The REAL Reason Why Japanese People Can't Speak English
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- Опубликовано: 2 окт 2024
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Japanese kids are really struggling to grasp the concept of English... but why is that?
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I feel so incredibly lucky that I grew up speaking both English and Japanese. Many of the English textbooks and workbooks included strange phrases that you would never use in real life.
lol is there any weird phrases you learned back then that have stuck in your mind?
I remembered of them: "What do you think of Tina ?"
Not the best and not the worst I guess.
Same here. I grew up with 3 languages. Japanese Filipino and english
@@Chino-KafuI wish to be like you
Sometimes the phrases are either REALLY outdated, or REALLY regional.
Learning a language is very use it or lose it. Don’t consistently use it, you’ll forget everything. And the lifestyle of japan just doesn’t encourage English enough. I don’t blame the kids- the tests were also lame.
I don’t blame the Japanese either since most Americans are the same way when it comes to learning other languages. I have been exposed to all kinds of languages throughout my life in fact I used to be fairly fluent in Italian but now I have forgotten everything as I got older because as you said use it or lose it
> Learning a language is very use it or lose it.
This applies to your native language as well.
Technically true, but there is a line where you don't fall below. I've reached it in Spanish and Japanese. I can not use it for years, and although I lose some fluency and grammar etc... I don't lose it all. I haven't used spanish in YEARS, and had conversations in it easily, and can read most things. (did forget the word for 1000 at one point which was embarrassing though) With japanese took a break, and went back and finished a degree in it after about 5 year break.
80% English words are Latin. But 90% Latin words are Arabic. So, 85% English words are Arabic.
good reason to not go in japan. never understood why so many people goes in japan
I’m a 100% Japanese. I think that the reason that they can’t is because of Katakana. They don’t hear it. They read it. Japanese structure vs English structure. JP is designed to be read because each words (or letters for that matter) has meanings.
I went through the process of becoming an English speaker by getting rid of those Katakanas and focusing on hearing only. You should know this, In order to understand Japanese, you must know the meanings of the individual letters. Hashi vs Hashi. They should stop using Katakana in English classes.
Very true. It's the same reason why English speakers should not use romaji to learn Japanese words. It makes things much harder later on.
ooooh the rare instance of someone understanding HOW the languages works and not just speaks it AND has a based take because of it
The way English is taught here in Germany is basically they teach us the basics still in German and then as soon as you reach a certain level the entire class is in English completely. No German instructions anywhere. Same was true for my Spanish classes.
I think that approach would really help especially if it's languages that don't share a writing system and of course more speaking in class because how else would you ever learn that part of a language? I only became really good at English once I started forcing myself to speak even if I sounded horrible but I improved very fast where it was stagnant for ages before. Same for just writing freeform about a given topic regularly.
@@coolbrotherf127 Not even remotely comparable. It may not help you if you decide to start getting deeper into reading/writing and could make memorizing vocabulary more difficult because you miss out on the connection between character and meaning, but it's not a hindrance in terms of speaking. You won't get into habits that lead to pronouncing everything in a certain incorrect pattern just because you rely on romaji. Katakana distorts foreign sounds while romaji does a pretty good job at representing them as they are. That's not dissing katakana as a script, it just has an inherent restriction that is counterproductive in this particular context.
It's indeed true that it's the best to switch to teaching in the language that's being taught ASAP. Of course, some very difficult concepts (like tenses) may require a bit of native language explanation just to make certain it gets through, but even at further discussions it should be spoken of in the language that is being taught.
If I were learning Japanese, I'd expect to write as much as I can in Japanese. I don't mean just write a lot, I mean everything that I can write (and say) in Japanese, my teacher would make me write (and say) in Japanese. (But also just write a lot because Japanese is very alien to me, it's a difficult language for Europeans.)
It's difficult, but it's really pretty. Even my mom says, Japanese sounds very pleasant 😊 my colleague knows Chinese, Japanese and a bit of Korean. She says, Chinese is an easy enough language (with a difficult writing system), Japanese is a difficult one.
As a Malaysian who's main language is Chinese and Malay, learning and knowing English definitely did help me finding more entertainment and joy in my life. My first motivation to learn and speak English is that I wanted to understand Pewdiepie's video after having so much fun without even understanding him. There's definitely joy to be felt when I could understand English videos and its endearing to see people try to speak even if they may fail, the prime example would be Natsuki-san, he's so cool!
@@ALLKASDLLS-mg4lu this is probably the biggest reason. I grew up when internet is basically all english. No option for Indonesian yet. Google, Yahoo even the pirated anime sub are all in english. While there is some online games that published in my native languange, most of them is local so when i want to play the "global" server i had to learn english to even understand the registration website. Now i think about it my biggest drive to learn japanese is also to play the dozens of visual novel that aren't translated to english yet. The need of entertaiment probably my biggest languange learning motivation
It's also difficult for both china speaking area aswell, they would be likely to watch western stuff than actually speak it, and other times that people bother with people who don't speak english well is because they were more try and be more racial to others when they feel like it, based on behaviours.
Being proficient in english is a double edged sword for me during my uni years. The pros is i can interact well with other people, locals & foreigners alike because english. The cons are, the other kids like the malays who aren't as good will make you do alot of the talking during assignment presentations. Lol fun times.
pewdiepie is still overrated for a bad reason
@@darassylmoniakam what's the reason?
as a French Canadian i can say that not everyone is well versed in English where i live, but it is mandatory to learn and you only need to travel 20 KM to the next town and it is already English everywhere! in my case, i learnt English cause TV shows like Spider Man and X-Men were way better than the crap in the French channels!
Y'avait d'excellentes émissions pour enfant sur les chaînes francophones. Plusieurs collaborations Francaises Japonaises il y a 40 ans et plus tard plusieurs émissions qui ont fait découvrir des comédiens talentueux aujourd'hui réputés. Votre commentaire va se faire donner des pouces en l'air par des unilingues anglophones remplits de préjugés envers les francophones Nord Américains. Pas seulement, mais une booonne gagne, peut-être une majorité.
Your english is good! J'ai vivait au Montreal pendent 4 ans et mon ami Gabriel m'aider ameliorer mon francais, and I helped him learn english! 😁We were just playing video games, watching movies, and drinking beer most of the time. 😅It's a good way to learn another language! 😂
t'es un boss
@@sourandbitter3062 la plus part des emission etais completement impossible a supporter, ils y avais just Cannal Famille qui avais des "animation" mais pas "d'animes". c'etait tout des emission pours enfant d'age entre 5 a 8 ans. puis les dub francais transform les emission quis etais pour age 12-15 a 5-8.
sur 40 chaines, ils y an avais apeupres 8 en francais, 1 avais des dessain animer (Cannale Famille) 2 random, 1 musique plus (much music/MTV en francais) une chaine de france (Art TV ou TV5) puis jpence que ils y avais meteo media puis 2 autre chaines de nouvelles.
en passant sa fait probablement 20 ans j'ais pas ecrit en francais, jme rappelle meme pu commen ecrire en francais (le pire c'est que jetais 1er de class en 12 eme anner.) mais yavair rien a watcher, cetais pommal dla crap pour des enfant trop jeunes ou pour adult age 40+, 12 a 30 le stuff etais en anglais.
@@sourandbitter3062No one is attacking French speakers.
As an Indonesian, English is the first foreign language that I've learned. But after years of learning numerous foreign languages (English, German, Japanese, Italian, Russian, and Hebrew), many things you've learned in a classroom won't be used in daily life. I realized that when I became an English teacher for elementary school students. Yes, you'll learn basics like grammar that a total pain in the arse, but take it as a guideline to improve your skill by yourself outside the classroom. You'll learn so much vocabularies and phrases that commonly used in daily life, get comfortable with the language until you have the "language sense" so you don't really need to think hard to constuct an understandable sentence and then train slowly to build grammarly proper sentences which usually only needed in formal situations like in your workplace or such. Don't take language learning as a burden or you won't learn much. By all means, make it fun to learn. Internet is humongous, use it well.
In my own case, instead of only courses or formal educations, I learned English, German, and Japanese mostly through media like movies, videos, novels or comic books (or manga), and of course: the Internet. Among all other languages that I've learned, those three stick to my head better because of that.
For such thing as Joey said about English speaking test in schools asking student's opinion about plastic usage within different countries, that topic is used usually for B2 level in CEFR which means it's a higher intermediate level that people commonly reach when they're about to finish their studies in the university. That's completely too difficult for most middle schooler, let alone an elementary student. The government really need to rethink about that.
Just as I thought...Poor students are burdened by too much expectation...
Well, it's not just using the language. Being exposed to it is more important. And that's where Japan fails, since other than cool words every now and then, you won't come across actual conversational English or practical English in daily life. I'm Dutch, but I learned most of my English from watching movies (subbed) and playing videogames (fully English). By the time I was old enough for them to start teaching English in school for me, my English was already better than that of most adults in the country. And it's not like I used it much.
