mentat_kgs Wrote:Sorry, but you should read that again more carefully.
He does not answer my question in that post.
Hi Mentat. At first I thought you might have just missed his answer. I now understand you were hoping for a yes/no type answer. I would suggest that a "The question is irrelevant b/c" is just a different type of answer. Repeating the question got you the same answer: the question is moot.
I think the misunderstanding may have been that you're seeing it as a general language competency issue, while he's seeing it as a language specialization issue.
Quote:Well, if you say that he reads a lot, I'd be puzzled on how someone that reads for fun can be that bad at writing its own language. If you say that he almost never reads the news, nor anything else besides 2chan, I'd keep on believing that I am right, blaming his poor writing skills on his own lack of interest for the written language.
*Not being familiar with business style does not mean one writes poorly generally. It's not a matter of difficulty, but of conforming to accepted standards.
*Japanese has fixed formats, expressions and levels of politeness in some business (and other) situations. Your assumption that b/c no special knowledge is required for business English therefore nothing is required for business Japanese is not correct.
*Reading news and literature has no bearing on whether someone is good at this kind of writing. A person with sufficient business vocabulary and good language skills will still want to familiarize themselves with business writing conventions.
(This was the gist of Tokyostyle's first answer.)
Quote:The Japanese girls that talk a lot at the phone and read the news and literature regularly (manga is only an appetizer) would do fine answering the phone in a hotel. Btw, I heard Mac Donald's offer training to sweep the floor. But that doesn't mean one cannot learn how to sweep the floor on its own.
Well, despite what you assume, people do feel the need to study and practice polite phone Japanese.
I can see how this would be hard to imagine without experiencing just how formalized polite hospitality Japanese is. Again, news and literature has nothing to do with it. This is entirely about being able to use keigo perfectly. People use some form of keigo in their daily life, but not everyone has reason to use the high level used for customers and hotel guests.
Whether they do it at company lessons or on their own with any of the many books is irrelevant. The point is that people supplement their regular language with specialized materials for a specific purpose.
I hope this was of some help - apologies for butting in.
and I didn't say I learned English naturally ,I said I use it naturally like my native language (somehow lol) and explained how it wasn't easy, and after all, the foundation of my English was built by the usual grammar learning process
so I'm not in my fantasy land xD lol
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