Okay, I thought of an embarassing story to get this thread back on topic. I think Magamo's made a good case and it should probably be left at that.

Here we go: The first time I came to Japan I came as an exchange student and lived in a small city in Shiga. I lived with a host family who couldn't really speak English, and my Japanese was still pretty poor, so there were a lot of misunderstandings.

One time my host mom was asking me various questions about my friends. She asked something along the lines of 好きな友達いる？--I translated it into my head as "Is there a friend that you like?"

Now, there's two ways I could have interpreted that English sentence. One way is, "Is there a friend you get along with well?" The other way is "Is there a friend you have a crush on?" This shows how it's dangerous to translate in your head. In Japanese this questions means "Do you have a friend who you like (romantically)?" Anyway , I interpreted the other way--like she was asking if I had a friend I got along with well.

So, anyway, one time she came to an event at my college that host-parents were invited to. She asked if I would introduce her to that friend that I like... and I introduced her to another guy. So she thought I was gay. It took me way longer than it should have to realize why she seemed a bit confused.

Not that there's anything wrong with being gay, but it just so happens that I'm straight, haha.

Edit: Looks like Gyuujuice already got the thread back on track. Btw, I've totally done the 彼女 thing!

Tzadeck Wrote:

dat5h Wrote:However, you can't just put all the blame on foreign accents or what not. You cannot possibly say that there is not an, albeit small, sub-population in Japan that automatically assume all non-Asian's speak English (or at least not Japanese) and refuse to alter their understanding of reality.

You can possibly say that, actually, being that it's only ever been reported on half-assed anecdotal evidence. It's possible that such a population could exist, but it's not like there's strong evidence for it.

Yes, the fact that this is purely anecdotal is legitimate cause of concern (until I bring in Dev Psych and cCurrent Biology Journals ), but I think you are actually misunderstanding my position. Let me elaborate below in response to magamo:

magamo Wrote:Your brain automatically tries to find meaningful sequences of sounds even if your conscious mind is fully aware that it's a foreign language. ... We hear words of our native languages even in nonsensical sequences of voices spoken in foreign languages. Being xenophobic/racist/stupid/whatever doesn't prevent this process because it's pretty much a reflex.

Of course, if the listener panicked or became too nervous because of an unusual situation, he may fail to respond in a logical manner. But if you're sure that an unusual situation isn't the main factor, I can't imagine how a person fail to recognize the language when he hears a sequence of sounds which are close enough to his native language. Our brain has an automatic native tongue detector which can go off even when you know you're hearing a foreign language.

If it weren't because of a particular situation, accent or their combination, the listener must be so stupid that he thought the constant flow of soramimi'ed Japanese words coming out of your mouth was just a sequence of foreign words which happened to sound like Japanese. I don't believe this is the case.

If you argue that the listener was nervous, stressed, too surprised or whatever because he was a firm believer of some kind of no-Asian = no Japanese theory, then you must be running into too many extreme Japanese specimens as if you are looking for such idiots.

No no no, you missed a step somewhere between paragraph 2 and 4 (noone said the listener must have been stupid). The thing is, you guys, that these "unusual situations" where the "listener was nervous, stressed, too surprised or whatever" are likely the result of subconscious bias against people who look different (except in situations where they treat everyone like a weird stranger). Even if it is their job to speak English to English speaking customers, a non-biased individual would not notice your skin color and immediately respond in the same way as everyone else until prompted to speak in English. But the if the demeanor/actions of the listener change based on who is the speaker, then that shows an inherent bias against the speaker, does it not?

I'm not calling anybody a racist, but EVERYONE has racial bias starting in childhood. Don't believe it? Think you're a saint? Well, maybe you have a genetic disorder. That's right, there's a disorder associated with "absence of racial, but not gender, stereotyping". It's called Williams Syndrome (WS). This attribute of the syndrome was discovered this year:
Absence of racial, but not gender, stereotyping in Williams syndrome children
The fact that the "absence" of the attribute of racial stereotyping shows that we have known about inherent, subconscious racial bias for a longer:
The loyal member effect: on the preference for ingroup members who engage in exclusive relations with the ingroup.

