LazyNomad Wrote:

yudantaiteki Wrote:Aijin:

Quote:The two reasons for truly learning a language to a high proficiency are: necessity, and passion.

Definitely. If you look at some of the other Asian countries that have overall better English ability than Japan, one big reason is that there's an economic necessity (or at least advantage) to know English. In Japan there really isn't. Everyone seems to have this vague idea that they should know English and people will often tell you that it's necessary, but if you ask them for specifics on why it's necessary they can't really tell you -- because it's not.

The Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama urged Japanese youth to "study English, and see the world".
"Whether you like it or not, English is the universal language. Study English and go out. This is very important."

Well, thats great for people who want to see the world, but there are many Japanese students who don't have much of a care to "see the world through English", once again it bears repeating; you can not teach a language(or pretty much anything for that matter) to someone who does not want to learn it and then expect them to learn it, or at least if they learn it do something with it. And believe it or not, English is not the only language required to "see the world", there are plenty of villages and non-touristy areas around the world filled with people who don't speak English and instead speak , French, Spanish, one of the many Chinese languages. You can still see the world by not knowing English

yudantaiteki Wrote:If you look at some of the other Asian countries that have overall better English ability than Japan

I'm skeptical about this. I'm not sure that there other Asian countries that do that much better than Japanese after the same number of years of study. If someone has some figures to change my mind, I'd be happy to know about them.

Seiska Wrote:For my understanding japan has similar problems(declining population, need for better/more exports), and I would guess that in this modern day of age shutting out from the rest of the world does not show well in economy.

Not a quick change tough, it will take years as in tens of years at least.

Every country has problems, but I don't see how the general populace learning English would possibly solve any of Japan's social, cultural, or economic issues. That's tantamount to saying that Americans need to learn Mandarin or Japanese to solve their country's own issues.
As another poster said, people in Japan often stress the importance and value of learning English. But when asked point-black WHY it's of such dire consequence, they're left rather baffled.

When it boils down to it, English simply isn't necessary for the average person's day-to-day life in Japan. Remember that the country is 99% Japanese, meaning that Japanese people are speaking Japanese to Japanese people, listening to Japanese from Japanese people, reading things in Japanese written by Japanese....you get my point. Why would they feel the need to learn English? Media, entertainment, and products in English-speaking countries get translated. There isn't any more of a need for them to learn English to enjoy their lives than there is for an American to learn Japanese.

Regarding foreign business and the economic side of things, as far as I'm aware translators for those gigs are in no short supply, and it's a very competitive field.

Just consider the thousands of hours required for a Japanese native to learn English to high proficiency. How many other life accomplishments, skills, trades, jobs etc. could be learned and performed that time? Those things are going to be more beneficial to the social, cultural, and economic state of the country than learning English.

Tzadeck Wrote:

yudantaiteki Wrote:If you look at some of the other Asian countries that have overall better English ability than Japan

I'm skeptical about this. I'm not sure that there other Asian countries that do that much better than Japanese after the same number of years of study. If someone has some figures to change my mind, I'd be happy to know about them.

I was especially thinking of places like Hong Kong and Singapore, which have a significant foreign business presence. I'm not sure if Korea or China does any better, but I remember seeing some ranking a while back where Japan was near the bottom of the rankings in English (I have no idea how that study was done, though, or when).

Probably makes a difference that Singapore and HK were British colonies until the 60s and 90s, respectively.

Zon70 Wrote:And even if Japan did adopt the method like Finland, what does that say about Japanese culture? If they gave all classes in English, does that mean they just throw away Japanese language, one of the most beautiful languages aside

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We Do not have Classes in English We have English classes just like every other country.
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English is secondary language in Finland, there are less native speakers for English that there are for Swedish. 90%+ Of us Speak Finnish which is nothing like English, and is considered as one of the hardest languages in the world.

Now hope that clears the confusion.

As for Japanese need for English, I have no idea how important it is for them to learn the language. But as for doing business with the rest of the world, most countries communicate trough English as its considered as the "world language". Its not just to speak with people from UK, US or AUS its to speak with most countries in Europe and plenty of countries from other parts of the world as well.

I don't know how well Japanese economy prospers at the moment, but as technology advances it becomes more and more expensive to improve, just look at Japanese game development where many of the companies are having trouble to compete with western games. Manga and Anime are having problems of stagnation as well. As for technology like cellphones, entertainment devices and cars, there's a harsh competition going right now and production has been heavily moved to china.
Product development costs money and it needs to be done to compete with competitors, to know what to develop you need to know your customers, to know your customers you need to understand them. You need to understand the world to make products for it.

Better skills at English skills might help with this, but you can't really force a language on to people. Better schooling system is a start, but motivation and need are more bigger concern.

I study RTK trough English book because there's no Finnish version available, and there's not much good material for studying japanese for my language either. Thus I have both need and motivation (and skill as well.. I hope).

