Thank you for your comment. I agree that many Japanese need to overcome their fear of making mistakes when speaking with foreigners. That is a problem that all of us have when using a foreign language, but it seems to be a bit more pronounced here in Japan.
And by the same token Japanese people need to practice not to laugh when an English speakers makes mistakes. My Japanese teacher did that to me. Luckily I have thick skin.
It's a historical phenomenon. Only the outside force with great intention and great bargaining power can bend their knees. USA did it twice, first is before Meiji era, second is WW2
The big problem is that English Writing doesn't match our Phonics. This is because we write in the LATIN Alphabet. As a result, you have weird pronunciation inconsistencies like the difference between "Cough" and "Tough" and "Though". These all end with 'ough', but the 'ough' is never pronounced the same. This right here is the KEY to why people like the Japanese have such a hard time with our language. It's dishonest. Do you know what the fix is? Teach them English starting with the Shavian Alphabet instead of Latin. This will help them get a better understanding for how our phonics work. Once they master that, teach them the Latin Alphabet. BOOM! Language learned. ^^
-no apostrophe with plural forms -no plural is needed here - wrong preposition, - the Gerund is needed not the infinitive Grammatically corrected: “Pro of not learning English: saving your sanity from reading….” Don’t give up and keep at it.
This is actually one way to save the civilization from toxic western culture of wokism , karens and gender educations. ban the learning of English 🤣🤣 I just hope this is possible.
According to the owner of a hostel I stayed at while visiting Japan, the way he sees it is that Japanese people don’t feel motivated to learn English because they’re a financially independent country. A lot of Japanese people have no plans to live or even travel abroad, and the majority of them plan to live, work, and die in Japan. This combined with the small amount of foreigners in the country (meaning little to no chances to use English in an everyday setting) mean that for most Japanese people there is no reason to learn English. America is actually fairly similar in this respect- it is a financially strong and independent country which means foreign language acquisition is worse than almost everywhere in the EU. Contrast the SEA region which has a weaker economy and lots of people who want to work for English companies and which have a much higher English fluency rate because of it. People like to put learning a language up on a pedestal of some sort of pinnacle of self betterment, but in reality most people who learn English do it for practical reasons, and it’s just a fact that most Japanese people don’t have many practical reasons to do it. - sincerely, an American fluent in Japanese
I mean that would be true for pretty much any developed country. So it can't be this impactful. Looking at the numbers in the video, the bad reforms to the education system seem to be a bigger issue.
Nah. If that was the main reason we wouldn't have developed countries such as germany, sweden, denmark and others with a high level of english proficiency. Also even the japanese people that see foreigners every single day still can't speak english, I'm talking about japanese language schools which whole purpose is to interact with foreigners without a single english speaking teacher or staff member (except for the principal but he barely interacted with the students anyway) Also Japan is working itself into extinction right now, with an average age of 50 and a dark future in sight, they will definitely need more foreigners in the future but still I don't see any special effort put into learning english... Unless they're waiting to find out The actual main reason is because the japanese entertainment industry is so strong, they got plenty of japanese games, movies and tv shows (and of course anime and manga) so from a young age there's no incentive to learn english, I would know, the whole reason I started learning english was to understand the video games I was playing at age 11 All that being said, lately I've seen a lot of kids apparently studying english so I guess the second point I made is not completely true, even though there isn't much of a meaningful effort to strengthen english learning by the government, some parents are actually trying to give at least their kids proper english education
@@ozzi9816 This sentiment is self re-enforcing. Why don't Japanese want to travel abroad? It seems to be a very something that's very particular to the Japanese psyche, and I suspect has the same cause as the one that says that they can't learn English. I think it still goes back to the Edo period of isolation.
@@fgregerfeaxcwfeffece it’s likely combined with their culture and geography. Japan is an island nation, so they learned to be very independent and isolationist- especially seeing as the only people who ever visited them just wanted to invade. Japan as an island also isn’t exactly the most rich with resources and has precious little arable land, which drove them to becoming extremely industrious and excellent craftsman (mostly out of necessity). Comparing them to first world countries is a bit misleading, you need to be comparing them to first world island nations. And when you look at it that way they fall much more into line in terms of their society and social issues (think Iceland, New Zealand, etc.). Also again, just being an island nation by itself probably contributes. Other Asian nations (India, China, etc.) have land connections to other nations and thus tend to be more open, both on a physical and cultural level, but Japan can and did just close its borders whenever it didn’t want to play ball with everyone else.
As a GenZ Japanese I think the biggest reason why most of us can't speak English even in modern era is the huge cultural difference. We don't find the western entertainments so entertaining compared to our own, like music, movies, comedies(this one is huge because we don't understand sarcasm) etc. Because of that English remains just as a tool of communication or to flex their ability to speak a mysterious language, and no one really learns it for fun. For me English was the language spoken in every cool video back in early 2010s, so I could learn it without any struggles.
It look like a complicated relationship that the japanese youth entertain with the english language. There's a lot of content online (like early 2010 video as you stated) that could interest Japanese people i think. Just like we in France appreciate manga so much we are the second biggest country right behind Japan to buy manga. Even if just by curiosity for other cultures and their way of thinking. I believe the general disinterest in politics in Japan is also a huge factor. I learnt english myself throught video game and discussing politics online. You never work on your english as much as when you try to prove a point ahah
@@米空軍パイロット Indeed. I’ve recently found out that the Japanese version of a wikipedia article on "Sarcasm" is titled as "嫌み" which basically means indirect insult
I'm a student in Japan, I really don't like English Subjects. I think what's needed to learn a language is a passion for the culture of that language, but English culture is not popular at all in Japan right now. Only older people watch Hollywood movies and listen to Western music. I've watched some English content to study English, but I really wasn't interested. And to be honest, I don't want to study abroad or work in an English-speaking country.
Understandable. Even many in the west do not want to consume western media. It is extremely low quality. This is because we are suffering from cultural rot, due to infestation by a parasite.
It's because there isn't just one English culture. When people learn English, they generally get more in touch with the world, not with a single country/culture. It might help you to develop an interest for learning about foreign cultures and their people, and what'd be better for it than interact with foreigners? Whether it's online or IRL.
I'm currently learning English in Japan and i really understand what you saying. English class in school was so boring and not incentives me. I just stick around RUclips and turns out that it is the most efficient way for me to get good at. My overall English skill is beyond average in Japan, but it dose not mean i was gifted. How to learn it and what your motivation played a big role. My current motivation is to watch video game essay, science experiment, cute drawing and communicate someone that has same preference of me.
If you are motivated, I am sure you that will eventually become fluent. I am not gifted when it comes to learning Japanese (and the fact that I am no longer young is also an obstacle to gaining fluency in the language), but I enjoy it and am motivated (even though it will probably still take me several years to become fluent). Thank you for your comment.
you already have 8.5/10 English it looks like! Coming from a native speaker, just keep practicing for another year or two and you will be C2 advanced. Very understandable and clear, don't give up :)
I was born and raised in countryside of Japan my entire life. Speaking English as Japanese is something we feel disturbing. I can talk in English with my foreign friends, but I really don’t want to talk in English in front of other Japanese lol. It’s so embarrassing I don’t know why.
Just like many older or more conservative or etc of my American friends do not share my linguistic xenophilia. They do often seem to find the presence of anything unfamiliar to be disturbing.
Kurosawa reinvented the American Western movie, and as for knights and gentlemen - Japan had samurai and daimyo. Much of this should be relatable. I feel for the Japanese commenter who told us here that only older people care about English-language culture. That is a problem with the content which is produced in America and in Britain today, which is uniformly terrible. *I* don't want to watch any new Disney / Star Wars content, what makes anyone imagine the Japanese want it any more?
Your comparison between different attitudes toward English learning in Japan and China is very original and allows us to better understand why teaching English in Japan can sometimes feel like stepping into the Twilight Zone.
I also like that comparison. It is something many of us are unaware of, as we tend to think the situation is the same in all Asian countries. But China and Japan have certain stark differences (I have never been to China, so this was new to me).
@@ShiroiVie😂As an Indonesian🇮🇩. The increase in English language proficiency is more due to the increased consumption of English internet content .(RUclips, Netflix,Tiktok Etc.)Moreover, other Asian countries rarely watch films dubbed into localized languages.But watch English with subtitles so you can memorize the English sounds.Helps in reading English spelling (Because letters and silent letters are Messy in English) Japan should stop watching Japanese dubbed movies and start watching western movies with subtitles .
@@IndustrisasiIndonesiathe Philippines went backwards in this regard. When I was a boy every English movie is well, in English. No subtitles though since this was the early 90s. Before the 00s though they started dubbing English movies into Tagalog. Same thing happened with anime around that time, many used to have their English dubs and then dubbed into Tagalog.
@@IndustrisasiIndonesia The companies Distributing these western films dubbed in Japanese couldn't care less as long as they & their respective committee partners get to make a profit over it.
I am an Assistant English teacher in Japan. Another reason I think the Japanese are falling behind is their textbooks. In my experience, Japanese English classes are heavily textbook-reliant. So much so that when I try to put my native-speaker input and correct the many mistakes in the textbook, I often get ignored
There is a pervasive mindset around the world isn’t there, not just in Japan, that whoever wrote a book is automatically the expert more so than anyone we could possibly meet in person.
@tessmaru7285 I have been asked by Japanese groups and organizations to proof read and check English examples and while I am credited by their group as a checker... many of my suggestions or changes were rejected, ignored, or changed back to the original sentences that they the Japanese group had created. Because my new example or sentence didnt match the one they created when they threw my new sentence back into google Translate to compare it to their original... even tho it was the same in meaning. Just more natural sounding to the English ear. So even tho English speakers checked it doesn't excuse the egregious errors found in many Japanese textbooks. And I'll be the first to admit that mistakes got past me. Cause when you look at alot of Japanese English over the several weeks that editing can take and the long hours of checking.... you can become kind of numb or blind to it at times.
I'm surprised people are still talking about textbooks like it was the 80s or 90s. There are so many videos on RUclips in English! And I'm not talking about English teaching videos. Those are actually part of the problem in my opinion. I'm talking about content made by native speakers talking about real-life stuff.
Unless you have actually seen our highschool and university entrance exams, you'll not understand why our schools teach what they teach. English class in Japan has never been about conversational skills or what is considered correct in your country of origin. I also suspect you have never taught in top private, prefectural, or government-run highschools that produce most of the students for top universities in Japan. What I remember is that 1st grade of junior highschool started out with: This is a pen. He is a boy. But in 1st year of highschool my English textbook was Shakespeare (Modern-English version), and by the 3rd year in highschool we were reading Thomas More and Utopia. The reality is 99% of the Japanese population have zero need of foreign languages in their personal or professional lives. And the purpose for English education in Japan is not about speaking. It has always been about understanding literary material written in English, whether it's newspapers, contracts, programming instructions, or manuals on engines. The focus is to accurately understand foreign materials and translate them into Japanese. Japanese are not interested in the language, rather that content written in the language, so we can understand foreign cultures, history, governments, business trends, etc. And it has always been like this in language educations in Japan. It's how it was when I took Mandarin as a mandatory 2nd foreign language in university. In my "Chinese" language class, our text material was CCP's economic policy papers. And that was only after 2 years of studying Chinese. I was able to read and translate it, but I still don't speak Chinese. Nor do I have the need to in my daily life. Those who are really interested in the language/culture would usually do their study abroad in those countries.
The izakaya owner has a point. No tourist should feel entitled that everyone speaks their language. However, if you want to make money of foreigners, try to be welcoming. I live in a tourist hot spot in Germany, and yes, like many others, I worked as a waiter while being a student. Sometimes, it is hard to stay friendly when you have very unfriendly customers, but: in this case, just staying friendly and saying "no sorry, we don't have an english menu, but I'd love to help you order " would have been perfect. Also, if you reakise as an owner that you get a request for an English menu 3x a day, get a college kid to translate your menu and use it as a selling point with a sign in your window. If your English is nonexistent, get a student who is good at English as a waiter gor your rush hour. The point is, even tourists who prepare and lesrn a few phrases won't be able to read a menu in Japanese, because kanji! In hospitality, ideally, we want people to feel welcome, relax, enjoy their time, drinks and food and return again, as well as recommend us to their friends.The end.
Japanese people in general just don't like foreigners. Period. As the video says, their economy is turned inward. The tourists money is a drop in the bucket of their revenue, why should they spend time and money catering to them?
Yes - menus make life hard for life as a foreigner in Japan. First you learn hiragana, then katakana, then easy kanji, but none of this really helps get to grips with a menu.
This issue is interesting to me as a former geography major. I have moved 17 times around Japan, and most people know only a small area of society. To begin with, geography education after high school is always on the verge of extinction. Before considering English education, we need to understand the "reclusive" structure of this society.
Post-secondary geography education is on the verge of extinction in the United States even more than in such countries as Canada and the United Kingdom.
The problem with English is that, for those not used to it, it's actually two languages: the spoken one and the written one. Once you get used to how the different phonemes are written, it is relatively easy, but if you learn the language just by writing it down first, the students that are not used to speak it are suddenly overwhelmed with complex phonemes, become really scared of messing up and, finally, shut down. English native speakers do not realize it, but the latin alphabet was intended to be used with just clear vowels ("a", "e", "i", "o" and "u") so when you use Germanic vowels ("æ", "õ", "å", etc.) without actually including those letters, many people who have not heard those words struggle to speak and become really frustrated.
yes this is a fundamental flaw in how MOST humans think we should learn languages, which is completely inefficient. As toddlers we learn it in the order: Listening > Speaking > Reading > Writing. And we dont learn grammar rules and such explicitly until we can already write. Most knowledge is osmosis of the language and mimicry. for some reason humans have tried over intellectualizing language learning and thereby made it worse.
Yes, English has a very large vowel inventory, around 20. I also a large number of consonant phonemes, around 25. Consonant combinations are also difficult for Japanese, plus having to deal with closed syllable structures. (Physically forming a consonant sound at the end of a syllable, can be significantly different from forming the same consonant sound at the beginning of a syllable.) Add to the problem the fact that English vocabulary is a complicated mash-up of West Germanic and Romance influences. Don't even get me started on the mess that is English spelling.
@@khaosceroI agree that listening and mimicry is the “natural” way how humans learn a language as toddlers. But it’s not necessarily the most efficient. Think about it like this: As a toddler you’re exposed to a language or languages 24/7 and all the people around you talk to you without any expectation that you’re able to have a conversation. You don’t have that situation as an adult. Not to mention that you don’t have as much time disposable. In fact: Isn’t it amazing how quickly we can get a grasp of the basics of a language as adults? For example: If you studied a language for one hour each day for one year it totals to only 365 hours which are roughly 15 days or 23 days if we assume eight hours of sleep per day. It’s because we have an intellectual concept of languages and can transfer the skills we acquired in one or more other languages to the new language we want to learn. When we learn the structure and rules of the new language we don’t have to start from scratch but only have to internalise modified versions of already known concepts and/or just one new concept if there are unfamiliar concepts like tonality for example. But I agree that simply analysing and memorising is not a good way to learn a language. It’s more like a cheat code that makes learning a new language easier. I see it like this: You can intellectually understand a grammatical form, know how it works and recognise it when you see it but to internalise it you have to encounter it used organically in context: Hear it in spoken language, read it, try to incorporate it in sentences by yourself in speech and writing.
I actually know a Japanese girl who's fluent in English. I think aside from government issues, you have to actually want to learn languages. In my country the Philippines, Filipino and English are both official languages, that's why many Filipinos are fluent in English. But when it comes to other famous languages such as Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, or Korean, it's rare for a Filipino to be fluent in these. But the people I do know who are fluent in those foreign languages are usually the ones who really want to learn or are really interested in foreign languages.
Some Filipinos don't even bother to learn local languages even when they migrate to another country. I guess they picked up that same mentality from English-speaking countries. Quite ironic considering that most Filipinos know either at least two or three languages.
As for Spanish, we had a choice to adopt it instead of English as an official language. I really am thankful we chose the right language: English. History majors do still learn Spanish for obviour reasons.
Perhaps, Japanese should NOT bother to try. Let people learn English on their own. Americans are taught other languages, but also fail as it is not needed to learn other languages in the United States. English is the most spoken language in the world, I believe. If a language is required for employment, it will occur.
School is a terrible place to learn a language anyway. It doesn't matter how good a school's English curriculum is if the students forget it once the bell rings and they step out of school. I was terrible at English in middle school, but after just one year of immersing myself playing single player video games in English and watching 4 hours worth of videos from English-speaker youtubers everyday, I was able to breeze through English classes getting perfect scores almost every time. The brain likes to be very efficient with memory, so it gets rid of useless information like a language one does not use. Use it or lose it.
I am married to a Japanese woman as a non-Japanese. If I would not speak any Japanese, I would not be able to talk to any of her family. My wife also speaks English, but aside from that, no one of her family speaks English. In fact, if she is tired she is mostly too tired to even talk English and talks to me in Japanese (which is no problem because I understand it) In rural Nagano, when we married, they never even had a foreigner register his marriage to a Japanese there. And I totally understand why they would not bother to learn English. Because you never need English in your entire life in Japan. You have everything there, so why even bother to learn a language you never need in your life? In my own country (Germany) it is also the same. Of course, you have people like me or her who grew up internationally or studied abroad but the majority is not like that. the majority is like many of my relatives who are not even interested in eating any foreign food nor even bother about any other language. And they also would never need English in their entire life, they learned English but never used afterwards. I also learned Japanese from young age out of interest, not because I would have needed that in any way. A lot is more depending on the motivation I think...