So, all I'm saying is that you blame the story teller, and that's just silly. This thread is supposed to be fun anecdotes. I come here telling you that a woman say's "I'm sorry" to me instead of "申し訳ございません" after ramming me with her bike and that's my fault? My bad accent? My race's fault since Japan doesn't have enough foreigners? ("It's narrow because there are too few non-native speakers, which, in a sense, is foreigners' fault.") That is what we call a crock of bull ... er ... feces. In my ideal world, everyone would treat strangers as new, potential members of an in group and response would change only if necessary. Why have a second-tear of greater difficulty?

So, going back to the stories, because it's solely anecdotal, you gotta take the stories with a grain of salt of course. However, these stories are only of the people who showed weakness when it comes to suppressing the urge to segregate. Of course not everyone is like that, or the human race would be doomed. So, don't try to go on about how everyone is a saint, it's just the bad apples that we like to laugh about .

On a related note, I dunno what those 26 missing genes in WS patients do, but isn't it fascinating that they have such a major impact on our social skills?

Tzadeck Wrote:

chochajin Wrote:I guess for some Japanese people they just can't accept that Japanese is coming out from a foreigner's mouth, so whatever a foreigner says it must be English or some other language they can't understand and so they're not listening.
That's only my theory, though XD

I've heard this theory a lot, and people bring it up all the time, but I'm convinced that 90% of time time something else is going on. So, it happens, but much more rarely than people think.

For one, I've heard my friends complain about this happening to them, but I happen to know that my friends have really awful pronunciation. I don't tell them that, because that'd be mean, and Japanese people won't tell them that either. A lot of times people just can't understand them because they are not used to listening to the pronunciation of a foreigner. But my friends go around talking about how they're Japanese as fine and yet the person just didn't understand!

Sometimes something else is going on entirely. As was mentioned, sometimes this kind of thing results in situations in which you speak Japanese to people and they try to respond in broken English. One time this happened to me really bad, and it was when I was trying to get into the Ninja restaurant in Kyoto (btw, those Ninja restaurants are depressingly mediocre, so don't go). The Ninja-dressed lady at the entrance was trying to explain to me how long the wait was, and I kept telling her in Japanese that I understood Japanese, but she wouldn't switch to Japanese. We didn't end up going into the restaurant that night.

I went to the restaurant a couple of months later and realized what was going on. Like all theme restaurants in Japan, they do a sort of show for you. At the Ninja place they are expected to be able to do the show in English for when they have foreign customers, so it's kind of a job duty. So when I approached, the lady was obviously worried about the fact that she'd probably have to do the show in her really mediocre English if we decided to stay for the wait, so her head was in English mode. Especially since, while it was obvious that I could speak Japanese, my friends didn't seem to be able to (and she was right, they had just moved to Japan and couldn't really understand Japanese). So, it was the context of English as a job duty, and her nervousness, that made her act like that. But at the time I chalked it up as more evidence for this theory. But, I was wrong, it was something else.

I definitely have some embarassing moments--I'll try to think of a good one.

I find it hard to listen to him. So maybe it is somehow associated with pronunciation afterall.

magamo Wrote:I don't think human brains can fail to detect mother tongues that easily. It's a reflex. There is no room for stereotypes and such getting in the way. Even if it were a cat that spoke to me, I'd recognize it was Japanese as long as his accent was within the range of the standard Japanese language.

Yeah but as we all know from various Japanese media cats do speak Japanese so in this case you kind of expect it to do that

magamo Wrote:Because the Japanese are generally not used to foreign accents, the range of immediately recognizable accents may be narrower than that of English. But that's hardly native Japanese speakers' fault. It's narrow because there are too few non-native speakers, which, in a sense, is foreigners' fault.

As Tzadeck said, particular situations may also make it difficult to recognize the language. So I agree that it's not always due to your accent. But if you're absolutely positive that the situation wasn't the cause, then most likely it was due to your accent.

I think its exactly the opposite, native speakers are way better at "decoding" foreigner speech than anyone else. They are far superior in every aspect of their language and thus capable of "filling the blanks" that result from foreigner accent/phrasing/way of thinking.