Anyway, while that was just my own personal example... research has already proven that exposure is the most important factor when it comes to learning a language.
@@thenonexistingherohow did you fare with the fricative sounds? I.know a few older Swiss who have issues with that part of English when learning, and I know Dutch/Frisian (and Walloon?) have a fair share of those sounds.
@@LathropLdST I never had any issue with it. I think part of the reason Dutch people are often apt at learning different languages is because the language itself has enough variety in the sounds being used. Of course there are some we don't use much, but usually I'm able to pick it up when something sounds slightly different.
Meanwhile, I think English is kinda the reverse. Especially American-English, as in... it is fairly limited with what sounds are used in the language. Doesn't mean they don't exist in the language, but often they are not found in common daily use language.
And well, that advantage of the Dutch language is probably mainly for Germanic languages. I do know I have a harder time hearing the subtleties non-Germanic languages.
Still, even without perfect pronunciation it's still possible to have a proper conversation with someone. And that's the most important part, being able to understand others that don't speak your own native language.
Oh, it's so nice that people are learning russian which is my native language btw. ❤ I completely agree with everything you said on this topic cause that's the exact way I learnt english.
The best way to teach a language to a nation is to fill its television with movies and shows made in the target language and add subtitles in their native language. That is literally the reason why everybody here in Nordic countries are fluent in English.
My world would be very small if I only knew my native language, Finnish, that has only five million speakers.
I think that's the case with most european countries. We were getting so much american entertainment as movies and shows with subtitles on tv that we could pick up english easly. Add that to all the video games we played that were all in english, then the internet that waa all english.
Itte syynä on myös nettipelit jotka auttoivat paljon englannin oppimisessa.
Tbh I have gotten so good at least in written english that I have trouble speaking comprehensibly in my native language.
@@meciocio This may be true for most of the european countries, but its effects are seen way more in western to northwestern Europe. The more south you go, the lower the proficiency in English seems to drop.
Well, the languages being close also helps, but it's definitely a big boosting factor. Here in Germany everything is dubbed and the average person speaks noticeably worse English than in the Nordics.
As a Japanese former resident of Hawaii that later transferred to Japan I agree with your opinion a lot.
People here don’t need to learn English and people who come back from abroad feel out of place in the work place / school.
As do I myself.
The reason why I was able to maintain my English skills in a country where the majority of people don’t speak it is because I enjoy movies, books, tv shows, etc.
It's because Japan has been a closed country for a very long time but now that they're needing foreign workers. They're kinda opening up a bit
that's why we should feel discouraged to go in japan.
@@TJBlack3.5 Right, English is the most common 2nd language in the world as well as the language of business generally. So if Japan is currently planning to open up more to immigrants from _many different places_ like US, Germany, Singapore, India, etc, then English would be the most reasonable language to emphasize.
Same here in Germany...😅
80% English words are Latin. But 90% Latin words are Arabic. So, 85% English words are Arabic.
Is it just me or is there a slight delay between audio and video?
i think it's because of his camera's framerate
Yea there is, isn't that a basic rule everyone follows. I think he delayed the audio on purpose.
I hate that I read this and now only notice that
I rly Think something mudr be wrong on ur end. Testes it different places and slowed it Down. I have zero delay
Some content creators purposefully adds a delay to make up for bluetooth earphones' latency so there's that.
In my case, I grew in a Spanish speaking country, went to a British English school and when i finished it, i took the FCE and failed it. Yet, besides that being a slap in the face to my pride, i didn't surrender and i kept watching English shows without subs and I kept talking with people from other countries. This played a key role in my English skills and now some foreigners that comes to my country, whenever i speak with them, they are surprised by my level of English and how good I sound. They feel comfortable.
Talking to others is vital for keep retaining your level and improving it.
Nowadays I listen to your videos, Trash Taste and other podcasts or videos and keep practicing my english.
Hell yeah broda' 🤟🏻
keep it bro, FCE is a good measure of a good enough level, and if you are up for it you should also go for C1 and not only B2 (FCE), it will help you a lot in expressing yourself better
80% English words are Latin. But 90% Latin words are Arabic. So, 85% English words are Arabic.
t's really stupid all of these people from different countries who tell their lives it's not relevant
15:25 "how much English helped you" saved my life as Joey trapped me in his basement and taught me English to watch his videos
😐
When we went back to Japan in Feb 23, we visited my wife's town and had dinner with some of her friends.
We all brought our kids and I got to talking with 3 siblings.
Their English surprised me so much!
They were 16, 14 and 11, and they could speak basic English very well.
I encouraged them to make mistakes and ask me freely anything they wanted.
They all listened to English music, watched English movies and TV shows, but they just couldn't get over the initial embarrassment of making a mistake.
Once we broke the ice and everyone was relaxed, they were more open to practicing their English and chatting.
you don't explain at all how you break the ice and make them relaxed, so we have no reason to believe you.
@@giannilyanicks1718 If I did type it all out it would've been a long a$$ story.
But, we had dinner, I was chatting with the parents whilst all the kids ate.
After the mains and before dessert the mother of the 3 kids (primary school, and middle / highschool) told me her kids were studying English but were a little shy. So I went to their side of the table and introduced myself in my bad Japanese. I spoke with them in my bad Japanese for a little then I used the translator app on my phone. They used their phones to translate as well so we weren't all using the one phone.
All 3 loved watching American tv shows in English and reading Japanese subs. The were really good with reading and writing but they lacked confidence in speaking.
They slowly became more confident to ask questions in English after I encouraged them that making mistakes is a part of learning (something I think Japanese feel the opposite about).
The eldest daughter loved Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift and wanted to travel to the US and UK after highschool.
The middle son loved basketball and action movies.
They were maybe 14 and 16 but they had obviously lots of practice and studied hard because they could articulate what they wanted to say with minimal mistakes.
We chatted about lots of little things like how big anime and Japanese culture is overseas, how many people overseas have a desire to come to Japan, etc.
At the end of the night I told their mother and their kids' level of English was very amazing. They just needed a little confidence.
That’s great!
Keep it up!
I'm not from an English-speaking country (It's my second language) and I do know English quite well, but it's not thanks to school. Except for grammar, the base of my English is from Pokemon and many (in my country) tell me that I have a high level of English, so I say Japan should show English Pokemon to the kids
D tier snow
Same, games and cartoon helped me learn English more than school did. Feels like everyone ik with above avrg proficiency in english kinda grew up with the games and cartoons.
school taught me grammar, the words came from games and then I put it together thanks to tv shows and Pewdiepie's early years when his English wasn't the best yet but he was learning to communicate better so I learned with him in a way. after getting some confidence all I needed is native speakers to chat with all day all night and look at me now. my English is finally decent enough to write comments
@@craz859That’s true. You gotta have something that motivates you and requires the skills in order to learn efficiently, especially with a language. I was able to not study at all but still scored way better than a lot of my classmates in Japanese class just because I learnt a lot from watching anime. But it’s still up to the individuals to whether it’s worth the effort to consume that entertainment in that way now that localization is becoming more and more common. Many of my friends did not bother to learn through entertainment since it takes effort when selecting another language immediately solves that problem. When I was a kid, games weren’t translated into my mother language so I was forced to learn. But now, this kind of motivation rarely exists anymore, learning through entertainment has become a method of learning instead of a side-effect it used to be.
bro Pokémon is already is japanese why would you show kids a dubber version of a show which is in there own language ? Maybe showing cartoons like Simpsons would be better but i grew up watching japanese cartoons like doraemon , shinchan so who am i too say
I'm from Panama, where Spanish is the tongue of the land. I learned English through music, tv and movies and I can say it's the single most important thing I've ever learned in my life. It has allowed me to experience art, entertainment, information and perspectives that go beyond what is available in my language. It shapes my opinions by listening to news from around the world instead of just the local ones. It makes it a lot easier to find good resources for things I want to learn. The very work I have is thanks to being able to speak English because I work with people from around the world, while staying at home. This skill gives me access to so much that now that I have a son, if there's one thing I want to pass to him (besides being a good person) is to be multilingual.
I think it's a pity to go through life locked to a single language. The world becomes so much bigger, and smaller in some ways, when you can expand your experiences though language.