I worked for a Fujitsu, and Okidata in USA, my home country. We had Japanese liaison officers peppered through our company, To midwife the directives of the company from higher-ups in Japan. These workers were limited, or limiting themselves, to 3 years maximum working in the United States . One of the more English fluent and open Japanese colleagues told me that if they became too fluent in English and Western culture, they would be seen as different when they returned to Japan. In the American idiom that would be seen as "going native". He said being too enthusiastic about adopting Western languages and styles could be detrimental to their career once they return to Japan. Being different is not cool. Being different is not cool. There, I said it again. He went so far as to say that being too different could earn someone a 'window desk'. That is a desk that is outside the window, therefore outside of the building. It meant irrelevant to the process of the company, like Cold storage. Horrifying! Seeing that children and young people even in America will pick on others who are "different", being proficient at English while others struggle, could be the social equivalent of bad body odor or bad breath, or bad manners . Who would want that? Only those with an iconoclastic or a visionary Spirit. Those who see themselves more as a member of the human race than as a member of Japanese society. The English problem is a manifestation of the Japanese self-concept. If everyone in Japan, at the wave of a magic wand, were caused, have learned English 'well enough', there would be no problem of difference, and teaching and learning English would not have this social stigma.
On a trip to Okinawa in February I was approached by a small group of boys who were very keen to talk to me in English. Just basic stuff like hello, nice to meet you, how are you. When one of them asked me "Are you from America?" I replied "Australia shu-shin des" and he nearly fell over in shock lol
@@the_real_glabnurb that's not what it means lol. idk why google translate does that if you type it in roman characters, but directly putting the syllables into japanese characters comes out with オーストラリアしゅしんです. Try putting that in google translate
I had the same experience with Japanese exchange students at my university. Me: "Oh, so we are you from?" Them: "Japan!" Me: "Hontouni!?" (I'm at my keyboard so won't bother with the kanji/kana...) Dude just looked at me, stunned.
Learning English doesn't mean giving up your mother tongue, it means opening the door to the world. I'm from Austria, don't speak English very well and don't like US and UK culture very much. I also speak Italian. But I do not speak French, Spanish, Russian, Ukrainian, Swedish, Arabic, Hebrew, Greek, Mandarin, Japanese and all the other languages. English gave us the tool to communicate. And don't come with theoretical considerations of using another language because no other language has an even similar spread like English. Or tell me which language and, most importantly, find an agreement with all the other people who refuse English. I'm waiting and observing the argument.
Monolinguals (people who only speak one language) are in the minority. Most of the world's population can speak more than one language. That fact surprised me...
Simply because the U.S. and other Western countries are no longer attractive to the Japanese. English education in Japan has definitely improved over the past few decades, but the reason why Japanese people's English skills are not improving is because they lack the motivation to study English. If they had the motivation, they would study English on their own, no matter how bad the English education is, e.g., moving to the U.S. or being interested in American culture, etc. However, there are not many Japanese who have a yearning for the U.S. when they see the U.S. today. And Japanese subculture has become so strong that it has surpassed American culture, and Japanese people are no longer interested in Western music, movies, etc. It is obvious from the Japanese music charts that 10 years ago, about 10 percent of the music was Western music, but now not a single song is on the charts. In contrast, the popularity of the Korean language is growing in Japan, despite the fact that Korean is not a compulsory language in Japan, probably due to the influence of Kpop, etc. Unfortunately, the U.S. does not have the soft power like Kpop.
@@Thindorama i think this is disingenuous, a lot of money needs to be kind of poured into translation efforts, and they commonly snowball into apprectiation for the country yes in the past it was a nice thing to like anime in the USA, and it all came down to tapes translated by people with poor understanding of english, japanese, or the concepts of translation now however, more americans are learning japanese than ever before not more than japanese people learning english, but the ROI for an anglophone to study japanese is tiny and consists mostly of helping other anglophones that don't know japanese this could be part of the phenomenon, that as demand increases for translation, so do the job prospects in translation, so learning japanese just starts being a better idea
@@aiocafea translation works just fine for most people. Same in my country France, even some people who are super interested in US movies and series don't speak English very good because they can access them translated.
It is the same in my country in Hungary everybody says we speak badly, and a lot of people don’t speak in any foreign languages. My english is bad, but I’m not interested to learn to speak or write better. if we can choose I’d prefer to learn a neighburing countries’ language a slavic language or something for fun, but everybody is forcing this ** english😮💨I’m lacking any motivation. I will never go abroad to work, just not interested.
In addition to the comments by others here, you also forget that Korean is a lot closer gramatically and lingustically so much easier to learn. The biggest irony is that as they continue to shrink in population, they'll inevitably has less and less of an active, internal population to depend on (old people are not as productive) and external influences are likely to dominate at some point, especially on the youth. The time isn't now, but it's coming.
Wow, yeah I expected this guy to at least have a few thousand, maybe tens of thousands. I think that goal is pretty reasonable for such a quality channel though.
Not that much if you know Mexico. This is a mostly poor country and even in big cities there aren't as much people who know English because public schools don't teach it for some unknown reason. The only ones who are teaching English are private schools and their level is hilariously poor. I went to private schools most of my life and every single year we went back to "learn" the *to be* verb. You only actually learn English in specialized (and quite expensive) language schools. For my part, I learned everything I know from videogames and books. Private schools are a scam in many ways.
Mexican-American here, English is taught here, although not good enough- during middle school and highschool the English teachers would repeat the same lection all 6 years (granted, it was mostly due to my classmates never learning it as the should have done in the first place, and of course it was "el verbo to-be" and pronouns), I never learned anything new despite having a 7 year old's English level at the time and even then I had to correct them at times. And during Highschool I ranked higher than all of the English teachers in some Chinese app that teaches English (like what?) This was my personal experience in a city of 900 thousand, during 2014-2020 in public schools
As people mentioned the public school system is very bad at teaching English. In order to have a chance you need to be in a private school, and have a lot of interaction with English communities and media. Money tackles it a bit, and the other bit is about you having the opportunities or pushing yourself to interact with the English side of the world. Usually only people on the border have the need to do this.
As I told an young American, possibly an Army youth, about his Japanese girlfriend - the crappier her English is, the better your Japanese is going to be.
@@echelon2k8 Honestly they don't have much of a choice. The elderly say they had around eight siblings, and that the youth should have more babies, yet they themselves only had one child.
@@cooliipie Yeah, contraceptives weren't as popular as they were back then as they are now and bringing up their large families back then didn't cost nearly as much as bringing up our small families today. I'm thinking this was intentional... a sort of social Darwinism if you like to make sure that those at the top get to keep everything how they want it while it benefits them while the majority of everyone else who gets in their was slowly goes extinct. What a fun time to be alive, huh.
Frankly I am glad the less people that know English the more I get to practice Japanese, plus what is the Spanish proficiency of non-spanish immigrants in the US for balance.
Because Japan has always had its own entertainment industry. Yes, American entertainment has always been popular in Japan, but we would have enough entertainment made in Japanese even without American ones and also we have most of the American entertainment translated into Japanese whereas in other minor countries with minor languages, they won’t have their own translated version….
I was born and raised in Japan during the 60's and 70's, gratuated high school in 1977 San Francisco, went back o Japan in the 21st century to find that English literacy hadn't progressed much among the general populace much in the intervening 40 years. Sure there were more proficient English speakers due to the number of returning foreign student program participants, but as a whole, English was still an enigma to most Japanese. I was based in San Francisco, silicon valley, at the time (1975) and was told that translation programming would take at least 10 years. Here I am am 40 years later and still continuing my preferred profession. Even with LLM becoming prominent, I expect interpreters will be be job secure for the next 20 years
I remember when I was in college in Japan, I asked my friend whether or not he was interested to go abroad, and he said that that’s experience doesn’t give any positive impact for him to get a good job in Japan 😅
Well, he is right. Traveling sucks. Why do it ? Just for the sake of pleasing society that is obsseded woth " traveling" ? I hate traveling sooo much, still I learning English pretty well and now I am studying Japanese. Will I ever go to Japan ? Not until teleportation will be invented.
@@tsurugi5 travelling is fun lol, there isnt mountain as tall as K2 in Japan. You found it in Pakistan. Not to mention learning about different culture etc, Japanese have lot of purchasing power. So why not?
My wife and I were approached in Hiroshima last year by a student who wished to practise her English, but that was the only experience of this. In China, however, we found much more interest in speaking English.
I had the same experience. In China, it is easier to find people who wish to practice their English. They seem more eager to engage with foreigners. Thank you for your comment.
In my 11 years in Japan, I have met a couple of Japanese people who teach English in middle/high schools. One thing most of them have in common is that their English ability is extremely low to the point that they are not capable of holding simple everyday conversations in English. Imagine a math teacher who has no clue about math, everyone would be outraged. However, English teachers who don't speak English is not uncommon in Japan. I also know a couple of Japanese people who speak English fluently. Most of them have good careers.They make way more money than they would if they became English teachers. There is very little to no incentive for them to consider teaching English an option. I doubt Japan can increase its English proficiency unless it can get people who are actually fluent in English to teach, but then again people who are fluent have better options available. It's a vicious circle and I have no idea how Japan can fix it besides offering qualified English teachers who are actually proficient in English way more money. There are other problems too, but this one seems pretty big to me.
Academic language study is like math, a study of fascinating data structures and puzzle systems that are meant to be savored without the need for any concrete context. Unfortunately that perspective is not so motivating to most outside of academia. It doesn’t equate to skilled fluency.
If they really don't need it or don't like it, why learn it? Most countries proficient in English are developing countries or countries who are in close relations with Anglo countries. If there's no real incentive to learn something, one won't put the effort to do it. No matter the teaching methods used. In my case, I learned English because I loved American pop culture back in the day, the movies, the music, the literature. I love the way the language works and sounds. But most people don't like English. They see it as a boring tool they need to learn. This is what makes them quite challenging to teach (I can tell you this as a former English teacher). Now, I don't want to imagine what it's like to teach English to students who don't even NEED it.
To answer your question, to break the scientific barrier. It's really important, the global scientific standard language is now English. It was Latin a long time ago, but now by knowing English, you can work anywhere in the world in any field. If you know Japanese, you can only work in Japan, or in the Japanese field abroad. Don't you want kids to have the best chance possible at success? I'm sure this is what these educators are thriving for. この語るけどまだ自分は日本語お自習するだ。。。😅
Finally someone that understands why foreigners complaining about japanese people not knowing english is stupid. If people are not willing to adapt to the local culture, then they should not go and complain.
I'm American and I agree with you. People should only learn English if they want to. I'm learning Japanese and that's because I want to. If we excpect other Japanese to learn English should us Americans have programs to learn Japanese as well?
has nothing to do with anglo countries tho. if youre finnish and you want to talk to italians, what are you gonna do? then the fin meets a portuguese, and again what are you gonna do? english is the common language we use to connect everyone.
I studied for a year in Japan and also spent a few years there teaching English. I've now been an ESL teacher in Australia, teaching Japanese students for almost a decade and they often do become proficient here. I think there are 2 big issues Japan needs to look at. 1. Secondary (and to an extent tertiary) education in Japan is a farce. It's based on passing tests with high marks, and not on being able to use the information they've learned. Many Japanese people struggle to remember ANY topic they've studied after they've crammed for their exams. It's not just English. Japanese students are taught to parrot facts, not think or develop opinions, and you can't learn a language this way. 2. Japan is still quite xenophobic. It's one of the most homogeneous cultures in the world and there is an often stated concern that young people becoming too interested in foreign culture would be damaging to Japan. The textbooks, as an example, are attempting to use Japanese culture to interest students but as you said, this makes no sense. I think the older generation (and the government) would prefer Japanese students to grow into good workers than to become fascinated with another country and move away. We can see this with the constant propaganda in Japan about how dangerous every other country is and how good and safe and special Japan is. I really think these deeper issues are important reasons language (and other parts of education) aren't working in Japan.
You're absolutely right about secondary education in Japan. It's very difficult to learn a language in a such an environment. Thank you for your insights.
Japanese schools and students could benefit, and I mean REALLY benefit immensely with more frequent foreign exchange programs and sister-city school trips.
How prominent the mindset of safe and special Japan is... hurts me everytime. "Nihonjin ron"or the theiry of the uniqueness of Japan is detrimental to education in general in Japan and does no favors for English Education.
That bit by the end is exactly what I learned all those years ago when one single teacher made me fall in love with English, when I hated it because I was forced to go to classes.
I agree that teachers play a key role in students' enthusiasm for language learning. I experienced something similar with the foreign languages that I have learned over the past decade. Thank you for your comment.
The bottom line is that the Japanese are a hyper insular nation, not only geographically but also culturally, mentally: they really have a massive problem with anything foreign. Bear in mind that the country was almost 100% closed to contacts with foreigners between the 1620s and the 1860s, under very heavy penalties. My opinion is that the country has never really recovered from this Sakoku period. The first obstacle to their learning any foreign language is that deep seated discomfort with all things foreign. That said, I fully appreciate that foreign tourists ought to be aware that “this is not their place” and they have no right to demand to be served in English. So many tourists are just arrogant and this only reinforces the Japanese isolationistic attitude. As always, there will be no solution without good will and benevolence on both sides. My Japanese is rather basic and it’s especially tricky in izakayas and food outlets, with lots of kanjis that I can hardly read but I am usually met with benevolence when the locals see that I’m trying my best and realize I’m aware that “I’m just a guest” and I’m not entitled.
@@Miraihi Yes, definitely! I'm not a native English speaker but I am fluent and/or conversational in several foreign languages and I am invariably dumbfounded at how self-centred and culturally insensitive most Anglophones are. Learning at least one foreign language would go a long way towards making them more open-minded and aware of other cultures. P.S.: Miraihi-san wa Nihon-jin desu ka?
Gee I wonder why they really don’t give a shit about foreign things. Could it be them seeing the British drugging the Chinese in the Opium wars? The French Invading Southeast Asia? The Russian Empire trying to take Chinese and Korean Territory? Them being fucked over 3 times? I wonder. 🤔 It’s not discomfort, it’s disdain. Japan practiced the same ideals the West put in place when they invaded the Korean Empire in 1910. It’s not never really recovered, it’s not wanting a shit guest to come back. Most Asian countries are ethnocentric and there’s nothing wrong with that. They will consider your opinions but it’s not a requirement for them to follow it because why should they?
When I was in Japan even around the Narita airport, almost nobody could speak English. I learned a bit of Japanese, wish I had time for more. In Thailand, Hong Kong, or the Philippines - no problem, English everywhere.
This is my biggest hurdle with the language divide. I have been living on tokyo for 2 years and whenever i meet someone knew i usually strat off in japanese and the transition to English ao they can get some practice. They usually crumble within yhe first 2 phrases and usually give up. I have to keep telling them ( how do you expect to get better if you dont practice and male mistakes) which usually falls on dead ears. But its refreshing to finally hear someone explain this issue
I feel like natives and proficient speakers of English forget how notoriously difficult and non-sensical this language can sometimes get. I too hated English when I had to learn it in school, but my mother insisted that I learn it, I encountered it on the Internet, as there isn’t much qualitative content in my native language, and it had some common Indo-European words and Romance borrowings. However, the Japanese have almost everything stranslated in their language, they are culturally closed as a country, and they sometimes have better content than the rest of the world. I am studying Japanese and I can tell that, though I wouldn’t necessarily call it hard, it is a very different language in all aspects compared to English or any other Indo-European language. So learning English for a Japanese speaker would require twice or thrice the effort I had to put in. I’ve heard that those who speak English in Japan are those who have lived for a while before in English speaking countries (mostly Australia) and those who exchange culture and/or religion with the outside world, such as geishas, Buddhist monks etc.
The way i learned english and japanese to some extent is because i like playing video games, and back in the day there was little to no games translated to my language, so i had the necessity to learn if i wanted to keep playing some games. Many games are made by english speaking developers, be it in north america or europe, however japan is also big in the video-game market so there is little need for them to learn another language. I think it comes down to "need", there is little incentive to do so.
@@khaoscero yeah, i said games because it was my motivation, but japan is also a powerhouse for media in general, there is not much motive to learn english aside from the obligatory tests or like a hobby.
@@southcoastinventors6583 yes that is true in some cases but i think that the changes during localization or localization of media in general needs an entire topic for itself.
I agree -- fortunately, the Japanese government has been gradually warming up to this idea. But, thus far, only the more affluent regions of the country (such as Minato ward in Tokyo) have had the budget to implement these changes.
Yes, bilingual kindergartens gained popularity in the early 2000s. In China, those with the financial means generally prefer to send their kids to a bilingual pre-school. Here in Japan this trend has been slowly picking up in the past decade.
It may not be that simple. I have heard some Japanese youtubers, who teach English to their audiences, talk about the trauma and stress the Japanese children experience since the government's decision to require English to be a mandatory subject in the grade school education. If I remember it correctly, the majority of kids experience anxiety in English classes. They narurally end up hating English.
Filipinos for example never learn English from just school we also watch and listen to English Music and Movies. English is a language that needs time to develop you need to have understanding from the informal and formal way of communication. How to read, write, listen and speak fluently at the same time. There are 4 basic skills of a languange. Skills of reading, Listening which was back then considered passive and Writing and Speaking are considered as Active skills since it is the most obvious one. But neither of all 4 skills are being developed in the Japanese Educational system. Neither of them can understand a simple phrase.
Yes, your insights are spot on. Only by developing all four basic skills (reading, writing, speaking, and listening) will students be able to really master the language. But generally emphasis is placed on the "active" skills rather than the passive ones, even thought all four are equally important. This is a problem with language education throughout the world, not just in Japan.
50+ years of American occupation after the Spanish also helped us Filipinos exchange cultures and language. The Americans also gave us higher education and built in top of basic education that the Spanish gave us. Our medium of instruction are now all in English and speaking English is seen as a rich person thing here. Primarily because back when only the rich could afford to go to school. So if you speak good English, you are seen as educated and smart.
At least, unlike most English speaking nations, the Japanese don’t expect foreigners to speak their language. Compared to their neighbours, the British suck at foreign languages, and Americans will usually at best be proficient in Spanish, and only if they are Latino and use the language in their family. The unwillingness to learn a foreign language is never a good sign, even if you can benefit from your mother tongue being the most widespread second language across the world. Being actually interested and open to other cultures is not the same thing as communicating with everybody else in English. It’s when you make an effort yourself, and don’t rely on others to do so, that it becomes credible. I was motivated to learn foreign languages by travelling abroad, and by taking an interest in the pop culture of the language. I find it rewarding and inspiring to try and learn a new language.