I could never communicate with non-native Japanese speaker using with my current abilities and probably have lots of trouble with understanding them too. But I do ok when I explain something to my teacher just because she does a lot of "work" for me.

magamo Wrote:Does it take me a few minutes to realize I'm watching a French movie dubbed in Japanese because actors don't look like Asians? I don't think so.

True but there are situations (especially when a foreigner is involved) where it just takes a moment to realize something is being said in your native language. I've recently seen some movies made by a Lithuanian bodybuilder that was speaking Polish but it took me a good minute to realize that. Now I can understand him just fine (despite his mistakes) but it had to "click" at first.

BTW Tzadeck seems to be winning this thread

magamo Wrote:I don't think human brains can fail to detect mother tongues that easily. It's a reflex. There is no room for stereotypes and such getting in the way. Even if it were a cat that spoke to me, I'd recognize it was Japanese as long as his accent was within the range of the standard Japanese language.

ok,let me tell you my story here.it's not related to japanese but rather to this subject.my native language is Arabic.So,one day,a chinese sales woman rang my apartment door(i knew she was chinese because they usually go around with these huge backpacks and sell things from door to door).So i opened the door,and she started speaking,she spoke arabic(not perfect but good),she kept speaking arabic to me but i couldn't realize it and i was simply thinking she was speaking chinese!!i even tried to speak to her in english!that went on for 5 minutes until she told me(in arabic)"go get your mom"....thats when i realized xD

dat5h Wrote:No no no, you missed a step somewhere between paragraph 2 and 4 (noone said the listener must have been stupid). The thing is, you guys, that these "unusual situations" where the "listener was nervous, stressed, too surprised or whatever" are likely the result of subconscious bias against people who look different (except in situations where they treat everyone like a weird stranger). Even if it is their job to speak English to English speaking customers, a non-biased individual would not notice your skin color and immediately respond in the same way as everyone else until prompted to speak in English. But the if the demeanor/actions of the listener change based on who is the speaker, then that shows an inherent bias against the speaker, does it not?

I'm not calling anybody a racist, but EVERYONE has racial bias starting in childhood. Don't believe it? Think you're a saint? Well, maybe you have a genetic disorder. That's right, there's a disorder associated with "absence of racial, but not gender, stereotyping". It's called Williams Syndrome (WS). This attribute of the syndrome was discovered this year:
Absence of racial, but not gender, stereotyping in Williams syndrome children
The fact that the "absence" of the attribute of racial stereotyping shows that we have known about inherent, subconscious racial bias for a longer:
The loyal member effect: on the preference for ingroup members who engage in exclusive relations with the ingroup.

I'm not saying there is no racism in Japan or biases would never affect the range of immediately recognizable accents though?

When I was a grade schooler, we had this white guy in our class who spoke Japanese as his native language. Japanese is the only language he could speak. He sounded just like any other person from Osaka. Did a Japanese person respond to him in English, fail to recognize the language he was speaking or refuse to admit the fact that he was able to speak Japanese when he talked to others in a normal situation? No. It can't happen.

I think he has surprised many Japanese people because it's rare. We see some white guys speak fluent Japanese on TV and whatnot. But it can still be surprising if that happens when you bump into a random white guy on the street. I'm sure there were times he got reactions which can be considered racism. But can being a white guy make his Japanese unrecognizable? Some people just can't admit the fact that what coming out of his mouth is Japanese, huh?

If he had a noticeable foreign accent that requires some effort to understand on the native speakers' side, then I think his being a white might affect the perception by the interlocutor and make the range of immediately recognizable accents narrower than it would if he were Asian. I'm sure this is a bias. A bias which is created by the fact that too few people who look like him speak Japanese and that more Asian foreigners speak Japanese quite well.

This bias can appear in different ways in some situations too. For example, if he talks to an elderly Japanese person who almost hit him by bike, that person would be caught off guard and might respond in an awkward way. I said "off guard" because it IS unusual. Think this way: Slamming into a person when riding a bike is already kind of a situation where anyone can get nervous. If it's in Japan and he doesn't look like a Japanese person, it's definitely an unusual situation. And the foreigner turned out to be a nice person and asked me if I was ok in Japanese when anyone in such a situation could yell at me instead? I'm sure quite a few people would act funny in such a situation and want to crawl under a rock when they think about it later: "Why did I say アイムソーリー when he was obviously talking to me in Japanese?! Ahh!@%$#&**!!"

