg Wrote:

You're talking about making money, I'm talking about functioning. Stuff like voting is of course out of the question, so you can't contribute to the democrazy.

I voted last month in Hawaii and ballots were available in five languages. A person can vote but I am not sure how aware he/she would be of the issues as the debates are only in English. Tax dollars of course were used to pay for the translations. I have not see the state budget though so it might have been an insignificant amount of funds use.

The ballots are only available in the de facto and official languages of the country (at least, that's the norm). And still yeah, how can you properly vote, even with a translated ballot, if you don't know the language? By reading the XXXXX times? (Where XXXXX is the name of the country, obviously).

@ tobberoth

It doesn't sound like racism, but it sounds like an overreaction. In the case of a loud neighbor that doesn't understand, motioning to your ears or slightly covering them should get the point across. As far as pointing at items in a store, I'm sure that some deaf people are forced to do that as well. Should they start a country of the deaf so that they don't inconvenience everybody else? Or maybe they just need to try harder? Everyone has unique circumstances so I think it is a bit unfair to generalize.

@ bodhi

My issue with you is that you keep bringing up respecting a majority language, and your first post used terms like "someone else's country." To me, that original post was on the scale of somebody continuing to blatantly state that Colombus "discovered" America and we should all respect and celebrate him. (Something they made me do on Colombus day in elementary school.) I'm not sure how you fail to see that your words could make many people feel sore including native Hawaiians considering that the US destroyed their kingdom almost within living memory. If you are an Ainu, why is it disrepectful to resist learning or using Japanese?

bodhisamaya Wrote:If a person is living in a country other than the one they had original citizenship in, it is because somehow their life is better than it was back home. It is respectful to learn the majority language of ones new residence.

Again, this is a huge generalization. One could go live in a third world country to do charity work or be brought into the U.S. to be a prostitute.

Furthermore, what if I wanted to move to Japan to document and help preserve the Ainu language. I could in theory try to avoid learning Japanese out of principle.