A good reason is that Japan is very homogenous, thus they don't expect anyone who doesm't know Japanese to speak Japanese. Multicultural countries they expect everyone of all ethnicities to be able to speak local language
this is a global economy and Japan has been stagnant for decades. They can choose to remain insular, but learning English isn't to simply "pollute their culture" and consume western media, learning English is a competitive advantage to the employees at their companies that want to remain competitive on a global stage. Like it or not, English is the lingua franca of the business and scientific world. Look at what is currently happening with AI and large language models. While they have language translation built in, all of the most powerful LLMs were trained primarily in English, because that's the language that dominates the internet, business and science. If Japan doesn't care about continuing to stagnate and fall behind the rest of the world in global competitiveness, they can ignore English. Otherwise, they should try to be more like the Europeans, who have high English proficiency as a second language that is used for international business and allow them to keep up with science and technology. They still speak their local language primarily, and maintain their own local cultural identity.
Exactly. Learning English doesn't mean embracing American culture or values. It provides an opportunity to better communicate with others in an international setting. Most scientists around the world prefer to publish their research in English to reach a larger audience. It is possible to keep your local language and customs while, at the same time, learning English as a second language to be more competitive on the world stage.
@@ShiroiVieAlso, English is the lingua franca of the Internet. Not knowing English is a big handicap to your potential, even if you never plan to travel. Also, I can't imagine being, say, a programmer and not knowing English. Not only are the vast majority of resources for most modern programming languages overwhelmingly in English, but most calls and functions in many of the common ones use English words/phrases or abbreviations. I can't imagine trying to learn Python, JavaScript, or a C-based programming language without at least a decent understanding of English
As an English teacher in Japan for nearly a decade now I completely agree with this video. While the lack of motivation to learn a foreign language might be the reason for the lack of fluent people among the adults I've noticed that even motivated children don't really learn English that quickly over here. Granted I only have cursory experience in teaching in my native country (and I never taught young children) so it might just be my misunderstanding. I think it's more that English and Japanese are basically the opposite grammatically which makes learning it quite a bit more difficult for someone who's first language is Japanese...
Consider that Italian is really different from English, but it’s not hard task really to learn English at least on a written level and on a rough pronunciation level. It’s extremely easy because most of the words don’t even have a conjugation. They just work in every situation with extremely simple rules
@@cescobb4647 English grammar is pretty different from the Italian one. But it’s piss easy anyways. I don’t see why someone might have a hard time learning it at a written level. (Pronunciation is a whole other cup of tea, because English fucking sucks on that aspect)
My current line of work brings me to talk to a lot if people who don't speak my native language (Italian) except from a small handful of words, usually said badly. Japanese are one of the few people who know the words well, which is no small feat since words can have very complicated sounds in my language. It also helps that the English words I have to use are also used in Japanese - they usually understand me immediately, unlike French people or Germans (which is stupid because THEIR words are often one sound away from the English counterparts but apparently that's enough trouble that I have to switch to German)
13:47 Oh I saw this while waiting at Kyoto station! A group of high school boys went around looking for foreigners and they asked questions like how long I was staying, what I was most excited to see, and what my favourite Japanese meal was. I would have been so embarrassed to do that when I was in high school, so I thought it was pretty cool!
This idea seems to be catching on among educators. Hopefully this will also provide students with more confidence in interacting with foreigners in English. Thank you for your comment.
Keys to learning languages are You have to feel the necessity of language desperately. For example, when I was young, my hobby was playing lots of flash games and reading English websites in 2004. I wanted to read instructions so bad. I've searched English words and sentences in a search engine. That's how you start learning. Not having a grand goal, nor the scholarship archivement
In my personal experience the best way to learn English is to consume media and to have a genuine curiosity about the language. But I'm not taking about media created for the purpose of teaching English, but rather stuff that simply happen to be relatively easy to consume like movies and comics. But at the end of the day the best resource for learning the language ended up being the internet, you kinda need to speak (or more accurately be able to read and write even if you can't actually speak it) English in order to communicate with the larger international community online. BTW I'm just now learning that Argentina has a relatively good ranking in English proficiency, I guess that makes sense with the number of people I personally know here that know enough English to read books written in it, but I should point out that in almost every case it tends to be people that reached university level education and it's very commonly focused on understanding English rather than speaking it, our pronunciation tends to be awful. There's a certain culture in uni where professors will recommend reading material in its original language whenever possible because most perceive translations to be sub-par, and quite often the original will be written in English. I wonder if it's related to us speaking a dialect of Spanish that's noticeably different from what the rest of Latin America speaks and thus finding translations made somewhere else to be kinda awkward, at least that tends to be the reason why so many people here prefer subtitles to dubs.
Culturally speaking I think it’s just really hard to expect Japanese to understand or be fluent in English due to the stark differences in grammar. That probably explains why the Chinese are so good at English despite it being a foreign language due to the massive amount of similarities between the two languages.
@@anonymousbloke1Word order and basic grammar rules are pretty similar between English and Chinese. It becomes more complicated the more you learn, but the basics are easy enough to grasp
@@andriuhee2710 from what little I've seen of Chinese grammar it looks nothing like English, at all.. Maybe the word order (which is almost the same in most languages) and the fact neither Chinese nor English have exactly "hard" grammar structures, but everything about Chinese is weird, fucked up and very unlike any European language. Tones, Hanzi, politeness forms etc.
@@anonymousbloke1 as a native Chinese speaker, can confirm English is much easier to learn than most other Germanic or Latin languages due to the word order and relative lack of inflection and conjugation. English is still difficult, but after learning other European languages it becomes evident why English is a global language.
Any country that has a critical enough mass of people to support themselves on just their domestic economy are going to find it hard to convince people to learn a foreign language, because it's unnecessary. Show me one country with over 100 million people where the majority can speak a foreign language decently or are bilingual/multilingual. If anything, the larger your population is, the more prideful you will become of your own language and its "exceptionalism" (sound familiar to Americans out there?). This is not just a Japan "problem".
well Germany 84 million and decently good at it. and thats with them having access to austria and switzerland too for business. but I hear you, big countries have a tendency to become nationalistic - china and the US same symptoms. Of course HK is very good at english and technically China unfortunately, historical reasons but yeah. Same as india and PH of course historical reasons.
@@khaoscero your reply made me realise that of course big Nations tend to become nationalistic, how quickly will someone from inner mongolia see themselves as closely related to someone from hong kong?
@@aiocafea yeah well in big countries you have strong nationalism but as the states themselves become bigger there is so much diversity they also become tribal against each other. I mean rural vs urban you have everywhere but yeah almost every big countries has these states that hate other states and such so it depends on the context, when its internal conflict they diverge but if its external conflict they converge
@@augthit's America who should adopt French, not the other way around lol. English to the French is a foreign language like any other, there's zero reasons to giving it so much privileges.
My wife is Japanese but learnt English in Australia. Only 25% of Japanese have passports. Japan is very homogenous in its culture. They feel no need to speak English. They are happy to just be Japanese. In the west we feel like we should impose English speaking on everyone because it makes it easier for us. I’m learning Japanese - and it’s one of the hardest languages to learn. Conversely, so is English for Japanese.
Nobody is imposing English on everyone. Standardizing on one language for communication internationally is just a lot more efficient than everyone learning everyone else's language, particularly niche languages like Japanese which are pretty much only spoken in a single country. Either everyone could learn a second language or everyone could learn a couple of hundred extra languages to communicate with everyone else in the world. The choice is pretty clear.
@@Taladar2003English isn't a neutral choice, choosing it means that it'll be much easier for native English speakers to get by internationally, giving them an unfair advantage, it also benefits the Anglosphere, especially the US, by giving their media inherently a much greater voice than media of any other countries, morals, cultural norms, media genres and ideas specific to the US or UK become exported worldwide, sometimes surpassing the local native cultures, on top of that English has an even worse role in former colonies like Kenya, where the usage of the foreign colonial language makes them become more and more as Europeans, instead of continuing the legacy of the pre colonial cultures, some nations have their culture and identity completely destroyed in favor of an Anglo one, specifically Ireland, Scotland, New Zealand, Hawaii, the Lakota Nation and the Ojibwe Nation. The same criticisms are true for Russian and that's why post-Soviet states chose to restrict its usage and promote the local languages instead. The same should be ideally done for English, it's far from being a neutral, merely practical tool.
How many people in Australia know a foreign language and watch any media from non English speaking countries ? In practise Anglo countries are just as isolated and homogeneous as the Japanese, but because their culture is the dominant and privileged ones, and seen automatically as the default, they don't even realise that. In my opinion it makes total sense for the Japanese not to adapt English because they'll refuse to participate in that linguistic hierarchy altogether, because they'll inevitably lose and will never be able to outcompete America and the English-speaking world, therefore ending up infinitely more influenced by them than they are by them. Look at post colonial nations that speak English a lot, like the Philippines. What do you think is the result ? The Filipinos becoming more influenced by US and Anglo culture or the US becoming more influenced by Filipino culture?
@@Taladar2003You're completely wrong. English wouldn't even be considered the "global language" if it wasn't imposed on everyone. Ask all the Africans whether they chose to speak English. Ask all the Native Americans and Australian Aboriginals their thoughts on why most of them don't speak their own language anymore.
@@gamermapper The Soviet Union already had the concept of korenizatsiya where the local languages were taught and held equal footing when dealing with bureaucrats
Ikr, I'm Thai myself and I say ain't no way we are lower than Japanese. Old people maybe. But from millennials onward, I've seen no one with internet access, Urban or rural who isn't at least know enough to communicate brokenly. Urban people, RUclipsrs or tv stars, even focusing on local audiences, able to understand some english in games and form understandable sentences. While I facepalm at many educated Japanese jumbling words and unable to play games without japanese setting at all. Maybe it's using a standard test? That case, we sucked at doing exams properly. Broken English isn't going to score.
About two years ago, I worked at a warehouse in Australia and there were a lot of Thai women working there. Many came to Aus by themselves, but also, many who had married Aussie men and then come across. Most of these women, both the singles and the married, could barely speak any English at all. And like many Asians do, they pretty much all lived in their own communities and only spoke their native tongue outside of work, so their English never improved, in fact, their English was often better (although still minimal) when they first arrived in Aus, because they had at least tried learning English before coming to Aus, but stopped trying to learn it as soon as they arrived and moved into their Thai communities, and realised they could live a decent life in Aus without speaking English. I live with Koreans now, and many of them are exactly the same: close to zero English, they work for Korean companies, attend a Korean church, have only Korean friends. Don't need to learn English. I work with a lot of Cambodians, and their English is pretty good, and they are actively working hard to improve it. They told me their motivation is to date white women - and you can't rizz a woman properly if you can't speak her language.
I think there’s a lot of disinterest in learning English as a second language for Japanese. 1/ English is taught very boringly in school, making it a subject to memorize instead of learning. 2/ Little interaction to English-speaking natives, the only places where you’d find them are the touristy spots. 3/ Lack of Western media consumption, almost everyone who learn English as a second language did so because they have a Hollywood movie they want to watch in its original form. 4/ Japan has a very strong entertainment industry that produces their own shows and anime that could rival and surpass Western media, so there is little need to learn English when your favorite show is domestic and even imported ones are translated and dubbed over to Japanese. (Example: Genshin Impact, Helldivers 2, etc.) 5/ In everyday interaction you don’t need to learn English as the machines you interact with, your boss, your friends and colleagues are all Japanese or speak fluent Japanese to some extent.
I am from China and your view on English learning in China is on the spot. I think that another important factor is the 2008 Summer Olympics, which increased public awareness of English education. Although I haven't found any statistics, from personal experience the attention English received in primary and secondary education increased significantly after Beijing won the bids, as all major cities were preparing for opening to the world for the first time in decades. Before 2001, English was not taught until Year 7 (age 12-13), but was brought forward to Year 3 (age 8-9) after 2001. When I started school in 2002, my school offered English lessons at the very beginning in Year 1 (age 6-7). However, as China's economic growth slowing down in recent years, the enthusiasm for English is also declining. I have already seen school children these days having less English instruction at school than I did when I was at their age and pupils with disadvantaged backgrounds are particularly vulnerable. The decline of English proficiency among college students is also very concerning. In terms of English in Japan, there is something very weird going on. The problem is not in Japanese attitudes towards English but in their own language. In the past 20 years, the amount of loanwords in Japanese of English origin (which are written in katakana) has exploded. I am not talking about popular usage like in informal settings and marketing only. In fact, many are related to concepts in social sciences and social issues. Even if the native speakers are quite resistant to foreign media, the culture is still coming in. And some people are very critical of this trend because scholars in the mid-to-late 19th century had tried very hard to localise Western concepts and now Japanese is still being "polluted". Katakana words can also be very long and hard to understand, especially for the elderly. Interestingly, non-native speakers of Japanese tend to avoid these words whenever possible regardless of their native language. You may assume that a native English speaker will find kanji harder, but they actually prefer kanji to katakana words as well when they get better in Japanese. Professor Colin P.A. Jones of Doshisha University Law School, who is American, said that he did so because he will never be able to pronounce these words in the "Japanese way". If non-native speakers are using a more conservative form of Japanese than native speakers do, then this "new" thing probably really has something wrong with it and only multilingualism will make people more aware of this problem. I don't know if this can be a turning point in English education in Japan.
Let me explain from a Japanese perspective... I think there are mainly 7 reasons. (1) Linguistically distant (2) Japan's culture and economy are large, and the high percentage of domestic demand means that there is little need to speak English (I think this is one of the reasons why Chinese people are not good at English). (3) The Japanese language has a high ability to coin words in katakana and kanji, and can easily incorporate foreign concepts, and predecessors such as Yukichi Fukuzawa translated concepts such as "economy" (many languages cannot create words to express advanced concepts in their own language). (4) Japan is one of the few countries in the world that was not colonized by the West and did not have a Western language imposed on it. (5) Japan is an island country, too different from other countries in terms of language, and there is no Schengen Agreement, etc., so the hurdle to foreign countries is high. (6) Japanese people are introverted and shy. (7) Tourism was not an important industry (until the past). I think these are the main reasons.
Just as Japanese people do not know any famous English-speaking people, they have few opportunities to come into contact with overseas content, and even if they learn English, they rarely have the opportunity to use it.
There is only one way to learn languages effectively and efficiently: through massive inputs. Unfortunately a schools is really not the ideal environment for students to get hundreds of hours of language inputs, be it in japan or in any other country.
yup. The main reason for learning a language is to get access to something, like culture, opportunities, a certain community, travel, etc. But Japan is largely self-contained, and has basically everything most people could desire to gain from learning English, so the Japanese spend little time exposed to the English language, and thus suck at speaking it.
Language immersion schooling works pretty well. Not sure if Japanese parents would be too keen on the idea of their kids learning *all* their school subjects in English though
@@JeremyLevi - it wouldn’t work in Japan both from a practical viewpoint, but also wider societal views. There is a common perception in Japan that children should not learn second languages until they have perfected Japanese and that attempting bilingualism confuses children and that they grow up unable to speak either properly.
@@capitalb5889 Oh I'm certainly not under any illusion that it would be a popular idea in Japan. More just refuting the statement that "schools is really not the ideal environment for students to get hundreds of hours of language inputs". School can be a framework for that, if approached correctly. It's a model we've used to not insignificant levels of success as an option here in Canada for Anglo parents who are keen for their children to be fluently bilingual in French
As an English Instructor at a high school and business college, I have to agree with much of what is said here. As far as motivation goes, however, many of my students are learning English because they want to move to another country. I have been teaching off and on for over twenty years and designed a computer video game that teaches English basics, but cannot promote it due to visa restrictions. If the Japanese government wants to promote English it needs to make it easier for us foreigners to do so. Fortunately Japan's outlook is better than China's. Japan is hailed as a strong but peaceful nation among most of the English speaking world. It's economy is recovering while China's is falling apart. China is known for kidnapping foreign nationals, strong arming other nations (or attempting to do so) and according to many Chinese people I have spoken to back in my home country, is dealing with a rising anger against its own government for its failures. Japan is stable. China is not. Also, I would add that China isn't great at English either, especially when its government has cracked down on English schools all over the country, making it not only difficult, but downright scary for us to work there.
Thank you very much for your insightful and interesting remarks. China's recent attitude toward English seems to be driven by political forces. When I lived there in the 2000s, the environment was quite different but unfortunately the situation has changed over the past decade. As a result, teaching English in China has lost its allure and led many foreign educators to have second thoughts about pursuing a career there (many are now heading to places such as Taiwan and Vietnam). I also agree that the Japanese government should create better conditions for language teaching and learning. It has been taking baby steps over the past few years. Despite the slow pace, I am optimistic about the changes that lie ahead.
loved the last message, im from south korea and we both share similar cultures, the english education industry in south korea also has a problem but very similar
I wanted to end with a optimistic message. Despite the problems, English education is gradually changing. But it might take a while for its effects to be noticeable. Thank you for your support.
It doesn't help that English is extremely different from Japanese and Korean, making it that much harder to learn. Chinese grammar is actually quite similar to English.
I traveled in Korea and Japan earlier this year and I found that basic English proficiency in Korea was much more common, but in Japan people were very used to tourists and were skilled at using the few words they needed to know for their jobs, like waitresses and train station employees for instance.
Another reason for the decline is that phones have an English translation function. My class of housewives said that overseas, they can find salespersons in stores and restaurants that can speak Japanese.