I think I'd rather see 'please do not water the plants' sounds really polite like the Japanese culture
Hope they keep failing so I will be able to put all my language skills to the test when I go the next year during the fall. Sure would be a waste if I didn't get the chance to speak Japanese in Japan
in japanese it just says the plants will dry up please understand
i have no idea what the connection here is with the dog peeing
@@WeebJail 枯れる isn't drying but withering, there are reasons besides lack of hydration for plants to die
@@niwa_s oh you're right i guess peeing on plants would kill them im dumb
I'm from Germany and learned English as a second language at school. I then studied it at uni and am now an English teacher myself. But I must say that all of this formal education is nothing compared to actually using the language in a real life situation. I was very shy of speaking it despite always getting good grades, until I met my boyfriend from Sweden with whom I live together now and we speak English at home. Now I've realized that you are allowed to make mistakes and the most important thing is just making yourself understood. I try to pass this idea on to my own students now :)
80% English words are Latin. But 90% Latin words are Arabic. So, 85% English words are Arabic.
it's really stupid all of these people from different countries who tell their lives it's not relevant
Japanese students at public schools are not taught to freely express themselves but to learn fixed expressions of "proper" written English from textbooks and where the real emphasis is on grammar. It doesn't help that the pronunciation of foreign word is taught mostly through katakana transcriptions, which results in English (or any other foreign language) which is hardly understandable by anyone outside of Japan or japanese knowledge. Add to this a general shyness of many japanese citizen and the fear of making any kind of mistake. This blocks a natural acquisition of foreign languages.
Plus, they only see English in the classroom for less than an hour a day, and maybe some homework. With almost zero immersion outside of school, that's barely any time to learn a language as different from Japanese as English is. People learning Japanese as English speakers can take over 2000 hours of study to be somewhat fluent and that's with immersion and dedicated self study. A Japanese child who doesn't want to learn English would probably need over 3000 hours to learn it, which they definitely aren't getting in school. No matter how well they teach the language, the students would have to be doing a ton of work outside of school to actually learn it to a conversational level.
Very good points. It's clear it's very hard for them to overcome the Katakana sound.
yupp, I had a similar experience with my education. I only truly learned english at work having to find a way to communicate with our foreign overlords. I mean managers! Yeah.. developing countries are an adventure.. I still like foreign investment tho, at least I don't have to kill for food in the russian army.
They should've erase the katakanas completely and began using the real writing of the foreign language
I'm curious. Is there any language that Japanese kids have an easy time learning, or do they struggle with all of them? Chinese for instance? Bear in mind, I have no idea whether learning Chinese in Japan is even a thing.
I’m half Japanese but lived only 2 out of my 27 years in Japan (though I also went to Japanese schools in other countries for elementary and middle school). My parents hired a tutor that taught me English once a week, but I never really learned to use it until we moved to an English-speaking country and was placed in a situation of “speak or perish”. Tbh this also happened when my parents put me in a Japanese elementary school, after being with Spanish-speakers in kinder and in extracurriculars. I wouldn’t learn unless I was convinced that it was necessary. I think the same goes for these Japanese kids, and I can’t blame them; most people aren’t so privileged as to be able to throw themselves into a foreign country to learn the language 😅
I think what would help them is if the teacher would teach English while explaining things in Japanese. If students have a question on learning English, they should ask in their own language. I would need to know Japanese to help them learn English so I can explain things to them better and not make it so stressful.
actually some japanese people that are interested in english cant speak it at all so thats all about education imo
i have more respect towards japanese abroad than japan based japanese
I don't blame them it's my first language and i can barely speak it
Now imagine your brain being wired in a way where you can't pronounce 99% of letter combinations 😂 (english isnt my first labguage btw so my vocabulary is shit as you can see)
@@x7themmyour vocabulary is better than most of my friends don't worry 😂
I am 100% Brazilian and English has helped me a lot. It is my third language, but it is the language that is benefiting me the most. Now I am living in America and finishing my second University. I don't know how to express how important English is for me. It helped me with my career and with my hobbies.
I'm an English instructor and in this institute the main focus is for students to speak and listen and understand. It is hard, specially for those people who are just starting with the basics, but it really works once they get used to it. As teachers, we mainly correct what might cause them problems in the future, and we always encourage them to try to express themselves even if they don't know the exact word.
I want to learn Japanese in the future and I'm preparing myself for the hardships already
Had to take a mandatory English class when I went back to school as an adult. I already was over the level we were supposed to reach so I could mostly do whatever and watch what the others were doing. I saw someone go from being an almost complete beginner to being able to having simple conversations and even beginning to be able to have more complex ones in 6 months. We had only 4 hours of English every week but our teacher was a native speaker and barely knew any German. I was occasionally asked to help when they really got stuck so I could explain concepts in German to my classmate or the other way around explain the issue to our teacher but otherwise it was full on in English the entire time.
That's really the best and in my opinion only was to actually become proficient in English. I had 7 years of English in school and only reached fluency after school when I began to actually engage with others using the language in a more normal setting. Like in RUclips comment sections.
We do that too! We speak in English all the time and use visual aids if necessary (an image is really worth 1000 words sometimes xd) I like those students who know their level is not perfect but still try to communicate in any way they can, so I try to make the class as comfortable and safe for them as I can. Most of them have a great attitude and don't pick up on each other if anyone makes a mistake.
One trick I use is teach them first the words that sound very similar to their native language (Spanish in this case) so that it's easier for them to remember, and then I just have to build their vocabulary from there with synonyms
It so great that now we can learn a language entirely online with having to waste years in school and also save a ton of money. Glad we live in a time when we will finally break the broken education system and replace it with personal echo chambers.
I am English and only speak English so I have huge respect for those who learn other languages. My grandad was Polish, my dad half Polish but for some reason my Grandad Kazimierz stopped speaking Poish to me as soon as I learned how to talk. I strongly beleive my grandad did not want me speaking Polish as he feared I would be bullied and have no friends. So now my surname is Kowalczyk but I cannot speak Polish and have never been to Poland and have no Polish friends.
It's such a shame he didn't pass down the most conservative Slavic language. You could always try to learn it.
I grew up in the Chicago area back when it was still semi-jokingly called "The 2nd largest Polish city in the world." i was absolutely surrounded by last names like Ciolcosz, Tomaskiewicz, Wozjic, Niedswicz, Zielinksi, Dusza, Kalinowski, and so on. And not a 1 of them spoke anything other than English becuz their families had all been in the area since the early 1800's. Seems like it's simply something that fades out over time.
My great-grandparents were Dutch and imiigrated in the early 1900's, but they only ever spoke English to my grandfather, so he never learned any Dutch whatsoever. It's a running joke in the family that the 1st time my mom ever heard her last name pronounced correctly was at her wedding when the Dutch-speaking officiator said it.... right as she was giving it up. (she actually uses it as her middle name now, so never truly gave it up, though.)
But yeah, it seems that unless a family consciously tries to keep their "old country" language, that it will go away by the 3rd or 4th generation.
I've heard Polish is one of the most difficult languages to master.
@@Shijaru64 Polish definitely isn't the most conservative Slavic language. The South Slavic languages are way more conservative.
@@AxionSmurfYes, polish is a Slavic languages is very hard like a Hungarian or Finnish
TBH, I didn't learn my second nor my third language at school either... For the second, German, I was just fortunate enough to live at the border. For the third, English, I was forced to speak it at work. The one language I only "met" at school is unfortunately long forgotten. It was French. French is crazy hard. Did you see their numbers?! E.g. 89 literally translates into 4 times 20 (and- editors note, they don't bother to say "and") 9.... I'm sorry French folks, but wtff??? And than there's 79...
French wasn’t so bad imo but German holy cow. I just gave up on German lol.
I’m a native Spanish speaker so I guess it makes sense.
For being your third language, you've gotten as close to correct as a lot of native speakers. A lot of us make the _exact_ same small mistakes you've presented here. The only truly noteworthy one, in fact, is your mixing up of then/than. That's really good for third tier, even if it just so happens to be the freshest on your brain! (For reference: than is used for quantities and comparisons, then is used for time and place. You're under no obligation to be any better *than* you already are, but I'll write out a sentence that uses both correctly in case it starts itching at the back of your brain now that I've said it... "There she is, being humble... and *then* there's this guy, who thinks he knows more *than* me!" This Guy is in a sequence, after a Humble She; a place. This Guy is being asserted as having a thought involving an ambiguous quantity of _more,_ as well as a comparison--greater *than* the speaker. Again, you're really good already, so don't feel bad about making a mistake we make too if all I did was manage to make it more confusing!)
@@YourWaywardDestiny yeah, yeah, I tend to do that even I know... Being a bit drunk while typing that comment didn't help either, lol. But thanks, I'll try to watch myself a bit more.
@@unixtreme yeah, German is, well, German. I was really lucky to kinda learn it by osmosis as a small kid, just absorbing it from media (in the age of radio and TV, before the Internet was a thing)
@YourWaywardDestiny honestly, there's alot of native speakers that either don't care, don't bother, or dont know how to use the correct then/than in a sentence lol.
English as a second language here (as you asked at the end). I work in the software development industry, and most modern dev languages have much more documentation in English than any other language. They also use English verbs and attributes for their structure, so I'd probably have a much harder time if I didn't know English.
I moved to the US, where I joined a company that has multinationals work teams. I lead such a team, with developers from Serbia, Hungary, Uganda, and the US itself. We all communicate in English. No English, no way to make this team work.
I do not agree with the idea that the burden is on Japanese people to learn English in order to make foreigners 'more comfortable'.