> Proposed translations into Esperanto and pig Latin, he notes, were unceremoniously rejected.

I don’t know the exact context of these words, but it’s strange that a completely developed language with its own literature and tens of thousands of fluent speakers (i.e. Esperanto) has been equated here with a language joke called pig Latin.

Prejudices? I think so.

An interesting article on this:
http://claudepiron.free.fr/articlesenang...ctions.htm



Sorry for the off-topic. I'm just trying to allay prejudices about a thing that I consider valuable.

The Japanese English education system is often criticized for it's inefficiency, but I disagree.

According to FSI, the institute where they train American diplomats, it takes 4000 hours of extensive training for an English speaker to acquire enough Japanese skills to "barely do their job in Japanese". Japanese schools only have 1000 hours, but some advanced kids can somewhat comprehend The Economist and NY Times. That's because they concentrated on reading. There is no way they can be that advanced in all skills in 1000 hours. Just no way.

And Japanese need English basically because they want to read the latest papers on technology and science, so as a strategy, the current situation can be an effective one when you see it from that standpoint. Although, of course, there are rooms for improvements.

Guys in HK and Singapore are different. My ex is from HK and she speaks near native level English, but she had her education mostly in English in her entire life. They are more like cites than countries with only half the population of Tokyo, so the situations are completely different. I don't find people from Korea or Mainland China particularly good at English compared to Japanese. They all seem to be about the same.

Finland also has about half the population of Tokyo, though unlike HK and singapore it is not at all a city, and while Finish for English speakers is supposed to be difficult than say French and Spanish, it still only requires half the hours required for Japanese and Chinese, according to FSI.

In general, it seems to be harder and more inefficient to train everyone in English when the population is big.

masaman Wrote:The Japanese English education system is often criticized for it's inefficiency, but I disagree.

According to FSI, the institute where they train American diplomats, it takes 4000 hours of extensive training for an English speaker to acquire enough Japanese skills to "barely do their job in Japanese". Japanese schools only have 1000 hours, but some advanced kids can somewhat comprehend The Economist and NY Times. That's because they concentrated on reading. There is no way they can be that advanced in all skills in 1000 hours. Just no way.

Japanese is way harder language to learn than English, you can't really compare it that way. But I do agree that the difference of Japanese language compared to English and the heavy study needed for Japanese to learn their own language (writing/reading) probably make studying other languages or other subjects rather harsh.

Natives of languages that use alphabets can write their own language with very minimal study of alphabets. Most learn to read and write at 1st or 2nd grade or even at kindergarten. Its a very different starting position.

For example we Finns start studying English at 3rd grade, Swedish at 7th grade. Some even take Germany, French or Spanish at 4th,7th grade as extra. This is also a problem, If you can't even learn English, it very likely that you'll have problems with other languages as well. (not to try to make us look any smarter as similar school systems are all around Europe.)

masaman Wrote:and while Finish for English speakers is supposed to be difficult than say French and Spanish, it still only requires half the hours required for Japanese and Chinese, according to FSI.

It's not hard to see that the Hanji and Kanji are the reason for this. If you natively speak English you need to learn 3 new alphabets, vocabulary and grammar. The difficulty of studying Finnish is mainly based on flexible grammar and countless noun chases(list of ways to use word Shop/store in Finnish: http://www.ling.helsinki.fi/~fkarlsso/genkau2.html (over 2000 ways!)). This makes speaking the language way easier than understanding it. Its a lot easier than Chinese and Japanese tough.

If Chinese and Japanese languages would be based on romaji (not to say that they should be because that simply would not work). They would be a lot easier to learn.

masaman Wrote:Finland also has about half the population of Tokyo, though unlike HK and singapore it is not at all a city

In general, it seems to be harder and more inefficient to train everyone in English when the population is big.

Here's a fun fact: In general it seems to be harder to train everyone anything when population is big. Its not just English or Japanese, it also applies to mathematics, physics, history, etc etc.

There are plenty of great schools in US and UK or even in India, and they love to hang out in all kinds of charts and are well respected. But How big part of the population they serve? In Nordic countries, you do not need to be Einstein to get to University or higher, you just need to apply to one, if its full apply try another one (entrance exam usually decides who gets in and who does not if there's more people applying than there's room). Classes have usualy around 10-30 students, so teacher even has time to answer your questions or provide help for difficult questions.

Seiska Wrote:In Nordic countries, you do not need to be Einstein to get to University or higher, you just need to apply to one, if its full apply try another one (entrance exam usually decides who gets in and who does not if there's more people applying than there's room). Classes have usualy around 10-30 students, so teacher even has time to answer your questions or provide help for difficult questions.

Is it any wonder why Scandinavia is always at the top of education, even above Japan, Korea, and the god awful Singnapore education system that's even affecting their birth rates? The world has a lot to learn from Scandinavia and it's innovative education systems.