Two major problems: 1. Due to many factors, it's not easy to learn English. This is a hot take, but I think there are too many unqualified Westerners who become English teachers in Japan. To begin, I am not saying ALL teachers are bad. In fact, many are great from personal experience. But, the "terrible English teacher who is only interested in fetishizing Japanese culture/people" stereotype does not exist for no reason. Of course, bad teachers aren't the only reason, but I'd wager that other explanations like "they are too scared to make mistakes" aren't unique to Japanese people and every other English learner faces the same problem. The other major reason is that Japanese and English are very different to begin with, making the problem of unqualified teachers that much more problematic. How is a Japanese student, already burdened by their notoriously stressful Japanese-language curriculum, supposed to be expected to learn a language with a completely different phonology, grammar, vocabulary, structure, and writing system? This is especially when English is not even necessary for daily life- as I will get to later. 2. There is simply no widespread desire or need to learn English. To comment on the title, it's not an "allergy" to English. That statement assumes that English is a universal language that that all people are supposed to learn and be able to speak proficiently. That is simply wrong- most Japanese do not go about their day to day lives needing English. Japan's domestic market/economy and internet presence is large enough to the point where Japanese people can live near-entirely without ever watching an English language youtube video, reading an English language book, writing an English language paper, speaking to an English language audience, listening an English-language podcast/song, etc. Especially when it comes to the internet, Japanese people can go about their day to day lives just reading, writing, speaking, and hearing Japanese. Most of the world follows this trend- in other words, it's culturally and economically independent. Europe is the main exception- their cultural overlap with the US and broader Anglosphere makes knowing English much more desirable and necessary. The average European nation (excluding russia) has around 15 million people- there is simply not enough of a domestic market or audience for a Polish content creator, a Romanian journalist, or a Dutch academic to be financially well-off. As such, they all use English because there is a much larger audience who speaks English and because English serves as a sort of lingua franca in Europe. Japan, in contrast, has 125 million people. Thus, for all of the above reasons, I think it is fundamentally incorrect for people to assume that Japanese SHOULD be able to speak English in the first place (though it by no means hurts of course, and can definitely open many new pathways).
Its very easy for europeans because english is so basic. You only need to learn the rough shape of the words and thats it. Everything else is just mindset. Does my Sentence feel retarded? If the Answer is yes, its good enough for spoken word and use in digital writing(if you use basic software to get the words right). Thats why northern Europeans get better in spoken english after some drinks. You can do the same in Japan, just tell the kids that its a language for the mentally deficiant and they will understand that thinking hard only makes their english worse.
I’m and American and have visited Japan twice. I found it interesting how many people I ran into that had a surface level knowledge of English. It was mostly people in my generation (Z) that were fluent and I could talk with, but other people I met tried their best and were interested in learning about the western world. Maybe it’s the Japanese fascination with the US from our post-war influence, or maybe I just got lucky, but a lot of young Japanese seem interested enough.
Also keep in mind that (a) English is very hard for Japanese people to learn (and vice versa), because they are so different and (b) learning Japanese is pretty much a lifelong exercise even for Japanese people, which means there simply is less time for learning another language entirely.
You're absolutely right -- learning Japanese is a lifelong endeavor. I have been studying it for a few years now and am still far from being fluent. I imagine that Japanese feel the same way about English given the differences between the two languages. Thank you for your comment.
I'm working in a high school this year. I can fully atest to their inability to produce a complete sentence and given I've worked in elementary, jr high and high school now I have some strong opinions as to why that's happening.
Personally, I hate the fact that english is poorly expressive compared to my native language, so I studied french instead. Nowadays, I think learning chinese would also be more valuable to me than english.
Interesting that you do find French more expressive. Usually any second language or international trade language is going to feel far less expressive than one’s tongue of hearth and home.
True, when I try to translate Hindi songs into English it feels, as if the meaning of it lost in the translation and have become bland. It doesn't give the same feeling. Those deep cutting lines don't even harm you
@@Keskelis Not all languages have vocabulary for the same concepts, as that's a side effect of what a particular culture associated to said language considers important enough to express directly. This is part of the reason why there's loanwords between languages, to express concepts that aren't precisely labeled with matching vocabulary.
It shouldn't be expected from Japanese people to learn English (or from people of any other non-english-speaking country, really, as long as they don't need it for their profession). Japanese is one of the most difficult languages for English speakers to learn. That's because Japanese and English are not related at all. It shouldn't be a surprise that Japanese people don't excel at English and it shouldn't be forced upon them. Before English was the dominant language in the world, because of the rise of America as an economic world power, in developing countries like mine previous generations learned French, Italian or even German, but it's always been out of necessity. It's never been about some kind of global inclusion or being able to comunicate with anyone from any country. Language learning in large is about being able to conduct trade with the more powerful countries. Only in a few cases, it's out of interest for the country's culture, but that comes after the economic influence. English is popular as a second language even when it's not out of necessity because of Hollywood and American cartoons, but Hollywood only became so popular in foreign countries because we could see the prosperity and dreamt of having that lifestyle. Also we were already having trade with the US and being in contact with their products, and being taught English in school. Movies only help perpetuate the already stablished influence of the US; in comparison, almost no one moves to France because of French movies, for example. So, as you said, Japanese people are lucky in that it's not like they need English while in Japan and that's because they are still the 4th biggest economy in the world and are very independent from other countries' economies. Also, most of them don't have any interest in western culture, in part because the entertainment industry in Japan is very prolific. In fact, their influence through anime in recent years is almost as strong as what Hollywood has achieved, so they don't really have a reason to learn English and shouldn't be forced to in school. It would probably be better if they learnt either Chinese or Korean, since those are two languages more closely related to Japanese, from two economically powerful countries, and a lot of the immigrants in Japan come from east Asian countries. Also, I don't know why you compare Japan to China here, seeing that the ranking showed in your video has China only a few points ahead of Japan in terms of English proficiency. They're not much better than them and it makes sense, as Chinese is also a language that's not related to English in the slightest and hard for them to learn.
I have worked in different countries teaching English and Russian. Thank you for a well-grounded opinion. But with each person, the reasons will be different. Everything should be taken into account. Acquiring a foreign language as a child doesn't really work with adults but we can take the idea of creating the environment while learning. Another thing is, motivation is truly a number one thing that triggers the process of acquisition. There are many cases discussed in theoretical books trying to explain why some people acquire it better than others. There is NO one answer. My personal point of view is that the main constituents are inner motivation, well-organized process of learning and systematic approach with a lot of practice in speaking and listening🎉
As an old American retired and living in Japan, I notice that there were a lot more English speakers in my age group thirty to forty years ago. Among young people very few speak any English at all. My community is mountain guides so they have an incentive to learn English both to get better professional education by living and learning the guiding profession abroad and also so they can serve foreign clients who come here to ski the famous Japan powder snow. But outside of those guides, I don't see many people having an interest in English at all. I can't complain. My Japanese plateaued a long time ago. Maybe I'm not that interested in learning more than what I need to get around. But in my defense, I also suffer from auditory processing disorder, which makes learning additional languages super challenging. Although I can read katakana and hiragana and I know several hundred kanji, I am terrible at parsing the sounds I hear into something I can understand even when the words being used are words I know. This is even true in English, my native language. I much prefer to communicate in writing because I misunderstand what people say all the time. It's like a janky switch in my brain. Still, I love living in Japan because it is safe and peaceful. People do not get in your face here the way they do in America. People are kind and patient with me when I struggle to understand what is being said. Google Translate and other translation devices only get so far. They fall apart as soon as idioms come into the conversation and are simply useless for translating place names. But I use it because it's a lot better than nothing. Even though my Japanese language ability is not great, living here is far less stressful than living in America. I feel at home here and my wife's friends are very impressed by her ability to speak English, which she achieved by living with me in America for thirty years.
one thing you can see on the EF index is clear: countries who dub movies do way worse than countries who don't, with german speaking countries being an outlier. Which means the usefulness of english directly determines the fluency of a country, which makes sense. In the west, gen Z and millenials are pretty good at english because of the internet. as you hang out online, knowing english is going to be very useful. Historically Japan is a country that loves their own culture and language and does everything to amplify itself. This has a long history. So since japan has their own ecosystem with everything imaginable in japanese, it's really no wonder. It doesnt matter how good education even would be, if people never use english because there is no need for it, thats what you end up with. And in europe for example with so many countries bunched together closely speaking other languages, english is just paramount to function as the communication glue between countries. (and this going for online communities and gaming as ell there) how do you fix it systemically? that seems hard. Ai could be a great teacher but a) students AND ADULTS already spend too much time studying/working and b) to learn anything in life you need strong motivation
Devil’s advocate. Why should they? Have you not seen the entitlement of foreigners when they go to Asian countries? Also, learning English is either like Sunday school or it’s like a returnee with an ivy league degree, some extra “wow”s but rarely have much impact.
@@GWT1m0 Well, not anymore it isn’t if they keep shoving their disrespectful attitudes and entitled “morally superior” views in every country. Most of the English teachers aren’t even that good either but are hired because white guy. And then you got those returnees and expats that speak really bad English to show off. For now, English is just the convenient lingua franca. Before that, it was French. And before that, Classical Latin or Classical Chinese.
Exactly what I think. I became reasonably fluent at English out of necessity. From what I've experienced living in Japan for 3 years, I rarely if ever got myself into a situation where I need to use English, and I think it's safe to assume that's also the case for the vast majority of Japanese people. They don't need to, so they won't. As simple as that. Just like how most native English speakers can't speak any language other than the one they were raised with, because they simply don't need to.
@@crov43 It is. It’s subtly saying Western values and morals and ways of doing things are superior. Can’t do actual colonization so they’re trying to do cultural colonization. What is wrong with Japan having Japanese views?
But why do people care so much about the Japanese not speaking English or being interested in other countries? Lmfao I don't get it, I keep seeing this conversation on the internet and it's like y'all want to force the English language on them when they're clearly not interested. Contrary to popular belief that Japan is "westernized", the culture actually doesn't care about the western world that much, western music and films don't do well, neither do people travel abroad that much, Japan has always been a very isolationist country and it's like y'all so desperately want to force yourselves on them lmaoooo
Exactly. Obviously these people want one country, one language, and one measuring system. Having multiple ways of doing things in the world is inefficient, or something.
I had a group of Japanese elementary school students come up to me to interview me for a school assignment just like in your video. But since I'm a Japanese language enthusiast, I couldn't help but just answer all their questions in Japanese, which they were thrilled about since it trivialized all their work lol. I'll try to encourage their enthusiasm for English next time, maybe.
Thanks for sharing your experience. The Japanese were probably impressed with your language skills. They really enjoy it when a foreigner speaks their language.
I think the reason reforms mess with the students and make it even worse is because it breaks the flow of their education and creates jumps in difficulty. For example, in my childhood, we weren’t expected to learn times tables / multiplication, but in our final year of primary education they changed the rules and we had to know all of our multiplications up to x12. This means a handful of years randomly were expected to know multiplication. We did not learn it, because we were mad that it was suddenly expected of us. Many of us are still bad at this.
I laughed so much while watching your video -- really funny! 🤣🤣🤣And your Japanese at the end is very fluent, you seem to study Japanese hard (I wish my English pronunciation was as good as your Japanese). 👋👍
Thank you for your kind words. Japanese is a very beautiful language -- for some strange reason, I also think that I sound better in Japanese than English.
@@ShiroiVie I agree your Japanese sounds more interesting than your English you could be the equivalent of the those Vtubers to pretend to shock Japanese people with their decent Japanese skills.
0:43 so while k don’t agree with the Twitter rant I see it from both sides Of the owner doesn’t come across people who need an English menu often then he won’t feel obligated to spend money on getting one and also if you’re in another country you should know some basics of the language (how much you know should be determined by how long you’ll be there) The tourists just need something accessible to them and the Japanese menu isn’t so asking for an English menu, which a lot of Japanese restaurants have, isn’t a big deal. However if one isn’t available they could try using translation apps if they don’t have a friend to help them read. How it should have gone: Can we have an English menu? Sorry, don’t have one Tourists use translate app or ask a friend with them to help read menu Restaurant gets their money, tourists get their food, everyone is happy
I have never been to Korea (either one), and do not speak Korean, but I have watched several Korean drama series on Netflix, some with English subtitles and some dubbed into English. I was surprised at the number of bilingual signs displayed in public places in large cities like Seoul, not only in corporate headquarters, but in small fast food places. Nowhere near half, but more than the 1-5% I expected. There must be a significant number of foreign tourists visiting South Korea, to have so many signs (and presumably menus) translated.
…aaaand Seoul has a certain amount of international business, diplomatic, and military personnel all quite beneficial to the country’s survival more so than in most places.
They are smart enough to learn it easily… I am glad they refuse to learn though. In fact why should they? I found it refreshing to not listen to English while traveling locally in Japan, it created a sense I was really traveling, and also encouraged me to put effort into learning Japanese instead.
I totally get that! There’s something special about immersing yourself in the local culture and language. It really enhances the travel experience and makes you feel more connected to the place. Learning a few phrases in Japanese can open up so many more authentic interactions too. Thank you for your comment.
Back in '72, I hitchhiked over southern Japan, particularly Shikoku and Kyushu. It was very easy because so many people wanted free English lessons. Bless them, some drivers went miles out of their way to take me to my destination. In England, for comparison, some of my landlady's family would not speak to her because she bought a Datsun.
Very cool video. I’m in the “why should Japanese bother learning English” party myself, though. I mean, so many people who got good at English around the world either did so because they wanted economic success or because they were interested in American (or British) pop culture. Japan undeniably has the second biggest (and better, may I add, as an American) pop culture after America. I read they have the second largest music industry after the US. There’s so many great things that only Japan has, and besides some black companies, natural disasters, and other stuff, it’s one of the safest and most enjoyable countries to live in. If I was Japanese, living in a country with a first-world economy, such good entertainment, cleanliness, safety, etc., I’d also have little motivation to learn English. And frankly, I think it’s best that Japan doesn’t get systemically Anglicized like so many other countries and lose its own identity. Not to sound like a boomer, but we need to keep the bar high for foreigners who want to live in Japan; the Japanese quality of life will go down if every English-only foreigner can easily move in, and if Japanese can understand more of the English online social media bubble the younger generation might be influenced by the ident!ty politics, science denial, hyper-individualism, race wars, etc. that’s so common online and it will influence their ways of thinking and disturb the peace too. I’m all for Japan becoming more progressive but in a natural way and not because a bunch of foreigners want to strong-arm western ideas of right and wrong onto Japan. Colonizer mindset. Japan does need to improve in women‘s rights, workers’ rights, and some other areas, but that’s not for outsiders to fix. History shows that western colonizer influence always ruins cultures and if they get Japan there’s nothing left. Japan is so unique and beautiful, it’s not “perfect” but it does so much right and I love it how it is. People visiting Japan should just learn Japanese. The world doesn’t revolve around us English speakers. Of course, some Japanese like economists, lawyers, and politicians will greatly benefit from good English but I think the layperson doesn’t need to bother.
Careful they'll call you racist for saying the truth out loud. But I'm glad someone out there shares the same philosophy as me regarding mass westernization of japan. I hope more people will realise this sooner. LEAVE. JAPAN. ALONE. it's fine as is
Your admonition to "just learn Japanese" if visiting Japan is a little bit impractical. If I visit for 2 weeks, should I spend years learning the language just to get by and avoid offending the locals? I'm all for learning foreign languages, but perhaps it should be a case of meet you halfway?
I'm on holiday in Latvia at the moment. People visiting from all around the world are using English to get by - it's a common language. But as you are in the camp that says Japan shouldn't bother learning English, do you apply this to all other countries? Germany, Korea, Uzbekistan, Slovakia, Croatia, Thailand? We all stay a world of monoglots, making it hard to communicate with each other and enjoy travel? Or are you cutting some special slack for Japan, so that it can continue its gradual decline in blissful ignorance to the rest of the world?
@@johnjones6601 Do you think the UK, Canada, the US, Australia and all other English speaking countries should make their citizens learn every single language in the world so tourists can visit without having to become fluent at English? I bet your answer is no, and maybe next you'll say "Yeah but Japanese people only need to learn just one other language, not all of them" which is a logical response, but it has nothing to do with the core issue here. It's their country, not yours. When in Rome do as the Romans do. No one says you should spend years learning advanced level Japanese, but you do need to learn the basics like common etiquettes, greetings, how to ask for directions, and how to ask for prices of goods. It's also funny that you claim it's impractical for foreigners just visiting for 2 weeks to learn Japanese, but ignore how it also applies the opposite way. It's extremely impractical for the vast majority of Japanese people to learn English just for a 2 minute interaction with a tourist that they might experience once or twice a year, if at all.
5 yrs ago I had a conference in Japan and every topics are cover in English. Many undergrad students who attended the conference they had a courage to speak to gaijin like me and other ppl in English instead of Japanese, this made me feel impressive for their courage. Although they said they might have a bad skill in speaking English and I replied them that please do the mistakes those will make your English better and better and your speaking skill is good I can understand what you say thats all, you guys are "eigo jouzu". And I had to add the fact to them that English is not my first language just like you guys and Thai's English education is also sh*t as well So I only hope they might get better English skills at least better than their past selves from 5 yrs ago. At least this is some few percent of those who can use English in Japan and I hope nihonjin will use English more fluently :D
A lot of the excuses we make for the Japanese and their failure to learn English just tacitly accept Japan's own self-indulgent belief in being unique. They are an island. Sure, and so are a lot of other places. English grammar is hard. Yes, it is hard for Japanese, but not impossible - I've gone the other way - progress is slower, but after six years of studying, you should be able to make some basic sense. Don't need English to progress - what makes Japan different to other countries? Not interested in abroad...sure, but that's just Japanese insularity coming out again and their desire to be unique. Yesterday i heard a conversation between a Finn and two Ukrainians having a chance encounter in a bar in Latvia. It happened in English. A Japanese cannot participate in an experience like this. Even the internet is a global community of billions if you understand English, but one of millions of you only understand Japanese. There are people whose first language is not Japanese or English commenting on this thread - this can only happen because English is widely spoken around the world.
It’s also fucking Japan and not England. It has no requirement to learn English at all seeing as they already have a language that is quite suitable for communication This video shows how ignorant western English countries are. No one should expect to go to JAPAN and speak ENGLISH and be broadly understood. You’re the dumbass if that’s the case and you should address “western English countries allergy to Japanese”. This is some crybaby nonsense because Japan speaks Japanese. Please let’s use our brains
Ukrainians in Latvia will usually speak Russian when speaking to Latvians. It's interesting you brought up these countries because by your logic they'd need to embrace Russian even more but they in fact move away from it. They see it as imperialistic and artificial and prefer to support their local native language and culture. Why wouldn't this also apply to English then? It's a tool of US imperialism and settler colonialism.