As far as I'm concerned, if you plan to be moving to another country, you had better damn well learn that country's language first. At least to a conversational level.
edit: for those talking about tourism, I still believe the onus is on the tourist to learn at least basic phrases so as to not be rude. This applies to all countries.
I agree, however English is really important for the business world. Yes it would be great if Americans and British learned other languages, but even if we didn’t we aren’t going to learn the languages that everyone else knows.
@@thomasffrench3639its important to avoid fake news etc. Thats it
Okkk but those same people think immigrants going to America shouldn't lesrn english but we should understand them???
Japan when they invaded other countries definitely forced you to learn their language so they don't even believe your ideology
@@LYNN-id9rb I mean for one, English isn't a national language, for two, everyone agrees it's better for immigrants coming here to learn english, and most do, there are a lot of things that are much more difficult without english, our sings are in english, most of our emergency service people only speak english (911 operators, cops, ems, ect). Yeah we all agree it's probably best to learn it, but if a 50 year old Chinese couple moves here to give their child a better life, I'm not expecting them to dive into a new language.
As an ESL tutor it makes me really happy when I hear the stories of why my Japanese (and other non-english speaking) students wants to learn English in the first place. Even if they just want to learn it for fun or for their future. I also have a lot of older people that are still learning English which is realy good! Some of them are just bored and wanna learn something new and would love to interact with tourists more. The older people, mind you!!
Learning more than one language is always valuable. Especially the more commonly known ones. I’d love to learn not only Japanese/Chinese but Spanish, German, Portuguese, and Russian.
Unless it English then one is sufficient
Damn, I wish i could speck that many languages
If you are force to learned one and that one can alter your life, not so. It is a curse.
Arabic probably useful
Hindi and Korean too its pretty dope languages
I don’t know about education these days, but 20 years ago when I was studying Japanese full time at uni…I honestly have no idea how I was passing. I apparently had a university level understanding of a language I could barely read, and could barely express even the simplest of thoughts in. I suppose to someone who knew NO Japanese, it might have sounded like I was quite good, but I knew myself that I just couldn’t form sentences, couldn’t understand anything without looking up every second or third word. My fears were confirmed when I went to Japan and couldn’t even exist in the most basic of circumstances. Was I better off than a tourist with no language education? Only slightly! I was just lucky I went with others from my class, people who were far better at the language than me. Because I don’t know if I would have been able to find anyone to ask. Even the “English speaking Doctor” I spoke to at the hospital…really only knew as much English as I knew Japanese. Between us, we made it work.
The most reliable way to learn Japanese, if you actually want to brush up is just read a ton and use a popup dictionary like yomichan while you do it. That way you can look things up instantly and if you know what the words are then it's easier to pick up the grammar. Other then that just memorize a bunch of grammar rules so that you can at least recognize them as you read. But just spending hours and hours reading Japanese will improve your ability to read stuff you haven't seen before.
So english for Japanese people is like Spanish for non-hispanic American people. Teachers are made to 'teach' you 'conversational skills' found only within textbook scenarios in class and that's it. No one practices real conversations during class nor outside of class with one another (even with the teacher outside of the class! We still speak English to one another and just sprinkle a Spanish word or 2 in). As students, we memorize the bare minimum to get through the school year: hola, como estas, Bien y tu, necessito usar el bano por favor, y adios. Outside of that, I don't know how to ask real questions or convey how I'm truly feeling to someone in spanish if I were to try. I've learned more from Duolingo and even they don't teach proper Spanish, but I sure as hell have learned more from them than the several years of Spanish classes I took in middle and high school. It sucks.
It's the norm for second language teaching pretty much everywhere.
Japan considers "conversational" methods to just speak out. To repeat words. That's not conversation. That's being a parrot. That's audial, audiovisual at most, but not conversational. A conversation MUST have an objective and must imply creativity, not just repeating phrases. But Japan doesn't understand this for two reasons. First, curricula are made by Japanese professors, almost never by native speakers of the target language (only in Gaidais, universities of foreign languages that teach the language as a major, do foreign professors have the freedom to set their own curriculum); on a high school or non-major college level, curricula are set by Japanese professors ALWAYS. Why is that bad? They are not 100% fluent, and they will NEVER do things in a way that differs an iota from the way THEY learned Japanese. And neither did their professors. And their professors... And do you catch my drift? They will NEVER do things in a different (and better) way because it means two things: one, that the way THEY learned was wrong (and they take that personally), and that their professors were wrong, which they consider taboo and disrespectful.
If it were for Japanese professors of language, they would still be living in trees.
Maybe the opposite, like learning English after being an hispanic because the difference and non standard way that English vocals sound. E sounding æ or I maybe sometimes and most like Spanish I (EE) ?
True. I had eight years out of twelve that I had to take at least one semester of Spanish. And it was always the basic class. Same thing every year. It's to the point that I dumped everything. I can't speak a word of Spanish and I refuse outright to learn. I'm just sick of it over two decades later.
Probably one of the issues I have with learning languages now. I start, then just redo the level 1 stuff over and over until I get bored.
Sad part is that Spanish is such a easy language to understand due to all the common words with English.
Thought provoking post. I'm learning Japanese myself. I'm planning on visiting Japan in the future. I maded a few friends who are Japanese on Facebook and Instagram. Plus I watch anime and read manga andJapanese mythology and folklore. And I would like to visit Kyoto and few other places. I also practice Shinto and Zen Buddhism. The norito is in Japanese and English. So I'm learning from books as well as Google translate. It's difficult. But I want to learn. ❤
I think Philippines is a prime example of it being the primary language next to Filipino for English. Most people can speak write and understand. Working out of the country is so common that most people interact and work with it everyday , though I think some mannerism and speech patterns of Filipinos are very noticeable fi they learned inside of the Philippines as opposed to elsewhere.
Sounds liked Japan could learn a thing or two from the Philippines then.👌🏼
Yep. Philippine laws are drafted and written in English. It is required to speak English in a public school curriculum. Employment hinges on quality of spoken/written English, and high level office jobs cannot be accessible to somebody who is just mediocre at English. It is also paramount for everyone to know how to speak English, it's because Filipinos have way too many dialects, and Tagalog alone just doesn't cut it for people not living in the capital.
Filipino here. Yes, it's true. We are English native speakers. I have worked for American and Aussie clients because of my English communication skills apart from the technical skills I know. Those who can't speak it well sadly have limited job opportunities.
@@danielwhyatt3278 English is a tool toward prosperity, not a religion. Japan reach prosperity without much English and Philippines is still a shithole compare to Japan proves that English isnt that useful.
Yes, but there's a small but very vocal group of Tagalog purists in the Philippines who want to remove English from the curriculum because they think it will make the country rich like Japan by magically "preserving culture" and "removing foreign influence." Japan, on the other hand, is trying so very hard for students to learn English so they're more aware of the wider world. It's hilariously ironic sometimes.
My first language is Polish and I live in Poland. English has definitely helped me to understand, and learn more about the world, different countries, cultures, all of it. Yes, there are some Polish resources on all countries and cultures but it is not comparable to the amount of them in English. So many people from around the world speaking the language or even living in Eng-speaking countries (mostly in the us) really helped me to understand global issues like xenophobia or racism that aren't addressed much among Poles because of how homogeneous we are. Learning it gave me a chance to realize that I like learning languages, alphabets and where they come from in general. It also supports my other hobbies, makes it easier to travel overboard.
I think it has to do a lot with that the kids are learning formal english (polite). When I was in japan, a lot of the english students wanted me to teach slang and practice with them. I did 😂 but I reminded them you only talk like that with your friends. I stressed it is important to know when to call someone a “homie”, like don’t call your boss that.
Teallyimportant,i mean to not officially,but have fun with it
😅😅😅
I mean, if you live in a strong monoculture society, and NEVER HAVE PLANS TO BRANCH OUTSIDE of your culture, what would motivate someone to learn another language? Seriously.
Most times people learn a second language, maybe for business, friends, heritage, travel, etc.
I met too many Japanese who aspire to none of the above, except for being in Japan around Japanese people. Can't blame them I guess.
The test sounds like what Finnish high schoolers had to go through to get nationally graded. The listening comprehension was fast-paced and we took a lot practice tests and still answering the open questions feel really difficult. Also there's no spoken part lol
We have foreign students coming here in the Philippines to learn english. They are mostly our asian neighbors including some from s korea, vietnam, japan, malaysia, etc. In my opinion it's all about teaching approach and exposure to get them to gradually apply it. We have english speaking zones posted on those specialty schools here so they can practically use english regularly.
I grew up in Germany, where English was mandatory since 4th grade and is now mandatory since 2nd grade I believe.
I learned a lot of English through RUclips and video games (Sonic was a major English teacher for me as a kid because he never had any dub, it always was English with German subtitles)
When I was in 10th grade I also started speedrunning and Live streaming because of the speedrunning and that boostet my confidence and English speaking skills by a huge amount.