From what I read in your post, I guess the bike accident was more like a funny "embarrassing situation" where even the Japanese person doesn't know why he acted that way. I fail to see any obvious link between this bike incident and the (probably) racist reaction you got at the hospital.

Like I said, a bias towards non-Asian foreigners may skew the perception of non-native Japanese in such a way that the listener fail to recognize the language because of circumstantial reasons, accents or both. The same kind of effect may not be as noticeable as if the foreigner is Asian. But from what I have seen in real life, I think it's extremely unlikely that the bias ALONE can make an utterance within the range of native/near-native Japanese hard to recognize. As far as I know, said white guy has never been responded to in English or any foreign language simply because the Japanese person had a ridiculously strong assumption that a white wouldn't speak Japanese.

The bias may make it harder for foreigners' non-native Japanese to be recognized. But I'm not sure if this bias is more racist than the theory that non-native Japanese is harder to be recognized because some Japanese don't admit the Japanese language can come out of foreigners' mouths and won't accept reality even if they see it happening right in front of them.

The former is based on a fact (or statistics if you will) and, as your links suggest, every healthy human being has similar biases to a certain degree. The latter is based on someone's homespun philosophy and anecdotes from foreigners. And last I checked, it is not supported by science or anything.

I moved to a place where Chinese are the largest minority group about a year ago. I've never met a single Japanese person here. In some instances, I was talked to in Chinese by random people. In one instance, it took me a minute to stop him talking to me in Chinese. Is it reasonable for me to form a theory that some people here just can't accept the fact that there are Asians who are not Chinese?

I went to a bank to open a new check account a few months ago. While filling a couple forms, the bank clerk and I were talking about how I'm from Japan, the near-by restaurant has sushi, the weather is so different than in my hometown, and some other random stuff. And I asked, "What do I write here?" "Your address in China," she replied. Should I get offended when I'm probably the first Japanese person she met in her life while she's been handling tons of Chinese customers?

I don't think this kind of "bias" you speak of based on facts or circumstances is too unfair unless it is exercised to treat a particular group of people unfairly and discriminate them. I don't think failing to recognize Japanese with a foreign accent is always racism either just because this kind of natural bias is one of many factors. How is a natural bias humans have worse than saying, "They didn't understand me because they just don't accept the fact that some foreigners can speak Japanese! They don't accept reality!"? Of course, there are many idiots who are ridiculously ignorant out there. You might have run into one of them. But how can you be so sure that there weren't other factors?

Sorry for going off topic again. But I couldn't help.

Probably not my most embarrassing situation but one I always think of. At the end of my 15 months as an ALT I had to give a speech to all the teacher's in the teacher's room. I hadn't prepared anything so I just started speaking.

I said something along the lines of 皆と一緒に話していなかったけど... (something about seeing their smiling faces everyday yada yada) which I had translated in my head from English as "I didn't speak to everyone, but.." Later on I realized I'd said "I didn't speak to anyone, but..." in a very friendly and matter-of-fact voice.

edit: To add more random encounters with Japanese people not understanding Japanese speaking foreigners- my Japanese girlfriend used to work at a restaurant in Nakasu, which is close to Tenjin in Fukuoka and gets quite a few foreigners. The staff knew her English was pretty good so sometimes they would ask her to take orders from her table if a foreigner came in and spoke English. On several occasions she would tell the original waitress that the foreigner had been speaking Japanese, much to their embarrassment.

I'm not sure why it happens- my (white) Japanese teacher has had similar experiences- he says that whenever he gets into a Taxi in Tokyo he always starts with an あの。。。 just to get them in Japanese "mode" because otherwise they are assuming English is going to come out of his mouth and don't understand him (his explanation, not mine). I've been told his Japanese sounds very natural, though a little too textbook-ish (which makes sense given that's what he teaches).