@@gamermapper I don't think you understood my post properly - the encounter was between a Finn and two Ukrainians. Latvia was simply the place that they met. The point was that the encounter did not happen in either of their home countries or in a country where English is the native language.
I study music at a college in Tokyo. In one of the classes, the teacher presented a slide to the students saying that, in order to learn English, you should focus way more on output than input. I had to stop myself from laughing. If this is what they believe about learning a language, it actually explains a lot.
The real problem is in the backwards mentality of Japanese policy makers, government officials and educators alike. Learning methods in schools are antiquated and useless, drilling grammars for hours on end, with students not being able to say even one or two basic sentences after years of schooling, even the teachers themselves speak crappy English if any at all. Instead of looking at modern language teaching methods and trying to improve the curriculum, they import tens of thousands of "native English speakers", just because a person is a native English speaker it does not make him or her a good language teachers, many of these are fresh college students with no real professional skills to get a real job, so they do a "how to become an ESL teacher" course and go to Japan for a year or two, the result is god knows how many Japanese students with crappy English proficiency.
I recently traveled around Japan and Taiwan and some fact that shocked me is that the taiwanese are much better than japanese speaking english despite there are a lot more foreigners in Japan than Taiwan.
Speaking as a long-term bilingual Japanese resident, I can tell you that many jobs requiring bilingual skills are in demand in Japan. But companies generally want people who are native level in Japanese with only basic fluency in English. The reverse is much less in demand. A few foreign companies in Japan mostly operate in English and employ many foreign workers. But the overall trend in the last 30 years has actually been to require more Japanese and less English. A non-Japanese speaker is limited to only a few jobs like programming or English teaching. Other roles usually require close interaction with Japanese-speaking co-workers, vendors and customers. Practically speaking, Japan operates in Japanese and most Japanese people actually prefer it that way. The motivation to learn English is not very strong.
Japanese need to overcome their fear of making mistakes in front of foreigners. Simple answer but very difficult for Japanese people to understand.
Thank you for your comment. I agree that many Japanese need to overcome their fear of making mistakes when speaking with foreigners. That is a problem that all of us have when using a foreign language, but it seems to be a bit more pronounced here in Japan.
And by the same token Japanese people need to practice not to laugh when an English speakers makes mistakes. My Japanese teacher did that to me. Luckily I have thick skin.
It's a historical phenomenon. Only the outside force with great intention and great bargaining power can bend their knees. USA did it twice, first is before Meiji era, second is WW2
Yep, the only way to learn a new language is to make mistakes.
The big problem is that English Writing doesn't match our Phonics. This is because we write in the LATIN Alphabet. As a result, you have weird pronunciation inconsistencies like the difference between "Cough" and "Tough" and "Though". These all end with 'ough', but the 'ough' is never pronounced the same. This right here is the KEY to why people like the Japanese have such a hard time with our language. It's dishonest.
Do you know what the fix is? Teach them English starting with the Shavian Alphabet instead of Latin. This will help them get a better understanding for how our phonics work. Once they master that, teach them the Latin Alphabet. BOOM! Language learned. ^^
Pro's for not learning english = Save your sanity from reading twitter and reddit
-no apostrophe with plural forms
-no plural is needed here
- wrong preposition,
- the Gerund is needed not the infinitive
Grammatically corrected: “Pro of not learning English: saving your sanity from reading….”
Don’t give up and keep at it.
You know you can just CHOOSE not to engage with those toxic mental-illness inducing sites.
Their Twitter is insane too
wait until you find out about Japanese twitter
This is actually one way to save the civilization from toxic western culture of wokism , karens and gender educations.
ban the learning of English 🤣🤣 I just hope this is possible.
The irony is that very few Japanese can watch this video.
lmaoo
yeah their government banned youtube lol
Or just doesn’t care…..
@@juditszocs9057many wouldn't care, I suspect, but they'll never be able to find out. Two sides of the same coin, I suspect.
me
According to the owner of a hostel I stayed at while visiting Japan, the way he sees it is that Japanese people don’t feel motivated to learn English because they’re a financially independent country. A lot of Japanese people have no plans to live or even travel abroad, and the majority of them plan to live, work, and die in Japan. This combined with the small amount of foreigners in the country (meaning little to no chances to use English in an everyday setting) mean that for most Japanese people there is no reason to learn English. America is actually fairly similar in this respect- it is a financially strong and independent country which means foreign language acquisition is worse than almost everywhere in the EU. Contrast the SEA region which has a weaker economy and lots of people who want to work for English companies and which have a much higher English fluency rate because of it.
People like to put learning a language up on a pedestal of some sort of pinnacle of self betterment, but in reality most people who learn English do it for practical reasons, and it’s just a fact that most Japanese people don’t have many practical reasons to do it.
- sincerely, an American fluent in Japanese
I mean that would be true for pretty much any developed country. So it can't be this impactful. Looking at the numbers in the video, the bad reforms to the education system seem to be a bigger issue.
Nah. If that was the main reason we wouldn't have developed countries such as germany, sweden, denmark and others with a high level of english proficiency. Also even the japanese people that see foreigners every single day still can't speak english, I'm talking about japanese language schools which whole purpose is to interact with foreigners without a single english speaking teacher or staff member (except for the principal but he barely interacted with the students anyway)
Also Japan is working itself into extinction right now, with an average age of 50 and a dark future in sight, they will definitely need more foreigners in the future but still I don't see any special effort put into learning english... Unless they're waiting to find out
The actual main reason is because the japanese entertainment industry is so strong, they got plenty of japanese games, movies and tv shows (and of course anime and manga) so from a young age there's no incentive to learn english, I would know, the whole reason I started learning english was to understand the video games I was playing at age 11
All that being said, lately I've seen a lot of kids apparently studying english so I guess the second point I made is not completely true, even though there isn't much of a meaningful effort to strengthen english learning by the government, some parents are actually trying to give at least their kids proper english education
@@fgregerfeaxcwfeffecedeveloped does not automatically mean self sustainable
@@ozzi9816 This sentiment is self re-enforcing. Why don't Japanese want to travel abroad? It seems to be a very something that's very particular to the Japanese psyche, and I suspect has the same cause as the one that says that they can't learn English.
I think it still goes back to the Edo period of isolation.
@@fgregerfeaxcwfeffece it’s likely combined with their culture and geography. Japan is an island nation, so they learned to be very independent and isolationist- especially seeing as the only people who ever visited them just wanted to invade. Japan as an island also isn’t exactly the most rich with resources and has precious little arable land, which drove them to becoming extremely industrious and excellent craftsman (mostly out of necessity). Comparing them to first world countries is a bit misleading, you need to be comparing them to first world island nations. And when you look at it that way they fall much more into line in terms of their society and social issues (think Iceland, New Zealand, etc.).
Also again, just being an island nation by itself probably contributes. Other Asian nations (India, China, etc.) have land connections to other nations and thus tend to be more open, both on a physical and cultural level, but Japan can and did just close its borders whenever it didn’t want to play ball with everyone else.
As a GenZ Japanese I think the biggest reason why most of us can't speak English even in modern era is the huge cultural difference. We don't find the western entertainments so entertaining compared to our own, like music, movies, comedies(this one is huge because we don't understand sarcasm) etc. Because of that English remains just as a tool of communication or to flex their ability to speak a mysterious language, and no one really learns it for fun. For me English was the language spoken in every cool video back in early 2010s, so I could learn it without any struggles.
It look like a complicated relationship that the japanese youth entertain with the english language. There's a lot of content online (like early 2010 video as you stated) that could interest Japanese people i think. Just like we in France appreciate manga so much we are the second biggest country right behind Japan to buy manga. Even if just by curiosity for other cultures and their way of thinking. I believe the general disinterest in politics in Japan is also a huge factor. I learnt english myself throught video game and discussing politics online. You never work on your english as much as when you try to prove a point ahah
You definitely do understand sarcasm. Just not in a friendly context.
@@米空軍パイロット Indeed. I’ve recently found out that the Japanese version of a wikipedia article on "Sarcasm" is titled as "嫌み" which basically means indirect insult
@@UltraGigaNerd Yes. "Sarcasm" in Japan is really akin to "Passive Aggression" in America.
Why is Japanese "comedy" so unfunny?
I'm a student in Japan, I really don't like English Subjects.
I think what's needed to learn a language is a passion for the culture of that language,
but English culture is not popular at all in Japan right now.
Only older people watch Hollywood movies and listen to Western music.
I've watched some English content to study English, but I really wasn't interested.
And to be honest, I don't want to study abroad or work in an English-speaking country.
Understandable. Even many in the west do not want to consume western media. It is extremely low quality. This is because we are suffering from cultural rot, due to infestation by a parasite.
What are you passionate about?
自分の好きなコンテンツと英語が交差すると楽に学べるんだけど、そうもいかない人が多いよね
It's because there isn't just one English culture. When people learn English, they generally get more in touch with the world, not with a single country/culture. It might help you to develop an interest for learning about foreign cultures and their people, and what'd be better for it than interact with foreigners? Whether it's online or IRL.
understood
I'm currently learning English in Japan and i really understand what you saying. English class in school was so boring and not incentives me. I just stick around RUclips and turns out that it is the most efficient way for me to get good at. My overall English skill is beyond average in Japan, but it dose not mean i was gifted. How to learn it and what your motivation played a big role.
My current motivation is to watch video game essay, science experiment, cute drawing and communicate someone that has same preference of me.
If you are motivated, I am sure you that will eventually become fluent. I am not gifted when it comes to learning Japanese (and the fact that I am no longer young is also an obstacle to gaining fluency in the language), but I enjoy it and am motivated (even though it will probably still take me several years to become fluent). Thank you for your comment.
I love using youtube for language learning. Twitch too!!
Good luck with your learning! Hope you can make some international friends 👍
Your English is already exceptionally good IMO, especially your vocabulary. Keep on studying, it's really working.
you already have 8.5/10 English it looks like! Coming from a native speaker, just keep practicing for another year or two and you will be C2 advanced. Very understandable and clear, don't give up :)
I was born and raised in countryside of Japan my entire life.
Speaking English as Japanese is something we feel disturbing.
I can talk in English with my foreign friends, but I really don’t want to talk in English in front of other Japanese lol.
It’s so embarrassing I don’t know why.
Just like many older or more conservative or etc of my American friends do not share my linguistic xenophilia. They do often seem to find the presence of anything unfamiliar to be disturbing.
Could it be because of "losing face" topic?
I'm thai and we are horrifically bad at english
i find it embarrassing to use it with my countrymen and I am not sure why
Stand your ground. Nothing wrong with that.
I feel the same way.
Obviously Japanese textbooks should use Cowboys, Knights, and Victorian Gentlemen to teach English grammar.
Y e s
Based.
Replace "Knights" with English Longbowmen. English knights were weak-sauce.
Kurosawa reinvented the American Western movie, and as for knights and gentlemen - Japan had samurai and daimyo. Much of this should be relatable.
I feel for the Japanese commenter who told us here that only older people care about English-language culture. That is a problem with the content which is produced in America and in Britain today, which is uniformly terrible. *I* don't want to watch any new Disney / Star Wars content, what makes anyone imagine the Japanese want it any more?
Not a bad idea actually
Your comparison between different attitudes toward English learning in Japan and China is very original and allows us to better understand why teaching English in Japan can sometimes feel like stepping into the Twilight Zone.
Yes, comparing both countries provides a fresh perspective to this issue. Thank you for your support.
I also like that comparison. It is something many of us are unaware of, as we tend to think the situation is the same in all Asian countries. But China and Japan have certain stark differences (I have never been to China, so this was new to me).
@@ShiroiVie😂As an Indonesian🇮🇩. The increase in English language proficiency is more due to the increased consumption of English internet content .(RUclips, Netflix,Tiktok Etc.)Moreover, other Asian countries rarely watch films dubbed into localized languages.But watch English with subtitles so you can memorize the English sounds.Helps in reading English spelling (Because letters and silent letters are Messy in English)
Japan should stop watching Japanese dubbed movies and start watching western movies with subtitles .
@@IndustrisasiIndonesiathe Philippines went backwards in this regard. When I was a boy every English movie is well, in English. No subtitles though since this was the early 90s. Before the 00s though they started dubbing English movies into Tagalog. Same thing happened with anime around that time, many used to have their English dubs and then dubbed into Tagalog.
@@IndustrisasiIndonesia The companies Distributing these western films dubbed in Japanese couldn't care less as long as they & their respective committee partners get to make a profit over it.
I am an Assistant English teacher in Japan. Another reason I think the Japanese are falling behind is their textbooks. In my experience, Japanese English classes are heavily textbook-reliant. So much so that when I try to put my native-speaker input and correct the many mistakes in the textbook, I often get ignored
There is a pervasive mindset around the world isn’t there, not just in Japan, that whoever wrote a book is automatically the expert more so than anyone we could possibly meet in person.
The textbooks have been proofread by native English speakers!
Their names are on the list of those who have worked on the textbooks.
@tessmaru7285 I have been asked by Japanese groups and organizations to proof read and check English examples and while I am credited by their group as a checker... many of my suggestions or changes were rejected, ignored, or changed back to the original sentences that they the Japanese group had created. Because my new example or sentence didnt match the one they created when they threw my new sentence back into google Translate to compare it to their original... even tho it was the same in meaning. Just more natural sounding to the English ear.
So even tho English speakers checked it doesn't excuse the egregious errors found in many Japanese textbooks.
And I'll be the first to admit that mistakes got past me. Cause when you look at alot of Japanese English over the several weeks that editing can take and the long hours of checking.... you can become kind of numb or blind to it at times.
I'm surprised people are still talking about textbooks like it was the 80s or 90s. There are so many videos on RUclips in English! And I'm not talking about English teaching videos. Those are actually part of the problem in my opinion. I'm talking about content made by native speakers talking about real-life stuff.
Unless you have actually seen our highschool and university entrance exams, you'll not understand why our schools teach what they teach. English class in Japan has never been about conversational skills or what is considered correct in your country of origin. I also suspect you have never taught in top private, prefectural, or government-run highschools that produce most of the students for top universities in Japan.
What I remember is that 1st grade of junior highschool started out with: This is a pen. He is a boy. But in 1st year of highschool my English textbook was Shakespeare (Modern-English version), and by the 3rd year in highschool we were reading Thomas More and Utopia.
The reality is 99% of the Japanese population have zero need of foreign languages in their personal or professional lives. And the purpose for English education in Japan is not about speaking. It has always been about understanding literary material written in English, whether it's newspapers, contracts, programming instructions, or manuals on engines. The focus is to accurately understand foreign materials and translate them into Japanese. Japanese are not interested in the language, rather that content written in the language, so we can understand foreign cultures, history, governments, business trends, etc.
And it has always been like this in language educations in Japan. It's how it was when I took Mandarin as a mandatory 2nd foreign language in university. In my "Chinese" language class, our text material was CCP's economic policy papers. And that was only after 2 years of studying Chinese. I was able to read and translate it, but I still don't speak Chinese. Nor do I have the need to in my daily life. Those who are really interested in the language/culture would usually do their study abroad in those countries.
The izakaya owner has a point. No tourist should feel entitled that everyone speaks their language. However, if you want to make money of foreigners, try to be welcoming. I live in a tourist hot spot in Germany, and yes, like many others, I worked as a waiter while being a student. Sometimes, it is hard to stay friendly when you have very unfriendly customers, but: in this case, just staying friendly and saying "no sorry, we don't have an english menu, but I'd love to help you order " would have been perfect. Also, if you reakise as an owner that you get a request for an English menu 3x a day, get a college kid to translate your menu and use it as a selling point with a sign in your window. If your English is nonexistent, get a student who is good at English as a waiter gor your rush hour. The point is, even tourists who prepare and lesrn a few phrases won't be able to read a menu in Japanese, because kanji! In hospitality, ideally, we want people to feel welcome, relax, enjoy their time, drinks and food and return again, as well as recommend us to their friends.The end.
I agree with you. Thank you for your comment.
Great points
I wrote a couple English menus for restaurants here (a German-speaking country) and at least got a couple free meals out of it.
Japanese people in general just don't like foreigners. Period. As the video says, their economy is turned inward. The tourists money is a drop in the bucket of their revenue, why should they spend time and money catering to them?
Yes - menus make life hard for life as a foreigner in Japan. First you learn hiragana, then katakana, then easy kanji, but none of this really helps get to grips with a menu.
This issue is interesting to me as a former geography major.
I have moved 17 times around Japan, and most people know only a small area of society. To begin with, geography education after high school is always on the verge of extinction.
Before considering English education, we need to understand the "reclusive" structure of this society.
Great points -- thank you for your insights.
You should have studied something useful like dinosaurs
@@robertmartens7839 dinosaurs are pretty cool ngl
Post-secondary geography education is on the verge of extinction in the United States even more than in such countries as Canada and the United Kingdom.
The problem with English is that, for those not used to it, it's actually two languages: the spoken one and the written one. Once you get used to how the different phonemes are written, it is relatively easy, but if you learn the language just by writing it down first, the students that are not used to speak it are suddenly overwhelmed with complex phonemes, become really scared of messing up and, finally, shut down.
English native speakers do not realize it, but the latin alphabet was intended to be used with just clear vowels ("a", "e", "i", "o" and "u") so when you use Germanic vowels ("æ", "õ", "å", etc.) without actually including those letters, many people who have not heard those words struggle to speak and become really frustrated.
yes this is a fundamental flaw in how MOST humans think we should learn languages, which is completely inefficient.
As toddlers we learn it in the order: Listening > Speaking > Reading > Writing.
And we dont learn grammar rules and such explicitly until we can already write. Most knowledge is osmosis of the language and mimicry.
for some reason humans have tried over intellectualizing language learning and thereby made it worse.