But there were a lot of people who spoke terrible English because they did not engage with English media as much and they just didn't care
I think it's insanely useful for travelling, for my work (software developer) for my hobbies like watching twitch, RUclips, Movies and Shows with original audio, live streaming in english etc
That is really awesome man. Thanks for sharing that.
Yep, aside just watching not dubbed media, a lotis english, its good to know.
Including original audio.
How often do you travel for software dev
As a Hungarian, I can safely say that learning how to speak English did wonders to my life, as I realized that I could find much more information on the internet in English than in Hungarian (no surprises there). At first, I just used my knowledge for listening to music, watching shows, playing videogames, crocheting based on others' patterns, etc. However, recently, watching youtube videos became an excellent and really fun way of studying biology for me, which is a ton of help since I'll have to take an advanced level exam (Matura exam) of biology at the end of secondary school so that I can apply for psycology in college, and in this country, how high you score in those kind of exams determines whether or not you get into college.
So, to anyone who's reading this comment, learning English is pretty cool. (But you probably already know that. )
It’s a shame. I know some American adults who still struggle with English. I think it’s the environment. We concern ourselves to much with conforming to standardize tests.
Yeah that it always been hilarious to me considering we are awash with language of every conceivable level it actually kind of amazing
It is not a shame, it is glory. Not lose to language imperialism isnt shame at all. It is blessing for Japanese people.
For a lot of people focusing on just one language is fine, because they barely make any effort to learn even their own language. 😂
@@MrHkl8324 Oh, it looks like I failed at comunicating again. "its a shame" was directed at using standardized test to motivate language learning. That we should avoid using standardized tests this way because you are able to find native speakers who continue to make linguistic mistakes and they only know one language. The Japanese have all right to announce "by as of this moment we will no longer teach English" and I would applaud them for it. If you are going to Japan learn Japanese.
I’m Swedish and am fluent in English, have learnt Spanish in school and am learning Japanese in my free time. English has most defenetly been really usefull in my life and has personally been really easy to learn. I’ve been surounded with english since 5 years and up to now almost 17. It’s quite a big subject in our schools here and we start to learn it really early. English is also quite simular to my native language beacuse it’s so close and beacause of the vikings back in the day. But the most important thing that I think helped me the most is that I’ve been consuming english content my hole life through all the shows, youtube, videogames, social media, books, well badically everything. The only ”weak” areas I have are spelling and talking, beacause I don’t do it so often, but I’m guite decent at it.
But for example I’ve learnt spanish from 6:th-9:th grade so I have a good understanding of the language by listening and reading. But I’m bot so good in the other areas mostly beacause I was never as interested in the language or had a big reason to learn the language. So that is also a big important factor in learning a language.
I’ve been learning japanese for about 300 days and I allredy feel that I’m not so far away from the level in my Spanish. It’s probably beacause my genuine interest in the language, culture, anime, manga, j-metal/j-rock, etc. I’ve also been reading both manga and watched anime and shows in only japanese to imerse myself in the language.
My conclusion is that as long as your motivated and have a reason to learn the language, nothing can stop you, even how difficult that language is!
English tests in my country (Hungary) also had ridiculous topics when I was in school. recycling, planning a trip and shit like that, that even in my mother language would take me hours of preparation to talk about. on my test I got family as topic. and my family is so fucked up, I couldn't really say anything that wouldn't concern the teacher. on top of that the stress and I could only say my mother has brown hair. they really should come up with easy topics. something ppl actually talk about with others.
Örülök h ezt más is így látja, az összes angoltudásom 1%-át tudom be az oktatási rendszernek.
@@algorithmizer mindig csak a nyelvtanra feküdtünk rá. minimális gyakorlás pár egyszerűbb kifejezéssel, felmérő aztán ugrás a kövi nyelvtanra. ebből nem lesz meg az elegendő szókincs hogy saját véleményt fejtsek ki olyan témákról amikről amúgy fingom sincs
@@CTGrell A nyelvtan fontosabb mint a szókincs, ha csak szókincset tanulnál akkor nem lenne idő nyelvtanra. Nyilván alapvető szókincs muszáj, viszont a magasabb angol tudáshoz önkéntes tanulás is szükséges (ez minden nyelvre igaz, ezért nem tudnak nyelvet tanítani iskolában).
@@gabor6200 a probléma az hogy 5 év elment csak a nyelvtannal általánosban majd középsuliban elölről kezdtük hiába voltam a haladó csoportban. 2 év ismétléssel telt el. sokkal gyorsabban átmehettünk volna az ismétlés részen és akkor marad idő szókincs bővítésre
How about food or weather or , whatever really.
This coming from a Belgian: making at least one foreign language compulsory from an elementary school level was one of the best ideas the ministry for education ever had.
The fact that we've been a multilingual country since forever does help with that though. Just imagine learning a new language in school as a kid and then being able to use what you learned in school if you go on vacation in your own country, not even that far away. It's a huge boost to wanting to learn and retain a language, it breeds incentives.
I believe that this multilinguality is also part of why we've been so eager to play the diplomacy game, being able to communicate clearly with all your neighbouring countries even though they might not speak the same language is a huge boon especially in a time when English had not been established yet as a lingua franca. And this is part of the reason why we were so eager to jump on the EU and NATO bandwagons from the beginning, and likely also one of the reasons why their headquarters are in Brussels and not somewhere else.
(Almost) Major in English Teaching here.
I remember one of my teachers shitting on us due to the fact Mexico was one of the many countries that were slacking in English globally, like it was our fault or something.
I agree, two years of lock down during the pandemic really damaged students performance. I spent four semesters facing my computer and I asure you I don't remember 90% of the things we saw, which is a shame because in a major like mine we see things like linguistics, a bit of translation, interpretation, English composition. Things that I believe really help you as an English learner.
Can't imagine how it went down for students in Japan.
"How DARE you have no incentive to speak a language you've been barely taught these past few years! Shameful, just shameful!" --Every language teacher on the face of the planet in the last two years, as far as I've heard.
It's odd that Mexico is falling behind in English proficiency, given your northern neighbor's love for the language, sure, but to blame the students? Well, that's even more odd. We all know how lock down and restrictions impacted our capacity to go out and socialize, do they think the secondary language is going to be kept on file as "IMPORTANT! DO NOT DELETE!" while you had so few reasons to even use your native tongue? Of course everyone trying to learn is going to be rusty at the minimum. The internet is mostly text based, so even if you tried to keep up, you're going to lack the critical bit of SPEAKING IT IN CONVERSATION.
Learning English as a second language has for sure been the single most valuable thing I've ever learned! It just expands your whole personal, professional, and general information gathering abilities and expands your cognitive horizon from just 1 (or perhaps a few) countries speaking another language to essentially the whole world.
"How much has English helped you?"
Considering almost every piece of content I consume, be it videos, articles, books and so on is in English, I'd say it helped me quite a bit!
Seriously now, English is THE global language. EVERYTHING is in English!
It's not that knowing English opens many of doors and makes a lot of knowledge accessible - we've come to the point where NOT KNOWING English is a DISADVANTAGE! I can't even imagine being unable to access all of the information that can be found on the web (which is primarily in English). Passing up on learning English is like being nearsighted, but refusing to wear glasses.
So... Yeah, I'd say it's really, really important to know English. It definitely has been crucial in my life, so far!
but It's not as easy as to wear glasses to learn second language not as a child 😭
Personally, learning English has made a *big* impact in my life and I'm so proud for taken a huge interest in english since I was a kid. Big shout out to the Barbie movies for getting me into english
Wow, Barbie has only been out for a month!
You must be a language genius!
@@chunksloth lol I meant the 90s with the ps2 graphic barbie movies but yeah barbie is magical
80% English words are Latin. But 90% Latin words are Arabic. So, 85% English words are Arabic.
Being able to understand and speak to people from around the world was really important to me when I was younger.
So learning English from a young age at school has really helped me alot and it has saved me.
Also I pretty much have learned to speak English to much now I always forget stuff in Norwegian now xD. But I don’t regret it one bit I wouldn’t feel complete without English at this point.
So I was born in Estonia (shoutout to every Estonian who watches Joey btw, tibud olete) and English now is the most important thing in my life. I could not go to uni in the Netherlands without being able to listen, speak, write etc in English and nor could I have found such amazing friends along the way. Obviously it won't be like that for every Japanese person but also when I am back in Estonia then I find so many foreigners who just come up and ask for help or something about history (just to note, we are usually really ''introverted'', similar to Japan but we will still help people in need, like the Japanese). Just for that reason alone (though it's only in the touristy places) Japanese should learn at least basic conversations in English, you never know you might make a friend or help a foreigner understand your culture better.