Yes, English has a very large vowel inventory, around 20. I also a large number of consonant phonemes, around 25. Consonant combinations are also difficult for Japanese, plus having to deal with closed syllable structures. (Physically forming a consonant sound at the end of a syllable, can be significantly different from forming the same consonant sound at the beginning of a syllable.)
Add to the problem the fact that English vocabulary is a complicated mash-up of West Germanic and Romance influences. Don't even get me started on the mess that is English spelling.
@cyberpotato63 my favorite germanic romance language
I don't think the phonemes are the problem with learning English. I think the inconsistent pronunciation when compared to spelling is.
@@khaosceroI agree that listening and mimicry is the “natural” way how humans learn a language as toddlers.
But it’s not necessarily the most efficient.
Think about it like this:
As a toddler you’re exposed to a language or languages 24/7 and all the people around you talk to you without any expectation that you’re able to have a conversation.
You don’t have that situation as an adult.
Not to mention that you don’t have as much time disposable.
In fact: Isn’t it amazing how quickly we can get a grasp of the basics of a language as adults?
For example: If you studied a language for one hour each day for one year it totals to only 365 hours which are roughly 15 days or 23 days if we assume eight hours of sleep per day.
It’s because we have an intellectual concept of languages and can transfer the skills we acquired in one or more other languages to the new language we want to learn.
When we learn the structure and rules of the new language we don’t have to start from scratch but only have to internalise modified versions of already known concepts and/or just one new concept if there are unfamiliar concepts like tonality for example.
But I agree that simply analysing and memorising is not a good way to learn a language.
It’s more like a cheat code that makes learning a new language easier.
I see it like this: You can intellectually understand a grammatical form, know how it works and recognise it when you see it but to internalise it you have to encounter it used organically in context: Hear it in spoken language, read it, try to incorporate it in sentences by yourself in speech and writing.
I actually know a Japanese girl who's fluent in English. I think aside from government issues, you have to actually want to learn languages. In my country the Philippines, Filipino and English are both official languages, that's why many Filipinos are fluent in English. But when it comes to other famous languages such as Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, or Korean, it's rare for a Filipino to be fluent in these. But the people I do know who are fluent in those foreign languages are usually the ones who really want to learn or are really interested in foreign languages.
Thank you for your comment. Indeed, motivation is key to learning a language.
How come China havelow proficiency in English. I'm surprised.
Some Filipinos don't even bother to learn local languages even when they migrate to another country. I guess they picked up that same mentality from English-speaking countries. Quite ironic considering that most Filipinos know either at least two or three languages.
As for Spanish, we had a choice to adopt it instead of English as an official language. I really am thankful we chose the right language: English. History majors do still learn Spanish for obviour reasons.
@@kzm-cb5mrWhere did you get this? My sister lives in Japan and knows 3 languages: Filipino, English, and Japanese.
日本では、観光地を除いて、外国人を見かけることが稀で、みんな必要性を感じないのでしょう。また、日本の英語教育は座学ばかりで、英語話者と対話する機会が非常に少ないのが原因だと考えます。
そうですね
In Spain I don't have a lot of chances to talk with native speakers while I was in school
Perhaps, Japanese should NOT bother to try. Let people learn English on their own. Americans are taught other languages, but also fail as it is not needed to learn other languages in the United States. English is the most spoken language in the world, I believe. If a language is required for employment, it will occur.
School is a terrible place to learn a language anyway. It doesn't matter how good a school's English curriculum is if the students forget it once the bell rings and they step out of school. I was terrible at English in middle school, but after just one year of immersing myself playing single player video games in English and watching 4 hours worth of videos from English-speaker youtubers everyday, I was able to breeze through English classes getting perfect scores almost every time. The brain likes to be very efficient with memory, so it gets rid of useless information like a language one does not use. Use it or lose it.
@@mkaestnEnglish is the most known language, but if you only count native speakers, Mandarin would be in the lead.
I am married to a Japanese woman as a non-Japanese.
If I would not speak any Japanese, I would not be able to talk to any of her family. My wife also speaks English, but aside from that, no one of her family speaks English.
In fact, if she is tired she is mostly too tired to even talk English and talks to me in Japanese (which is no problem because I understand it)
In rural Nagano, when we married, they never even had a foreigner register his marriage to a Japanese there.
And I totally understand why they would not bother to learn English. Because you never need English in your entire life in Japan. You have everything there, so why even bother to learn a language you never need in your life?
In my own country (Germany) it is also the same.
Of course, you have people like me or her who grew up internationally or studied abroad but the majority is not like that. the majority is like many of my relatives who are not even interested in eating any foreign food nor even bother about any other language.
And they also would never need English in their entire life, they learned English but never used afterwards. I also learned Japanese from young age out of interest, not because I would have needed that in any way. A lot is more depending on the motivation I think...
I worked for a Fujitsu, and Okidata in USA, my home country. We had Japanese liaison officers peppered through our company, To midwife the directives of the company from higher-ups in Japan.
These workers were limited, or limiting themselves, to 3 years maximum working in the United States .
One of the more English fluent and open Japanese colleagues told me that if they became too fluent in English and Western culture, they would be seen as different when they returned to Japan.
In the American idiom that would be seen as "going native". He said being too enthusiastic about adopting Western languages and styles could be detrimental to their career once they return to Japan. Being different is not cool.
Being different is not cool. There, I said it again.
He went so far as to say that being too different could earn someone a 'window desk'. That is a desk that is outside the window, therefore outside of the building. It meant irrelevant to the process of the company, like Cold storage. Horrifying!
Seeing that children and young people even in America will pick on others who are "different", being proficient at English while others struggle, could be the social equivalent of bad body odor or bad breath, or bad manners .
Who would want that? Only those with an iconoclastic or a visionary Spirit. Those who see themselves more as a member of the human race than as a member of Japanese society.
The English problem is a manifestation of the Japanese self-concept.
If everyone in Japan, at the wave of a magic wand, were caused, have learned English 'well enough', there would be no problem of difference, and teaching and learning English would not have this social stigma.
On a trip to Okinawa in February I was approached by a small group of boys who were very keen to talk to me in English. Just basic stuff like hello, nice to meet you, how are you. When one of them asked me "Are you from America?" I replied "Australia shu-shin des" and he nearly fell over in shock lol
No wonder, when one suddenly reveils himself as the "Australia chief god"...
@@the_real_glabnurb *reveals
@@the_real_glabnurb that's not what it means lol. idk why google translate does that if you type it in roman characters, but directly putting the syllables into japanese characters comes out with オーストラリアしゅしんです. Try putting that in google translate
@@soundbeverage3964 Yes, I was just facetious.
But google machine translation autocorrects "shushin" or "shu-shin" to "shusshin" しゅっしん (出身).
I had the same experience with Japanese exchange students at my university.
Me: "Oh, so we are you from?"
Them: "Japan!"
Me: "Hontouni!?" (I'm at my keyboard so won't bother with the kanji/kana...)
Dude just looked at me, stunned.
0:50 Americans do very little to advance English education in America, why would they bother in Japan
Learning English doesn't mean giving up your mother tongue, it means opening the door to the world. I'm from Austria, don't speak English very well and don't like US and UK culture very much. I also speak Italian. But I do not speak French, Spanish, Russian, Ukrainian, Swedish, Arabic, Hebrew, Greek, Mandarin, Japanese and all the other languages. English gave us the tool to communicate. And don't come with theoretical considerations of using another language because no other language has an even similar spread like English. Or tell me which language and, most importantly, find an agreement with all the other people who refuse English. I'm waiting and observing the argument.
I agree. Thank you for your great insights.
Monolinguals (people who only speak one language) are in the minority. Most of the world's population can speak more than one language. That fact surprised me...
Africa, India and most of Europe kind of make it unavoidable
@@southcoastinventors6583 South East Asia too
In South America people "try" to speak English but barely can ... like in Japan.
@@Mobik_ Sad part is Spanish is so easy compared to Japanese for English speaker to learn but most never to bother to learn even if they live there.
Anglophones have no incentive to learn another language. Which one should we pick?
Simply because the U.S. and other Western countries are no longer attractive to the Japanese. English education in Japan has definitely improved over the past few decades, but the reason why Japanese people's English skills are not improving is because they lack the motivation to study English. If they had the motivation, they would study English on their own, no matter how bad the English education is, e.g., moving to the U.S. or being interested in American culture, etc. However, there are not many Japanese who have a yearning for the U.S. when they see the U.S. today. And Japanese subculture has become so strong that it has surpassed American culture, and Japanese people are no longer interested in Western music, movies, etc. It is obvious from the Japanese music charts that 10 years ago, about 10 percent of the music was Western music, but now not a single song is on the charts. In contrast, the popularity of the Korean language is growing in Japan, despite the fact that Korean is not a compulsory language in Japan, probably due to the influence of Kpop, etc. Unfortunately, the U.S. does not have the soft power like Kpop.
And being in Western culture doesn't mean having to know English. Most popular books and media are translated.
@@Thindorama
i think this is disingenuous, a lot of money needs to be kind of poured into translation efforts, and they commonly snowball into apprectiation for the country
yes in the past it was a nice thing to like anime in the USA, and it all came down to tapes translated by people with poor understanding of english, japanese, or the concepts of translation
now however, more americans are learning japanese than ever before
not more than japanese people learning english, but the ROI for an anglophone to study japanese is tiny and consists mostly of helping other anglophones that don't know japanese
this could be part of the phenomenon, that as demand increases for translation, so do the job prospects in translation, so learning japanese just starts being a better idea
@@aiocafea translation works just fine for most people. Same in my country France, even some people who are super interested in US movies and series don't speak English very good because they can access them translated.
It is the same in my country in Hungary everybody says we speak badly, and a lot of people don’t speak in any foreign languages. My english is bad, but I’m not interested to learn to speak or write better. if we can choose I’d prefer to learn a neighburing countries’ language a slavic language or something for fun, but everybody is forcing this ** english😮💨I’m lacking any motivation. I will never go abroad to work, just not interested.
In addition to the comments by others here, you also forget that Korean is a lot closer gramatically and lingustically so much easier to learn. The biggest irony is that as they continue to shrink in population, they'll inevitably has less and less of an active, internal population to depend on (old people are not as productive) and external influences are likely to dominate at some point, especially on the youth. The time isn't now, but it's coming.
New viewer here-
unusually good for someone with 100 subscribers. I wish you a rapid growth
Thank you very much for your support. We really appreciate it.
I hadnt even noticed until I read your comment, yeah!
Wow, yeah I expected this guy to at least have a few thousand, maybe tens of thousands. I think that goal is pretty reasonable for such a quality channel though.
1:09 japan knowing more English than mexico is impressive
Yes, that was a bit unexpected. Thank you for your comment.
Not that much if you know Mexico.
This is a mostly poor country and even in big cities there aren't as much people who know English because public schools don't teach it for some unknown reason.
The only ones who are teaching English are private schools and their level is hilariously poor.
I went to private schools most of my life and every single year we went back to "learn" the *to be* verb.
You only actually learn English in specialized (and quite expensive) language schools.
For my part, I learned everything I know from videogames and books.
Private schools are a scam in many ways.
Pretty surprising considering they share a border and some people plan to cross that border.
Mexican-American here, English is taught here, although not good enough- during middle school and highschool the English teachers would repeat the same lection all 6 years (granted, it was mostly due to my classmates never learning it as the should have done in the first place, and of course it was "el verbo to-be" and pronouns), I never learned anything new despite having a 7 year old's English level at the time and even then I had to correct them at times. And during Highschool I ranked higher than all of the English teachers in some Chinese app that teaches English (like what?)
This was my personal experience in a city of 900 thousand, during 2014-2020 in public schools
As people mentioned the public school system is very bad at teaching English. In order to have a chance you need to be in a private school, and have a lot of interaction with English communities and media. Money tackles it a bit, and the other bit is about you having the opportunities or pushing yourself to interact with the English side of the world. Usually only people on the border have the need to do this.
As I told an young American, possibly an Army youth, about his Japanese girlfriend - the crappier her English is, the better your Japanese is going to be.
🤭
Most Japanese don't need to speak English if they don't travel abroad
They will be outbred soon, and replaced
@@cooliipie And it'll be their own fault for allowing that to happen.
@@echelon2k8
Honestly they don't have much of a choice. The elderly say they had around eight siblings, and that the youth should have more babies, yet they themselves only had one child.
@@cooliipie Yeah, contraceptives weren't as popular as they were back then as they are now and bringing up their large families back then didn't cost nearly as much as bringing up our small families today. I'm thinking this was intentional... a sort of social Darwinism if you like to make sure that those at the top get to keep everything how they want it while it benefits them while the majority of everyone else who gets in their was slowly goes extinct. What a fun time to be alive, huh.
Frankly I am glad the less people that know English the more I get to practice Japanese, plus what is the Spanish proficiency of non-spanish immigrants in the US for balance.
Because Japan has always had its own entertainment industry. Yes, American entertainment has always been popular in Japan, but we would have enough entertainment made in Japanese even without American ones and also we have most of the American entertainment translated into Japanese whereas in other minor countries with minor languages, they won’t have their own translated version….
I was born and raised in Japan during the 60's and 70's, gratuated high school in 1977 San Francisco, went back o Japan in the 21st century to find that English literacy hadn't progressed much among the general populace much in the intervening 40 years. Sure there were more proficient English speakers due to the number of returning foreign student program participants, but as a whole, English was still an enigma to most Japanese.
I was based in San Francisco, silicon valley, at the time (1975) and was told that translation programming would take at least 10 years. Here I am am 40 years later and still continuing my preferred profession.
Even with LLM becoming prominent, I expect interpreters will be be job secure for the next 20 years
proud to know English on a fluent level and living in a country that has a low proficiency on that language
well done!
Good job :)
+100 aura
how disgusting
🤝
I remember when I was in college in Japan, I asked my friend whether or not he was interested to go abroad, and he said that that’s experience doesn’t give any positive impact for him to get a good job in Japan 😅
If he never go to Paris, he'll never get Paris syndrome 😂
Well, he is right. Traveling sucks. Why do it ? Just for the sake of pleasing society that is obsseded woth " traveling" ? I hate traveling sooo much, still I learning English pretty well and now I am studying Japanese. Will I ever go to Japan ? Not until teleportation will be invented.
@@MrDragos360I agree. “Traveling” and the tourism industry is awful and overrated by wider society. I’d rather stay home.
@@tsurugi5 travelling is fun lol, there isnt mountain as tall as K2 in Japan. You found it in Pakistan. Not to mention learning about different culture etc, Japanese have lot of purchasing power. So why not?
My wife and I were approached in Hiroshima last year by a student who wished to practise her English, but that was the only experience of this. In China, however, we found much more interest in speaking English.
I had the same experience. In China, it is easier to find people who wish to practice their English. They seem more eager to engage with foreigners. Thank you for your comment.
But even in China the interest is falling.
In my 11 years in Japan, I have met a couple of Japanese people who teach English in middle/high schools. One thing most of them have in common is that their English ability is extremely low to the point that they are not capable of holding simple everyday conversations in English. Imagine a math teacher who has no clue about math, everyone would be outraged. However, English teachers who don't speak English is not uncommon in Japan.
I also know a couple of Japanese people who speak English fluently. Most of them have good careers.They make way more money than they would if they became English teachers. There is very little to no incentive for them to consider teaching English an option.
I doubt Japan can increase its English proficiency unless it can get people who are actually fluent in English to teach, but then again people who are fluent have better options available. It's a vicious circle and I have no idea how Japan can fix it besides offering qualified English teachers who are actually proficient in English way more money.
There are other problems too, but this one seems pretty big to me.
Academic language study is like math, a study of fascinating data structures and puzzle systems that are meant to be savored without the need for any concrete context. Unfortunately that perspective is not so motivating to most outside of academia. It doesn’t equate to skilled fluency.
If they really don't need it or don't like it, why learn it? Most countries proficient in English are developing countries or countries who are in close relations with Anglo countries.
If there's no real incentive to learn something, one won't put the effort to do it. No matter the teaching methods used.
In my case, I learned English because I loved American pop culture back in the day, the movies, the music, the literature. I love the way the language works and sounds. But most people don't like English. They see it as a boring tool they need to learn.
This is what makes them quite challenging to teach (I can tell you this as a former English teacher). Now, I don't want to imagine what it's like to teach English to students who don't even NEED it.
To answer your question, to break the scientific barrier. It's really important, the global scientific standard language is now English. It was Latin a long time ago, but now by knowing English, you can work anywhere in the world in any field. If you know Japanese, you can only work in Japan, or in the Japanese field abroad.
Don't you want kids to have the best chance possible at success? I'm sure this is what these educators are thriving for.
この語るけどまだ自分は日本語お自習するだ。。。😅
Finally someone that understands why foreigners complaining about japanese people not knowing english is stupid. If people are not willing to adapt to the local culture, then they should not go and complain.
I'm American and I agree with you. People should only learn English if they want to. I'm learning Japanese and that's because I want to. If we excpect other Japanese to learn English should us Americans have programs to learn Japanese as well?
has nothing to do with anglo countries tho.
if youre finnish and you want to talk to italians, what are you gonna do?
then the fin meets a portuguese, and again what are you gonna do?
english is the common language we use to connect everyone.
@@khaoscerothey use English because they're so incredibly Americanised.
I studied for a year in Japan and also spent a few years there teaching English. I've now been an ESL teacher in Australia, teaching Japanese students for almost a decade and they often do become proficient here. I think there are 2 big issues Japan needs to look at.
1. Secondary (and to an extent tertiary) education in Japan is a farce. It's based on passing tests with high marks, and not on being able to use the information they've learned. Many Japanese people struggle to remember ANY topic they've studied after they've crammed for their exams. It's not just English. Japanese students are taught to parrot facts, not think or develop opinions, and you can't learn a language this way.
2. Japan is still quite xenophobic. It's one of the most homogeneous cultures in the world and there is an often stated concern that young people becoming too interested in foreign culture would be damaging to Japan. The textbooks, as an example, are attempting to use Japanese culture to interest students but as you said, this makes no sense. I think the older generation (and the government) would prefer Japanese students to grow into good workers than to become fascinated with another country and move away. We can see this with the constant propaganda in Japan about how dangerous every other country is and how good and safe and special Japan is.
I really think these deeper issues are important reasons language (and other parts of education) aren't working in Japan.
You're absolutely right about secondary education in Japan. It's very difficult to learn a language in a such an environment. Thank you for your insights.
I ate to admit it, but I absolutely agree, especially with your first point.
Japanese schools and students could benefit, and I mean REALLY benefit immensely with more frequent foreign exchange programs and sister-city school trips.
How prominent the mindset of safe and special Japan is... hurts me everytime. "Nihonjin ron"or the theiry of the uniqueness of Japan is detrimental to education in general in Japan and does no favors for English Education.
That bit by the end is exactly what I learned all those years ago when one single teacher made me fall in love with English, when I hated it because I was forced to go to classes.
I agree that teachers play a key role in students' enthusiasm for language learning. I experienced something similar with the foreign languages that I have learned over the past decade. Thank you for your comment.
The bottom line is that the Japanese are a hyper insular nation, not only geographically but also culturally, mentally: they really have a massive problem with anything foreign. Bear in mind that the country was almost 100% closed to contacts with foreigners between the 1620s and the 1860s, under very heavy penalties. My opinion is that the country has never really recovered from this Sakoku period. The first obstacle to their learning any foreign language is that deep seated discomfort with all things foreign. That said, I fully appreciate that foreign tourists ought to be aware that “this is not their place” and they have no right to demand to be served in English. So many tourists are just arrogant and this only reinforces the Japanese isolationistic attitude. As always, there will be no solution without good will and benevolence on both sides. My Japanese is rather basic and it’s especially tricky in izakayas and food outlets, with lots of kanjis that I can hardly read but I am usually met with benevolence when the locals see that I’m trying my best and realize I’m aware that “I’m just a guest” and I’m not entitled.
True! I think the native English speakers should also be encouraged to learn a foreign language in their lifetime.
@@Miraihi Yes, definitely! I'm not a native English speaker but I am fluent and/or conversational in several foreign languages and I am invariably dumbfounded at how self-centred and culturally insensitive most Anglophones are. Learning at least one foreign language would go a long way towards making them more open-minded and aware of other cultures. P.S.: Miraihi-san wa Nihon-jin desu ka?
@@yagi3925 I'm not Japanese, just have a Japanese nickname :D Written in kanji as 未来飛
@@Miraihi Thanks for the reply. Allright, 未来飛 is fine: I'm familiar with all 3 kanjis🙂
Gee I wonder why they really don’t give a shit about foreign things. Could it be them seeing the British drugging the Chinese in the Opium wars? The French Invading Southeast Asia? The Russian Empire trying to take Chinese and Korean Territory? Them being fucked over 3 times? I wonder. 🤔 It’s not discomfort, it’s disdain. Japan practiced the same ideals the West put in place when they invaded the Korean Empire in 1910. It’s not never really recovered, it’s not wanting a shit guest to come back. Most Asian countries are ethnocentric and there’s nothing wrong with that. They will consider your opinions but it’s not a requirement for them to follow it because why should they?
When I was in Japan even around the Narita airport, almost nobody could speak English. I learned a bit of Japanese, wish I had time for more. In Thailand, Hong Kong, or the Philippines - no problem, English everywhere.
I'm a Japanese high school student and I love learning English. But my friends are always surprised when I say "I love English"😂
This is my biggest hurdle with the language divide.
I have been living on tokyo for 2 years and whenever i meet someone knew i usually strat off in japanese and the transition to English ao they can get some practice.
They usually crumble within yhe first 2 phrases and usually give up.
I have to keep telling them ( how do you expect to get better if you dont practice and male mistakes) which usually falls on dead ears. But its refreshing to finally hear someone explain this issue
I feel like natives and proficient speakers of English forget how notoriously difficult and non-sensical this language can sometimes get. I too hated English when I had to learn it in school, but my mother insisted that I learn it, I encountered it on the Internet, as there isn’t much qualitative content in my native language, and it had some common Indo-European words and Romance borrowings. However, the Japanese have almost everything stranslated in their language, they are culturally closed as a country, and they sometimes have better content than the rest of the world. I am studying Japanese and I can tell that, though I wouldn’t necessarily call it hard, it is a very different language in all aspects compared to English or any other Indo-European language. So learning English for a Japanese speaker would require twice or thrice the effort I had to put in. I’ve heard that those who speak English in Japan are those who have lived for a while before in English speaking countries (mostly Australia) and those who exchange culture and/or religion with the outside world, such as geishas, Buddhist monks etc.
The way i learned english and japanese to some extent is because i like playing video games, and back in the day there was little to no games translated to my language, so i had the necessity to learn if i wanted to keep playing some games. Many games are made by english speaking developers, be it in north america or europe, however japan is also big in the video-game market so there is little need for them to learn another language. I think it comes down to "need", there is little incentive to do so.
Most games still aren't translated many just like dubs are terribly inaccurate or worse change the character personality to western standards, bleh.
yeah. games, movies, shows, even back in the day websites without translation tools etc entire communities online
@@khaoscero yeah, i said games because it was my motivation, but japan is also a powerhouse for media in general, there is not much motive to learn english aside from the obligatory tests or like a hobby.
@@southcoastinventors6583 yes that is true in some cases but i think that the changes during localization or localization of media in general needs an entire topic for itself.
@@zegroselia2504 That one of the reasons I bothered to learn that and the music.
Integrating english into kindergarden or elementary school would be ideal since the younger you are the more easy it is to acquirer a language.
I agree -- fortunately, the Japanese government has been gradually warming up to this idea. But, thus far, only the more affluent regions of the country (such as Minato ward in Tokyo) have had the budget to implement these changes.
In China, kids start to learn English in pre-school.
Yes, bilingual kindergartens gained popularity in the early 2000s. In China, those with the financial means generally prefer to send their kids to a bilingual pre-school. Here in Japan this trend has been slowly picking up in the past decade.
Would be better if they make people who visit Japan learn some Japanese.
It may not be that simple. I have heard some Japanese youtubers, who teach English to their audiences, talk about the trauma and stress the Japanese children experience since the government's decision to require English to be a mandatory subject in the grade school education. If I remember it correctly, the majority of kids experience anxiety in English classes. They narurally end up hating English.
Filipinos for example never learn English from just school we also watch and listen to English Music and Movies. English is a language that needs time to develop you need to have understanding from the informal and formal way of communication. How to read, write, listen and speak fluently at the same time.
There are 4 basic skills of a languange. Skills of reading, Listening which was back then considered passive and Writing and Speaking are considered as Active skills since it is the most obvious one.
But neither of all 4 skills are being developed in the Japanese Educational system. Neither of them can understand a simple phrase.
Yes, your insights are spot on. Only by developing all four basic skills (reading, writing, speaking, and listening) will students be able to really master the language. But generally emphasis is placed on the "active" skills rather than the passive ones, even thought all four are equally important. This is a problem with language education throughout the world, not just in Japan.
And yet Filipino students fail when it comes to comprehension, according to PISA results.
50+ years of American occupation after the Spanish also helped us Filipinos exchange cultures and language. The Americans also gave us higher education and built in top of basic education that the Spanish gave us.
Our medium of instruction are now all in English and speaking English is seen as a rich person thing here.
Primarily because back when only the rich could afford to go to school. So if you speak good English, you are seen as educated and smart.
At least, unlike most English speaking nations, the Japanese don’t expect foreigners to speak their language. Compared to their neighbours, the British suck at foreign languages, and Americans will usually at best be proficient in Spanish, and only if they are Latino and use the language in their family.
The unwillingness to learn a foreign language is never a good sign, even if you can benefit from your mother tongue being the most widespread second language across the world. Being actually interested and open to other cultures is not the same thing as communicating with everybody else in English. It’s when you make an effort yourself, and don’t rely on others to do so, that it becomes credible.
I was motivated to learn foreign languages by travelling abroad, and by taking an interest in the pop culture of the language. I find it rewarding and inspiring to try and learn a new language.
Didn't he start the video talking about how an Izakaya owner said that people should be expected to know Japanese in Japan?
by foreigners you must mean westerner cause if your asian looking they expect japanese to come out your mouth.
A good reason is that Japan is very homogenous, thus they don't expect anyone who doesm't know Japanese to speak Japanese. Multicultural countries they expect everyone of all ethnicities to be able to speak local language
That's how companies in Japan don't run out of corporate slaves 😅
No new ideas. Fall in line, and don't pay attention to the funny Americans out the window.
At this rate it is more like corporate senior citizens
this is a global economy and Japan has been stagnant for decades. They can choose to remain insular, but learning English isn't to simply "pollute their culture" and consume western media, learning English is a competitive advantage to the employees at their companies that want to remain competitive on a global stage.
Like it or not, English is the lingua franca of the business and scientific world. Look at what is currently happening with AI and large language models. While they have language translation built in, all of the most powerful LLMs were trained primarily in English, because that's the language that dominates the internet, business and science.
If Japan doesn't care about continuing to stagnate and fall behind the rest of the world in global competitiveness, they can ignore English. Otherwise, they should try to be more like the Europeans, who have high English proficiency as a second language that is used for international business and allow them to keep up with science and technology. They still speak their local language primarily, and maintain their own local cultural identity.
Exactly. Learning English doesn't mean embracing American culture or values. It provides an opportunity to better communicate with others in an international setting. Most scientists around the world prefer to publish their research in English to reach a larger audience. It is possible to keep your local language and customs while, at the same time, learning English as a second language to be more competitive on the world stage.
@@ShiroiVieAlso, English is the lingua franca of the Internet. Not knowing English is a big handicap to your potential, even if you never plan to travel.
Also, I can't imagine being, say, a programmer and not knowing English. Not only are the vast majority of resources for most modern programming languages overwhelmingly in English, but most calls and functions in many of the common ones use English words/phrases or abbreviations. I can't imagine trying to learn Python, JavaScript, or a C-based programming language without at least a decent understanding of English
As an English teacher in Japan for nearly a decade now I completely agree with this video. While the lack of motivation to learn a foreign language might be the reason for the lack of fluent people among the adults I've noticed that even motivated children don't really learn English that quickly over here. Granted I only have cursory experience in teaching in my native country (and I never taught young children) so it might just be my misunderstanding. I think it's more that English and Japanese are basically the opposite grammatically which makes learning it quite a bit more difficult for someone who's first language is Japanese...
You’re right 👍
But it’s “whose”, not “who’s”.
Consider that Italian is really different from English, but it’s not hard task really to learn English at least on a written level and on a rough pronunciation level.
It’s extremely easy because most of the words don’t even have a conjugation. They just work in every situation with extremely simple rules
@@jacopomalatesta4913italian and english are at least both indo-european languages, the difference between English and Japanese is much bigger.
@@cescobb4647 English grammar is pretty different from the Italian one. But it’s piss easy anyways. I don’t see why someone might have a hard time learning it at a written level. (Pronunciation is a whole other cup of tea, because English fucking sucks on that aspect)
My current line of work brings me to talk to a lot if people who don't speak my native language (Italian) except from a small handful of words, usually said badly. Japanese are one of the few people who know the words well, which is no small feat since words can have very complicated sounds in my language. It also helps that the English words I have to use are also used in Japanese - they usually understand me immediately, unlike French people or Germans (which is stupid because THEIR words are often one sound away from the English counterparts but apparently that's enough trouble that I have to switch to German)
13:47 Oh I saw this while waiting at Kyoto station! A group of high school boys went around looking for foreigners and they asked questions like how long I was staying, what I was most excited to see, and what my favourite Japanese meal was. I would have been so embarrassed to do that when I was in high school, so I thought it was pretty cool!
This idea seems to be catching on among educators. Hopefully this will also provide students with more confidence in interacting with foreigners in English. Thank you for your comment.
Keys to learning languages are You have to feel the necessity of language desperately. For example, when I was young, my hobby was playing lots of flash games and reading English websites in 2004.
I wanted to read instructions so bad. I've searched English words and sentences in a search engine. That's how you start learning. Not having a grand goal, nor the scholarship archivement
In my personal experience the best way to learn English is to consume media and to have a genuine curiosity about the language. But I'm not taking about media created for the purpose of teaching English, but rather stuff that simply happen to be relatively easy to consume like movies and comics.
But at the end of the day the best resource for learning the language ended up being the internet, you kinda need to speak (or more accurately be able to read and write even if you can't actually speak it) English in order to communicate with the larger international community online.
BTW I'm just now learning that Argentina has a relatively good ranking in English proficiency, I guess that makes sense with the number of people I personally know here that know enough English to read books written in it, but I should point out that in almost every case it tends to be people that reached university level education and it's very commonly focused on understanding English rather than speaking it, our pronunciation tends to be awful. There's a certain culture in uni where professors will recommend reading material in its original language whenever possible because most perceive translations to be sub-par, and quite often the original will be written in English. I wonder if it's related to us speaking a dialect of Spanish that's noticeably different from what the rest of Latin America speaks and thus finding translations made somewhere else to be kinda awkward, at least that tends to be the reason why so many people here prefer subtitles to dubs.
Culturally speaking I think it’s just really hard to expect Japanese to understand or be fluent in English due to the stark differences in grammar. That probably explains why the Chinese are so good at English despite it being a foreign language due to the massive amount of similarities between the two languages.
Massive similarities between Mandarin Chinese and English? Those being? Fuck are you on about lmao
@@anonymousbloke1Word order and basic grammar rules are pretty similar between English and Chinese. It becomes more complicated the more you learn, but the basics are easy enough to grasp
@@andriuhee2710 from what little I've seen of Chinese grammar it looks nothing like English, at all.. Maybe the word order (which is almost the same in most languages) and the fact neither Chinese nor English have exactly "hard" grammar structures, but everything about Chinese is weird, fucked up and very unlike any European language. Tones, Hanzi, politeness forms etc.
@@anonymousbloke1 as a native Chinese speaker, can confirm English is much easier to learn than most other Germanic or Latin languages due to the word order and relative lack of inflection and conjugation. English is still difficult, but after learning other European languages it becomes evident why English is a global language.
Korean is quite similar to Japanese grammatically, but they do better at studying English.
Any country that has a critical enough mass of people to support themselves on just their domestic economy are going to find it hard to convince people to learn a foreign language, because it's unnecessary. Show me one country with over 100 million people where the majority can speak a foreign language decently or are bilingual/multilingual. If anything, the larger your population is, the more prideful you will become of your own language and its "exceptionalism" (sound familiar to Americans out there?). This is not just a Japan "problem".
well Germany 84 million and decently good at it. and thats with them having access to austria and switzerland too for business. but I hear you, big countries have a tendency to become nationalistic - china and the US same symptoms.
Of course HK is very good at english and technically China unfortunately, historical reasons but yeah. Same as india and PH of course historical reasons.
@@khaoscero
your reply made me realise that of course big Nations tend to become nationalistic, how quickly will someone from inner mongolia see themselves as closely related to someone from hong kong?
@@aiocafea yeah well in big countries you have strong nationalism but as the states themselves become bigger there is so much diversity they also become tribal against each other. I mean rural vs urban you have everywhere but yeah almost every big countries has these states that hate other states and such
so it depends on the context, when its internal conflict they diverge but if its external conflict they converge
Exacly. People criticise France for not speaking English but the country is large enough to work by itself.
@@augthit's America who should adopt French, not the other way around lol. English to the French is a foreign language like any other, there's zero reasons to giving it so much privileges.
My wife is Japanese but learnt English in Australia. Only 25% of Japanese have passports. Japan is very homogenous in its culture. They feel no need to speak English. They are happy to just be Japanese. In the west we feel like we should impose English speaking on everyone because it makes it easier for us. I’m learning Japanese - and it’s one of the hardest languages to learn. Conversely, so is English for Japanese.
Nobody is imposing English on everyone. Standardizing on one language for communication internationally is just a lot more efficient than everyone learning everyone else's language, particularly niche languages like Japanese which are pretty much only spoken in a single country. Either everyone could learn a second language or everyone could learn a couple of hundred extra languages to communicate with everyone else in the world. The choice is pretty clear.
@@Taladar2003English isn't a neutral choice, choosing it means that it'll be much easier for native English speakers to get by internationally, giving them an unfair advantage, it also benefits the Anglosphere, especially the US, by giving their media inherently a much greater voice than media of any other countries, morals, cultural norms, media genres and ideas specific to the US or UK become exported worldwide, sometimes surpassing the local native cultures, on top of that English has an even worse role in former colonies like Kenya, where the usage of the foreign colonial language makes them become more and more as Europeans, instead of continuing the legacy of the pre colonial cultures, some nations have their culture and identity completely destroyed in favor of an Anglo one, specifically Ireland, Scotland, New Zealand, Hawaii, the Lakota Nation and the Ojibwe Nation. The same criticisms are true for Russian and that's why post-Soviet states chose to restrict its usage and promote the local languages instead. The same should be ideally done for English, it's far from being a neutral, merely practical tool.
How many people in Australia know a foreign language and watch any media from non English speaking countries ? In practise Anglo countries are just as isolated and homogeneous as the Japanese, but because their culture is the dominant and privileged ones, and seen automatically as the default, they don't even realise that. In my opinion it makes total sense for the Japanese not to adapt English because they'll refuse to participate in that linguistic hierarchy altogether, because they'll inevitably lose and will never be able to outcompete America and the English-speaking world, therefore ending up infinitely more influenced by them than they are by them. Look at post colonial nations that speak English a lot, like the Philippines. What do you think is the result ? The Filipinos becoming more influenced by US and Anglo culture or the US becoming more influenced by Filipino culture?
@@Taladar2003You're completely wrong. English wouldn't even be considered the "global language" if it wasn't imposed on everyone. Ask all the Africans whether they chose to speak English. Ask all the Native Americans and Australian Aboriginals their thoughts on why most of them don't speak their own language anymore.
@@gamermapper The Soviet Union already had the concept of korenizatsiya where the local languages were taught and held equal footing when dealing with bureaucrats
I will try the aerobics English! That really surprised me.