P.S. English helped me to understand and study other languages much easier, such as Spanish, German and Dutch (haven't studied a whole lot though, only to speak a bit)
I learned the basics of english at school (France is not the best country to learn english at school, trust me) and I got better alone, now i can understand it really well, and i speak and write it well enough so that it can be understood by others peoples. I am still a student, but it already helped me a lot ! I study ecology, and being able to read and understand scientific articles and thesis in english is really hepful to learn more and more. I also had to speak with english speaker to ask about their way to manage nature and learning about other countries' way of doing things is really helpful to have an open mind... (I'm sure i made a lot of mistakes in this text, but i'm tired and don"t want to correct them so sorry u native speakers)
you wrote very well, only two minor mistakes: "others peoples" -> "other people" and "speak with english speaker" -> "speak with AN english speaker".
i'm also english second language, started learning from youtube videos from very early on, then came school education some years later (started watching videos around primary shcool, probably around 6 to 9 years old)
Nice! I have played some online games with a big French audience and a lot of them couldn't really talk to me, so what you're saying about the usefulness of the english classes there is probably true.
Considering that, you speak english quite well! It isn't my native language either but by interacting with things that we like while english is being involved, learning is much more fun.
@@MillyKKitty Exactly ! Learning by doing things you like is the best way (imo)
Me and my siblings went to Japan in 2019 and whilst we were at the imperial Palace in Kyoto some Japanese students came up to us and tried to talk in English (I know basic Japanese and had Japanese lessons prior to coming so could speak to them a bit)
They spoke some sentences that they'd practiced but had no idea what we were saying. Fair enough we are English and maybe they expected an American accent but the region we are from in the UK is known for having a fairly easy to understand accent haha
English isn't my tongue. I've been learning it from a very young age at school, but it hasn't really helped me to be able to understand and use the language. The only thing that actually helped me and that I still do is self-learning.
Learning a new language can be really beneficial as you open up a new world to explore. The decision to improve my English was one of the best decisions I've ever made. The amount of media I'm able to consume and enjoy right now is definitely worth it.
Simple reason. Because if a Japanese person lives in Japan, he/she does not need English.
How many people in the world seriously study a foreign language they do not use?
When taking high school or university entrance exams, English is one of the subjects of the exam, so people study it, but when the exam is over, they forget about it.
Japanese who live in Japan but need English because they have a job, organization, or school that involves foreigners study English so that they can speak English (conversational English).
In today's Internet society, individuals can easily understand the economic, security, and racial discrimination situations in Europe, the U.S., and the rest of the world, and the number of Japanese young people studying abroad has decreased dramatically.
Although the economic growth rate has stagnated, Japan remains the third largest economy in the world, so the number of young people who want to work for foreign companies is very small.
@@aoiumi6393 not to mention the people who get those jobs more than likely come from the upper class. They go to the best schools, get into the more notable/famous universities, etc..
For anyone to study abroad in a western country, it does take quite a bit of money. Comparing it to the United States for example, if you were to go to university in Japan, Korea, or China as an American, it’s much cheaper for you than the other way around.
@@Wingzero90939I imagine that many children of rich Chinese in particular are studying at American universities.
Tuition at private universities is not cheap in Japan either. Moreover, some faculties are quite expensive.
In the past, far more Japanese studied in the U.S. than now, so I think the reasons for not studying or moving to the U.S. are less about the high cost of tuition at U.S. universities and more about the fact that the U.S. is not safe and that discrimination against Asians is worse.
Recently, more and more Japanese and Japanese families are returning to Japan from the United States. The number of Japanese and American couples moving to Japan is also increasing.
The reason for this is that many Japanese feel threatened by the lack of security and discrimination against Asians in the U.S., as well as the many drug problems and shootings in schools.
Not many people want to live abroad because they can enjoy a "safe life" and a middle-class life in general in Japan.
Many Japanese people think that the most important thing is the life and health of themselves and their families.
80% English words are Latin. But 90% Latin words are Arabic. So, 85% English words are Arabic.
In Germany, Austria, Sweitzerland, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Iceland, Greece, Cyprus, Malta, Israel many people know English language. What is a problem to know English language?
“an US 9th grader, so an Australian 6th grader”
Everyone outside of the US and AUS: 👁️👄👁️
You misheard
still sounds about right 🤣
Yeah I have no idea how old these kids are 😂
OZ kids be eatin well, coles be bussin
NO!!! That question! SDGs is being pushed this year in English education and this isn't the first time I've seen a question like this pop up since April. The material 3rd-year junior high students are studying is far more advanced that what I studied in most of my college Japanese classes.
Yeah... in my country English class was super bare bones. Only my personal interest in english media got me serious enough to invest my free time into learning it. It wasn't exactly "studying", more like: Reading, watching, playing stuff in English and bit by bit it just stuck to me. Currently learning Japanese and my goal is to get at least N3 .
Part of the problem is native Japanese teachers who can't speak English, teaching students from very poorly written English language textbooks.
i live in Mexico and work for a US company, so yes, learning another language can give you more opportunities to get a job.
Indeed he or she speak/read/write ✍️ in more than one language or even more than two languages.
I work with many Japanese professionals in Aviation and all the design technical specs are done in English. Despite their experience or years of exposure in the U.S., speaking English isnt their strong suite, but they can read/write and understand very complex topics.
this isn't necessairily problematic, english is forced upon the world. I'm not mad japan doesn't speak portuguese or czeh. But I understand the pragmatical economic utility.
Hi! I’m learning Japanese as my 5th language. I generally dislike learning languages but of course once you know one, you gain access to so much new culture that was locked away from you before, not to mention accessing completely new modes of thinking. My education (one of the European Schools in Luxembourg, 12 years total of primary+secondary education, 6-18) had us learn 3 compulsory languages. The European schools have a system of language sections; there are parallel classes for native tongues, like English, French, German, Spanish, etc. If I recall correctly there were 9 or 10 of them at mine. They were all mixed for classes in the 2nd language, so each L2 class had a mixture of 9 nationalities that picked that 2nd language; and the teacher would only speak english (for L2 En. Some also picked french, and 5 years later when L3 became compulsory, they would usually pick english). You couldn’t really communicate with your neighbours outside of your second language, or the teacher, so if you had something to say, you had about an hour a day, 5 days a week, for about 6 years to figure it out. After that there were less classes, but other subjects like PE, art, history, geography, music, philosophy, economics, were all in your second language, plus at that point you also had another language to worry about. I ended up communicative at spanish (4) and french (3), and of course fluent in polish (1) and english (2). If I knew I’d study typography and like linguistics back then, I would have probably also picked latin and ancient greek. Still, even with 4 languages out of the 6 I should have picked, I’ve been having an easy time structuring my own study of Japanese in a way that I know is suited for how I learn best. I’ll get a teacher once I need one to progress, and I will know roughly when that will be.
Well then, your honour, now that you know my credentials, let us proceed with the case;
I think a lot of classes in second language should be the norm, not just the actual language class. It makes you communicative. Pretty much everyone in my graduating year who had english L2 is fluent now. None of us will have to study english again to any technical capacity like grammar or syntax. Most of us sound ‘european’ with an ambiguous accent coming from a bunch of languages but could convincingly produce a neutral english, except the french, but whatever, the french are hopeless. They invented the conjugations of le verbe être. Learning some functionally different languages also allows you to start thinking in different ways, especially if you’re the internal monologue type of thinker. The most extreme example would be toki pona, I could imagine that if students learnt it as a third language, it would open up a lot of possibilities, since being a conlang designed for simplicity, it borrows features from many different languages. I find that multilingual people are generally more open to new things, aware of the world, and less dogmatic. Even if one of the cultures they interact with on a ‘first-name’ basis has a heavy bias in some direction, having access to another culture can help shift that away towards balance, inner peace, and 間 in the needlessly esoteric spiritual sense. The media you can consume widens. You stop thinking in binaries, for instance, there is no longer a single line of ‘literary geniuses’. There are parallel lines. Shakespeare could not have been French, but Stéphane Mallarmé could not have been english. The way you count in spoken Japanese is completely different than in any language I speak fluently, and having no future tense is also quite unique (though I guess English doesn’t have an inflectional future tenses either.) Languages without grammatical gender treat objects differently than those without. You can only experience the world through your senses and process it through thoughts, so having thoughts that interpret things completely differently is like a freaky set of spiritual extra magical brain senses. I know it might sound a bit too magical for any rational alpha males who mansplained nietzsche to their high school girlfriends in the audience. Well, the short (and objective rational male) of it is that you become a more eclectic person. Better opportunities? Sure. Easier life? Sure. Improving range of sounds you can produce to pronounce foreign names better and for learning future languages? Sure. Improved ability to whip out google translate when you’re blanking on a word in your native tongue but happen to know it in your 2nd or 3rd? Yes, common benefits. But then there is the whimsical of it that I like. You sound different, your accents mix and make something new and unique. You become a more chill person holistically, not performatively.. usually, anyway. You know more. Even as someone who doesn’t *like* learning languages, I can appreciate everything that comes of it. Language education is not just missing in Japan, it’s missing almost everywhere in the world. I think 2 languages are a good start, but compulsory 3 is also pretty awesome, and gives you a lot of ground for working on other languages in your own time if you wish to. Even if you can’t afford to travel, or if you’ll go right ahead and forget your third language, having a period in life where you’re learning this black box from a completely ignorant perspective, analytically, is a small cognitive miracle and provides you with an ATLA Iroh-level understanding of practice in picking up new skills or learning long term things, akin to learning to play a musical instrument or practicing martial arts for a long time (they also come with cultural benefits same as languages!), the key difference being that many tasks you get in jobs that are not physical labour will benefit more from a 2-4+ year brain practice project in your portfolio than having spent a hundred hours on wrist and finger independence exercises for a Chopin Étude. Foiled again by the double thirds! Not to discredit musicianship or martial arts. I too plead guilty of music myself. Idk man I just feel like learning a language or two is good for you, holistically.
As someone who failed all my language classes (I only know a few French words) I completely understand why it’s so difficult for these kids to understand English. Hearing a language is far easier for me then writing it or trying to pronounce the words
Oh well, As a spanish speaker, the Japanese has pronunciation similarly to spanish and English
They are Japanese. Let them speak Japanese, in Japan. If I want to visit them, I will learn their language, or pay for a translator service.
I think the main reason is that they tend to "japanesize" english word and say that it's not a japanese word. Like how Pink in japanese is said Pinku. It's not a miss-spelt "Pink", they just are convinced that Pinku is Pink in Japanese. And this happens a lot of times, to the point where if you say "your pronounce is wrong" they think that you are the one who can't speak english
There are a few major things coming together to create this problem.
1. They only see English in the classroom for less than an hour a day, and maybe some homework. With almost zero immersion outside of school, that's barely any time to learn a language as different from Japanese as English is. People learning Japanese as English speakers can take over 2000 hours of study to be somewhat fluent and that's with immersion and dedicated self study. A Japanese child who doesn't want to learn English would probably need over 3000 hours to learn it, which they definitely aren't getting in school. No matter how well they teach the language, the students would have to be doing a ton of work outside of school to actually learn it to a conversational level.
2. Japanese media is usually pretty good and there is a lot of it. Seems like a weird point, but many people outside of English speaking countries learn English to be able to enjoy English media. With the large amount of quality Japanese content from movies, TV, music, video games, etc., Japanese children have little need to learn English to find entertainment. Any popular international content is usually localized into Japanese too.
3. English is not really that useful to them in daily life outside of communication with foreigners. No average student isn't going to want to spend hundreds of hours studying a language that only might be useful to them later. Especially if it's more for others' benefit not themselves. Any Japanese person I've ever met that knows English learned it because it was directly beneficial for them for work, school, or they were passionate about something that is more popular in English speaking communities. Forced language learning will never work because the people learning it have to actively try to learn it more than a typical school subject. Just sitting in an English class does little to teach the kids and real English skills outside of a few words and simple grammar rules.
4. It's not taught very well. They focus a lot on the grammar rules as that can be taught as much as possible in Japanese. They then know a bunch of rules in the English language, but almost no words and little knowledge about how natural sentences sound.
i did learn english in school as not the first language, but i only learnt some very basic things while not learning others. so most of my knowledge of this language comes from reading manga scans (translated in english) or youtube videos. to make you understand how much the internet(and not a school teacher) actually taught me english, i can add that i also learnt french in school, but at the same time hating the way it was taught to me and now i remember just some vague small things
That half of Japanese students completely failed to understand English (despite years of studying it in school) is shocking. It's a colossal waste of resources.
I live in Russia and kinda stumbled upon English and started learning it on my own while in school. And it feels like a superpower, it's like a whole world is unlocked to me. It always feels like I have so much new to tell to other people.
While English is compulsory in Russian schools, people usually don't learn it well enough to actually use.
Norwegian here, English has been extremely helpful. I enjoy everything that has to do with computers, and the resources out there in English is huge. It also happens to be the Lingua Franca of the world, so if something is translated into a single other language, chances are that language is English. I don't expect subtitles in Norwegian, but there's almost always an English one.
Bomb, Tomb, Blood, Food.. English lol
Tough - Though
Read - Tread
Etc.
The real reason why they can't speak English is because their classmate will make fun of you for speaking English in class. This discourage them to study English
So as a German who learned english up to a point that I consider almost native, it helped me a LLLLLOT. Just to get it out of the way, I was literally never interested in learning english, it just somehow happened with me consuming english stuff like your videos 😂 so back to the main point, english gave me a bigger spectrum of what I can consume. I would generally say that the crazier stuff happens in the english speaking community. We just don't have someone like Mr. Beast or Pewdiepie or even someone like you in the german community. I can also connect to different communities perfectly well like I am currently writing a comment to exactly do so. And at last, the most important thing for me. My god, researching stuff in english is SOOOOOOO much better, holy shit 😂 you can basically find 20× more things in english than in german, it's insane. Especially right now. I am trying to study in japan and if I couldn't research this stuff in english, I would likely just not find my answers (and my japanese is currently not good enough). So learning english (by accident 😅) literally opened me up to the world, even if that sounds a little bit crazy 😂
As an English speaker that's learning Japanese, I find Katakana quite hard and I think that that might be one of the contributing factors. Katakana words are (mostly) English words, just pronounced very, very differently which causes a cognitive dissonance for English speakers learning Japanese and Japanese speakers learning English.
As someone from the US, I definitely understand why it would be beneficial both for the kids and for Japan as a country if more Japanese people spoke English. The being said though it's hard for me to sit here and judge other countries for not speaking enough English considering my country's abysmal efforts to teach our kids foreign languages. We literally live in probably the most diverse country in the world, with large populations of various foreign language speakers, but yet we can't be bothered to make a genuine effort put at emphasis on foreign language learning in school.
That question about the plastic bag usage in New Zealand and Japan sounds like something that would be in a DELE or SIELE test (Spanish fluency test).
I grew up in the Philippines and English is our second language. Being fluent in two languages is awesome since some foreign said its not easy to learn tagalog.
I thought that the grade schools in Japan actually had English classes?
The real problem is that a native Japanese speaker has trouble distinguishing "R" from "L" when spoken, (thus giving rise to lame "Flied Lice" jokes) because there is only one sound that is close to either one in Japanese.
Oh, and the Japanese have had wearing of those masks when sick as part of their culture since the 1960s. It was NOT triggered by the Coof.
The real reason is because Joey isn't their teacher. 😂
as a person from Russia I understand people from Japan.
people here only know english if they are kids, teens, students (learn it in school)... people who are ~14-40 maybe BUT i can't say that all of them can really speak English, especially those who don't live in a big city! like we use Russian and people here are mostly russians or another nationalities who can speak Russian, so English is important only to speak with foreigners obviously... or for some kind of job like IT, video games, travel, english teacher i donno lol... some people know only something like "hello" you know, no metter how old are they 😅
Germans cant speak English either... Like most of us understand English but don't speak it.
(When i went through my verbal english exam, the examiners told me to move to London because my English was so good, I'm not even joking. I can confidently say I'm fluent lol)
German here.... A lot of People amongst millenials can actually speak proper english. I would say that most people under 40 speak well enough to help you if you ask. What they make fun of is ze äkzent.
Thankfully I don't have one. But I get mocked by Brits that I sound like an American lol.
@@HoJSimpson my exam partner had an accent (still got full score too tho), I do too but mine only shows when I get mad. And its a British accent for some reason.. I'm from Berlin so I'm used to speaking English
@@dinocatgaming2127 I am a Software Engineer, and I use it every day with my team. If you have that many Nations represented, you need to use english lol. I personally learned it properly by watching lots of media, of which most are from the US. That's probably my accent. Yes... grammar and rules was learned in School, but actually having to use it professionally since I was 18 is what made me really fluent. I take being recognized as not German when I speak as a Win lol.
@@HoJSimpson Yeah when native speakers assume you're also a native speaker does feel good ngl
There is a Japanese girl who studied English for 5 years at a foreign language university in Tokyo. Then she went to New Zealand to practice her English. When she hears someone say something, she has to write it down in Japanese, then she writes it in English. Very funny.
I think knowing English is a good thing for many reasons, but learning English to make expats and foreign tourists more comfortable is ridiculous. They instead should learn the native language of the country their living in. And tourists? Who cares. It's up to them to figure out how to get around in a foriegn country. You can't expect a whole nation to bend over backwards to placate people who will only be there for two weeks
learning the language of your most recent "enemy" is never easy and Japan is very poor when it comes to innovation in education. It's much more a "brute force" approach to learning, rather than a "creative/expressive" approach used in the "West". It doesn't help that some of the earliest textbooks were just plain terrible, but they became the "standard" and in true Japanese fashion, have never been updated or innovated. Language = Culture and the more "foreign" Language you adopt, the more of their culture you will adopt, which will then alter your Native Culture, which is much less embraced in the "East", generally speaking. Learning anything new requires an open mind and honest effort, nothing more.
For a while I was learning Japanese, stopped for a little bit, now I'm focusing on Spanish and Hawaiian and the most important thing I've learned is, when learning how to say something in that language, you have to accept that you are going to sound ridiculous and silly for a long time in the beginning. 6 months into Spanish and I'm finally starting to read and speak it better.
I use to teach Japanese students in Japan from Elementary to HS students for 4 years. And now I teach remotely online and now have students from All over the world mostly adults now for the last 4 years. And I was actually just talking with my wife about this. But the Japanese students are by far the worst students I've had. It's their mentality, so many times I've had students say "Why do i need English, I am Japanese and i live in Japan". Also probably even more so, is there confidence or lack there of. They have zero confidence in themselves. Its that Japanese Pride, they would rather not even try than to try and fail and come off what they'll think as "Looking dumb or foolish". And what I always try to teach them is that making mistakes is not bad, nor does it mean you are dumb. That means you are Trying, Learning and Growing.
Regarding the question at the end, for me, it's kinda weird. Even though English is not technically my first language (being Swedish), I don't have any memories of not being able to speak English. I remember visiting countries like Switzerland and UAE when being 5 or younger, and definitely being able to communicate with the local populace using English at that age. Also, as someone who read a lot of books during childhood, I remember deciding to stop reading books in Swedish completely at age 11, since I just... preferred how they sounded in English (a large deciding factor for that may be that the latest Harry Potter book at the time; The Order of the Phoenix, wasn't out in Swedish yet at that point in time, and I ended up enjoying reading it in English a lot more than I had reading the earlier books in Swedish (that being said, the book version of TOotP, unlike its movie counterpart, is probably the best of the series, sooo... yea... that may also have influenced me)).
Back to the question though... I enjoy being bi-/trilingual (Spanish being my third language), and except for speaking with friends/family, I rarely use Swedish at all, despite still living in Sweden. In most cases, English is the only language you really need, so why should you NOT simply master the language that is arguably the lingua franca of the world?
That's also true for Japanese though...when I read a Japanese novel written in the author's native language and then compare it to the English or Italian translations I feel like they end up becoming much more bland since they tend to lose a lot of their original beauty and depth. Japanese has lots of features that are completely foreign and untranslatable into European languages...apart from the fact that it is a left-branching language (unlike English, Swedish, Italian and most Indo-European languages) which means that the entire way the sentences are structured is very different from ours, some of these features are wago/yamatokotoba vs kango, manipulating kanji in order to change the nuance of words, old Japanese expressions and 4-kanji words coming from ancient Chinese, different levels of grammatical formality, onomatopoeia that can express not only sounds, but also visual phenomena, emotions, abstract concepts and physical characteristics, etc.
English and Italian on the other hand feel incredibly similar since the vast majority of expressions, way of phrasing sentences, humor, is basically the same
(I could basically translate this whole comment into Italian almost word for word, with the exact same order and with the exact same nuance, but that's not always the case with Japanese, and viceversa)
I am more or less an extreme example in the difference of what a good motive for learning does to the learning process.
I live in Finland, which has two national languages; Finnish and Swedish. Household and other people around me have always spoken Finnish. Actual classes regarding the subject start from grade 1 (age 7). English being a mandatory subject in school from grade 3 (age 10) onward and Swedish, despite being one of the main languages of the country, the learning process didn't start until grade 7 (age 14). All languages more or less continue until the end of the "comprehensive school" years aka grades 1-9 or ages 7-16, high school being an optional 3 years added on (I didn't take it, can't speak on how stuff is organized there).
To this day I only know a few singular words of Swedish, but I would describe myself as close to fluent in English. I would put this down to just using the English language actively in everything before, during and after my school days. I consume almost all of my media and entertainment in English. I never had a proper use for Swedish outside of MAYBE needing it in work life. No medium has so far been considered to be better experienced in Swedish rather than Finnish or English, so my only motivation to even learn was just to get a passing grade. It also didn't help that my teacher for some reason put a super high emphasis on correct pronunciation rather than the correct way to use those words. I can sure as hell pronounce å correctly but I have no idea what I'm saying!
When I compare myself to peers who know Swedish, but don't know English, our lives and such aren't that different, but I do tend to see a trend of small mindedness and a lack of understanding for foreign influences. This by no means an insult to those kinds of people, just an observed trend and exceptions to this are plentiful.
ayo wadup its your boi
It really helps to grow up hearing and trying the sounds of other languages. It's difficult to learn to create sounds that you're not familiar with, and that is very discouraging to many people.
My greatest strength in being Bilingual in Japanese and English is judging the voice acting skills in Animation and Live Action series or movies in both Japanese and English dub. I could either praise or cringe in the translation and acting skills.
For example, I love Avatar The Last Airbender series in English, but the Japanese dub makes my ear bleed because of such wasted popularity potential.
The English tests given to students here are outdated and overly tricky and difficult. I was a 760 verbal SAT scorer in the late 80s and I probably would do very poorly on the highest level English grammar tests they give here in Japan. It's ridiculous.
But what do you expect when a foreign language is being forced on everyone? Hows this for a crazy idea......ask who actually wants to learn English and then let them learn it and those that don't want to don't have to do it.
I love the casual way it's just accepted that the problem lies with the non English speaking people being forced to learn a difficult language (as it is for East Asians) and not with the said difficult foreign language having been made mandatory to learn. No wonder many students in East Asia (it's hardly only Japan) don't learn much English. Aside from the reality that they don't live in English speaking countries (not sure what's hard to grasp about this), many probably feel resentment at having a foreign language forced on them. Especially if they are not interested in learning said language. There is this bizzare idea I see floated among many that every child in East Asia just has an inherent burning desire to learn English. Not sure where this delusion came from. And then everyone acts shocked and surprised that most of the kids don't learn that much.
I taught English in South Korea and Taiwan for a number of years. And everything you describe in Japan sounds exactly the same.
I'm Latino and I don't know Spanish. I was born in the USA and I think in my case a lot of Asians and other Latinos can relate to me where we get bullied out of learning "our" language. If you look at the stats Latinos are the biggest group who have kids that only speak English in the house with Asians in 2nd place. It's wierd to me how so many Latino people will judge and shame people like me who don't know Spanish. They look at me like some sort of "traitor". I don't see it as much with Asains where their people, when they come to the USA, they actually try to learn English. At least enough to conduct a business transaction. I don't really agree with how Japanese people should learn English as a way of helping foreigners feel more comfortable. You are going into their country so it falls on you to learn a little bit of the language to be able to have a smooth experience. Now I don't think we should get rid of English classes in Japan, but rather make it optional. It's kinda like how at least in my high school we were forced to take 2 language classes or we couldn't graduate. I took 2 Spanish classes because while I don't speak the language I can understand it a bit better than others who never grew up around it. But of course once I was done with the class I forgot everything I learned. A majority of the kids felt the same way. We just did the bare minimum to pass.
That's complete BS, Joey! Japanese people shouldn't have to learn another language just to make foreigners "feel more comfortable". If foreigners need to be able to communicate with Japanese people in order to feel comfortable, then they should learn to speak Japanese!!
There's no Incentive for the japanese people, especially the young, to speak Engrish. They're in their own affluent world. No need to have any "BS" outside their echo chamber.
Think of it like this:
Is japanese hard for you to learn? Like really freaking hard? Well for Japanese, the same thing is true. For them English is just an astronomically difficult language for them that takes a lifetime to learn because to them English is too complicated compared to their Japanese
In my opinion, one of the reason Japanese are not good at English is that we have a lot of Japanese entertainments. I couldn’t find any motivation to learn English when I was student so I watched Japanese anime with English sub or dub to learn English. Recently some Japanese girls speak Korean well because they like K-pop. In the long run, motivation is important to keep studying other language.
I am a polyglot and i think knowing english makes one to subject very nice and self aware stuff in general. Like the english speaking world is very open to everyone, warm and welcoming and u rarely feel down when interacting with others but when i interact with japanese ppl in their own langauge more than half of the time i end up feeling like shit and insecure if not annoyed which is an amazing contrast.
I know several Japanese people who regret learning English as it has limited their promotion opportunities at their jobs due to their getting classified as the "gaijin wrangler". They all work in Japan for Japanese companies, though. I know many other Japanese who credit learning English with improving their work prospects by either letting them work for a Japanese company overseas or a foreign company in Japan.
Japan struggles with an aging population. It doesn't make sense for public schools to teach English because every person who can communicate in English will potentially leave the country and the workforce will become even smaller.
The government then has an incentive to throw the quality of classes all the way down so that the youth can provide for the old under very non-competitive work hours and salaries
I see that Japan is falling behind in tech despite of how Japan is viewed publicly. When I asked my Japanese coworkers, they said that they don't understand English. Many Japanese still have island mentality even for youngsters.