I will also give it a shot. It was so hilarious, I almost peed in my pants watching the salarymen.
Indeed, this scene was quite unique.
You're sooooo good!
Maybe you could make your own sentences while you dance, like "I'm running to the bathroom so I don't 💩 my pants." 🤸🕺
@@themechanictangerine You have a great sense of humor!😂
1:17 To be honest, I'm more surprised that Thailand, a place known for tourism, is down in the very low proficiency list.
Ikr, I'm Thai myself and I say ain't no way we are lower than Japanese.
Old people maybe. But from millennials onward, I've seen no one with internet access, Urban or rural who isn't at least know enough to communicate brokenly.
Urban people, RUclipsrs or tv stars, even focusing on local audiences, able to understand some english in games and form understandable sentences.
While I facepalm at many educated Japanese jumbling words and unable to play games without japanese setting at all.
Maybe it's using a standard test? That case, we sucked at doing exams properly. Broken English isn't going to score.
About two years ago, I worked at a warehouse in Australia and there were a lot of Thai women working there. Many came to Aus by themselves, but also, many who had married Aussie men and then come across. Most of these women, both the singles and the married, could barely speak any English at all. And like many Asians do, they pretty much all lived in their own communities and only spoke their native tongue outside of work, so their English never improved, in fact, their English was often better (although still minimal) when they first arrived in Aus, because they had at least tried learning English before coming to Aus, but stopped trying to learn it as soon as they arrived and moved into their Thai communities, and realised they could live a decent life in Aus without speaking English.
I live with Koreans now, and many of them are exactly the same: close to zero English, they work for Korean companies, attend a Korean church, have only Korean friends. Don't need to learn English.
I work with a lot of Cambodians, and their English is pretty good, and they are actively working hard to improve it. They told me their motivation is to date white women - and you can't rizz a woman properly if you can't speak her language.
Speaking of being allergic to other languages...
Cue the bald eagle flying overhead with the way overused bird of prey sound effect...
Great point! Thank you for your comment.
I think there’s a lot of disinterest in learning English as a second language for Japanese.
1/ English is taught very boringly in school, making it a subject to memorize instead of learning.
2/ Little interaction to English-speaking natives, the only places where you’d find them are the touristy spots.
3/ Lack of Western media consumption, almost everyone who learn English as a second language did so because they have a Hollywood movie they want to watch in its original form.
4/ Japan has a very strong entertainment industry that produces their own shows and anime that could rival and surpass Western media, so there is little need to learn English when your favorite show is domestic and even imported ones are translated and dubbed over to Japanese. (Example: Genshin Impact, Helldivers 2, etc.)
5/ In everyday interaction you don’t need to learn English as the machines you interact with, your boss, your friends and colleagues are all Japanese or speak fluent Japanese to some extent.
Motivation is key when learning a language. It's as simple as that.
I am from China and your view on English learning in China is on the spot. I think that another important factor is the 2008 Summer Olympics, which increased public awareness of English education. Although I haven't found any statistics, from personal experience the attention English received in primary and secondary education increased significantly after Beijing won the bids, as all major cities were preparing for opening to the world for the first time in decades. Before 2001, English was not taught until Year 7 (age 12-13), but was brought forward to Year 3 (age 8-9) after 2001. When I started school in 2002, my school offered English lessons at the very beginning in Year 1 (age 6-7). However, as China's economic growth slowing down in recent years, the enthusiasm for English is also declining. I have already seen school children these days having less English instruction at school than I did when I was at their age and pupils with disadvantaged backgrounds are particularly vulnerable. The decline of English proficiency among college students is also very concerning.
In terms of English in Japan, there is something very weird going on. The problem is not in Japanese attitudes towards English but in their own language. In the past 20 years, the amount of loanwords in Japanese of English origin (which are written in katakana) has exploded. I am not talking about popular usage like in informal settings and marketing only. In fact, many are related to concepts in social sciences and social issues. Even if the native speakers are quite resistant to foreign media, the culture is still coming in. And some people are very critical of this trend because scholars in the mid-to-late 19th century had tried very hard to localise Western concepts and now Japanese is still being "polluted". Katakana words can also be very long and hard to understand, especially for the elderly. Interestingly, non-native speakers of Japanese tend to avoid these words whenever possible regardless of their native language. You may assume that a native English speaker will find kanji harder, but they actually prefer kanji to katakana words as well when they get better in Japanese. Professor Colin P.A. Jones of Doshisha University Law School, who is American, said that he did so because he will never be able to pronounce these words in the "Japanese way". If non-native speakers are using a more conservative form of Japanese than native speakers do, then this "new" thing probably really has something wrong with it and only multilingualism will make people more aware of this problem. I don't know if this can be a turning point in English education in Japan.
Let me explain from a Japanese perspective...
I think there are mainly 7 reasons.
(1) Linguistically distant
(2) Japan's culture and economy are large, and the high percentage of domestic demand means that there is little need to speak English (I think this is one of the reasons why Chinese people are not good at English).
(3) The Japanese language has a high ability to coin words in katakana and kanji, and can easily incorporate foreign concepts, and predecessors such as Yukichi Fukuzawa translated concepts such as "economy" (many languages cannot create words to express advanced concepts in their own language).
(4) Japan is one of the few countries in the world that was not colonized by the West and did not have a Western language imposed on it.
(5) Japan is an island country, too different from other countries in terms of language, and there is no Schengen Agreement, etc., so the hurdle to foreign countries is high.
(6) Japanese people are introverted and shy.
(7) Tourism was not an important industry (until the past).
I think these are the main reasons.
Yes, and we could also add that teaching methods need to be revamped. Thank you for your insights.
Just as Japanese people do not know any famous English-speaking people, they have few opportunities to come into contact with overseas content, and even if they learn English, they rarely have the opportunity to use it.
There is only one way to learn languages effectively and efficiently: through massive inputs. Unfortunately a schools is really not the ideal environment for students to get hundreds of hours of language inputs, be it in japan or in any other country.
But it does work in lots of countries
yup. The main reason for learning a language is to get access to something, like culture, opportunities, a certain community, travel, etc. But Japan is largely self-contained, and has basically everything most people could desire to gain from learning English, so the Japanese spend little time exposed to the English language, and thus suck at speaking it.
Language immersion schooling works pretty well. Not sure if Japanese parents would be too keen on the idea of their kids learning *all* their school subjects in English though
@@JeremyLevi - it wouldn’t work in Japan both from a practical viewpoint, but also wider societal views. There is a common perception in Japan that children should not learn second languages until they have perfected Japanese and that attempting bilingualism confuses children and that they grow up unable to speak either properly.
@@capitalb5889 Oh I'm certainly not under any illusion that it would be a popular idea in Japan. More just refuting the statement that "schools is really not the ideal environment for students to get hundreds of hours of language inputs". School can be a framework for that, if approached correctly. It's a model we've used to not insignificant levels of success as an option here in Canada for Anglo parents who are keen for their children to be fluently bilingual in French
Honestly , as a Japanese, I’m scared of using English in public because people make fun of my poor English even though they can’t speak too.
As an English Instructor at a high school and business college, I have to agree with much of what is said here. As far as motivation goes, however, many of my students are learning English because they want to move to another country. I have been teaching off and on for over twenty years and designed a computer video game that teaches English basics, but cannot promote it due to visa restrictions. If the Japanese government wants to promote English it needs to make it easier for us foreigners to do so.
Fortunately Japan's outlook is better than China's. Japan is hailed as a strong but peaceful nation among most of the English speaking world. It's economy is recovering while China's is falling apart. China is known for kidnapping foreign nationals, strong arming other nations (or attempting to do so) and according to many Chinese people I have spoken to back in my home country, is dealing with a rising anger against its own government for its failures. Japan is stable. China is not.
Also, I would add that China isn't great at English either, especially when its government has cracked down on English schools all over the country, making it not only difficult, but downright scary for us to work there.
Thank you very much for your insightful and interesting remarks. China's recent attitude toward English seems to be driven by political forces. When I lived there in the 2000s, the environment was quite different but unfortunately the situation has changed over the past decade. As a result, teaching English in China has lost its allure and led many foreign educators to have second thoughts about pursuing a career there (many are now heading to places such as Taiwan and Vietnam). I also agree that the Japanese government should create better conditions for language teaching and learning. It has been taking baby steps over the past few years. Despite the slow pace, I am optimistic about the changes that lie ahead.
loved the last message, im from south korea and we both share similar cultures, the english education industry in south korea also has a problem but very similar
I wanted to end with a optimistic message. Despite the problems, English education is gradually changing. But it might take a while for its effects to be noticeable. Thank you for your support.
It doesn't help that English is extremely different from Japanese and Korean, making it that much harder to learn. Chinese grammar is actually quite similar to English.
But Korean people score much higher in English tests.
I traveled in Korea and Japan earlier this year and I found that basic English proficiency in Korea was much more common, but in Japan people were very used to tourists and were skilled at using the few words they needed to know for their jobs, like waitresses and train station employees for instance.
Another reason for the decline is that phones have an English translation function. My class of housewives said that overseas, they can find salespersons in stores and restaurants that can speak Japanese.
Two major problems:
1. Due to many factors, it's not easy to learn English.
This is a hot take, but I think there are too many unqualified Westerners who become English teachers in Japan. To begin, I am not saying ALL teachers are bad. In fact, many are great from personal experience. But, the "terrible English teacher who is only interested in fetishizing Japanese culture/people" stereotype does not exist for no reason. Of course, bad teachers aren't the only reason, but I'd wager that other explanations like "they are too scared to make mistakes" aren't unique to Japanese people and every other English learner faces the same problem.
The other major reason is that Japanese and English are very different to begin with, making the problem of unqualified teachers that much more problematic. How is a Japanese student, already burdened by their notoriously stressful Japanese-language curriculum, supposed to be expected to learn a language with a completely different phonology, grammar, vocabulary, structure, and writing system? This is especially when English is not even necessary for daily life- as I will get to later.
2. There is simply no widespread desire or need to learn English.
To comment on the title, it's not an "allergy" to English. That statement assumes that English is a universal language that that all people are supposed to learn and be able to speak proficiently. That is simply wrong- most Japanese do not go about their day to day lives needing English.
Japan's domestic market/economy and internet presence is large enough to the point where Japanese people can live near-entirely without ever watching an English language youtube video, reading an English language book, writing an English language paper, speaking to an English language audience, listening an English-language podcast/song, etc. Especially when it comes to the internet, Japanese people can go about their day to day lives just reading, writing, speaking, and hearing Japanese. Most of the world follows this trend- in other words, it's culturally and economically independent.
Europe is the main exception- their cultural overlap with the US and broader Anglosphere makes knowing English much more desirable and necessary. The average European nation (excluding russia) has around 15 million people- there is simply not enough of a domestic market or audience for a Polish content creator, a Romanian journalist, or a Dutch academic to be financially well-off. As such, they all use English because there is a much larger audience who speaks English and because English serves as a sort of lingua franca in Europe.
Japan, in contrast, has 125 million people. Thus, for all of the above reasons, I think it is fundamentally incorrect for people to assume that Japanese SHOULD be able to speak English in the first place (though it by no means hurts of course, and can definitely open many new pathways).
Its very easy for europeans because english is so basic. You only need to learn the rough shape of the words and thats it.
Everything else is just mindset. Does my Sentence feel retarded? If the Answer is yes, its good enough for spoken word and use in digital writing(if you use basic software to get the words right). Thats why northern Europeans get better in spoken english after some drinks.
You can do the same in Japan, just tell the kids that its a language for the mentally deficiant and they will understand that thinking hard only makes their english worse.
I’m and American and have visited Japan twice. I found it interesting how many people I ran into that had a surface level knowledge of English. It was mostly people in my generation (Z) that were fluent and I could talk with, but other people I met tried their best and were interested in learning about the western world. Maybe it’s the Japanese fascination with the US from our post-war influence, or maybe I just got lucky, but a lot of young Japanese seem interested enough.
Also keep in mind that (a) English is very hard for Japanese people to learn (and vice versa), because they are so different and (b) learning Japanese is pretty much a lifelong exercise even for Japanese people, which means there simply is less time for learning another language entirely.
You're absolutely right -- learning Japanese is a lifelong endeavor. I have been studying it for a few years now and am still far from being fluent. I imagine that Japanese feel the same way about English given the differences between the two languages. Thank you for your comment.
I'm working in a high school this year. I can fully atest to their inability to produce a complete sentence and given I've worked in elementary, jr high and high school now I have some strong opinions as to why that's happening.
Personally, I hate the fact that english is poorly expressive compared to my native language, so I studied french instead. Nowadays, I think learning chinese would also be more valuable to me than english.
With the largest vocab set, your ability to express yourself is limited by how many words you know.
Interesting that you do find French more expressive. Usually any second language or international trade language is going to feel far less expressive than one’s tongue of hearth and home.
True, when I try to translate Hindi songs into English it feels, as if the meaning of it lost in the translation and have become bland. It doesn't give the same feeling. Those deep cutting lines don't even harm you
@@Keskelis Not all languages have vocabulary for the same concepts, as that's a side effect of what a particular culture associated to said language considers important enough to express directly. This is part of the reason why there's loanwords between languages, to express concepts that aren't precisely labeled with matching vocabulary.
It shouldn't be expected from Japanese people to learn English (or from people of any other non-english-speaking country, really, as long as they don't need it for their profession).
Japanese is one of the most difficult languages for English speakers to learn. That's because Japanese and English are not related at all. It shouldn't be a surprise that Japanese people don't excel at English and it shouldn't be forced upon them.
Before English was the dominant language in the world, because of the rise of America as an economic world power, in developing countries like mine previous generations learned French, Italian or even German, but it's always been out of necessity. It's never been about some kind of global inclusion or being able to comunicate with anyone from any country.
Language learning in large is about being able to conduct trade with the more powerful countries. Only in a few cases, it's out of interest for the country's culture, but that comes after the economic influence. English is popular as a second language even when it's not out of necessity because of Hollywood and American cartoons, but Hollywood only became so popular in foreign countries because we could see the prosperity and dreamt of having that lifestyle. Also we were already having trade with the US and being in contact with their products, and being taught English in school. Movies only help perpetuate the already stablished influence of the US; in comparison, almost no one moves to France because of French movies, for example.
So, as you said, Japanese people are lucky in that it's not like they need English while in Japan and that's because they are still the 4th biggest economy in the world and are very independent from other countries' economies. Also, most of them don't have any interest in western culture, in part because the entertainment industry in Japan is very prolific. In fact, their influence through anime in recent years is almost as strong as what Hollywood has achieved, so they don't really have a reason to learn English and shouldn't be forced to in school. It would probably be better if they learnt either Chinese or Korean, since those are two languages more closely related to Japanese, from two economically powerful countries, and a lot of the immigrants in Japan come from east Asian countries.
Also, I don't know why you compare Japan to China here, seeing that the ranking showed in your video has China only a few points ahead of Japan in terms of English proficiency. They're not much better than them and it makes sense, as Chinese is also a language that's not related to English in the slightest and hard for them to learn.
I have worked in different countries teaching English and Russian. Thank you for a well-grounded opinion. But with each person, the reasons will be different. Everything should be taken into account. Acquiring a foreign language as a child doesn't really work with adults but we can take the idea of creating the environment while learning. Another thing is, motivation is truly a number one thing that triggers the process of acquisition. There are many cases discussed in theoretical books trying to explain why some people acquire it better than others. There is NO one answer. My personal point of view is that the main constituents are inner motivation, well-organized process of learning and systematic approach with a lot of practice in speaking and listening🎉
0:30 Mexicans, "How the tables habe turned, Becky".
Declines in proficiency are inversely correlated to the involvement of government bureaucracy in designing solutions
AI will make translations easy so why bother plus Japanese is a fun language to learn,
@@southcoastinventors6583the article and comment are about learning English, not learning Japanese
The outcome of the system is what it's designed to do.
The Japanese government does not want its citizens to like English.
As an old American retired and living in Japan, I notice that there were a lot more English speakers in my age group thirty to forty years ago. Among young people very few speak any English at all. My community is mountain guides so they have an incentive to learn English both to get better professional education by living and learning the guiding profession abroad and also so they can serve foreign clients who come here to ski the famous Japan powder snow. But outside of those guides, I don't see many people having an interest in English at all. I can't complain. My Japanese plateaued a long time ago. Maybe I'm not that interested in learning more than what I need to get around. But in my defense, I also suffer from auditory processing disorder, which makes learning additional languages super challenging. Although I can read katakana and hiragana and I know several hundred kanji, I am terrible at parsing the sounds I hear into something I can understand even when the words being used are words I know. This is even true in English, my native language. I much prefer to communicate in writing because I misunderstand what people say all the time. It's like a janky switch in my brain. Still, I love living in Japan because it is safe and peaceful. People do not get in your face here the way they do in America. People are kind and patient with me when I struggle to understand what is being said. Google Translate and other translation devices only get so far. They fall apart as soon as idioms come into the conversation and are simply useless for translating place names. But I use it because it's a lot better than nothing. Even though my Japanese language ability is not great, living here is far less stressful than living in America. I feel at home here and my wife's friends are very impressed by her ability to speak English, which she achieved by living with me in America for thirty years.
Thank you for sharing your insights.
one thing you can see on the EF index is clear: countries who dub movies do way worse than countries who don't, with german speaking countries being an outlier.
Which means the usefulness of english directly determines the fluency of a country, which makes sense.
In the west, gen Z and millenials are pretty good at english because of the internet. as you hang out online, knowing english is going to be very useful.
Historically Japan is a country that loves their own culture and language and does everything to amplify itself. This has a long history.
So since japan has their own ecosystem with everything imaginable in japanese, it's really no wonder.
It doesnt matter how good education even would be, if people never use english because there is no need for it, thats what you end up with.
And in europe for example with so many countries bunched together closely speaking other languages, english is just paramount to function as the communication glue between countries. (and this going for online communities and gaming as ell there)
how do you fix it systemically? that seems hard.
Ai could be a great teacher but a) students AND ADULTS already spend too much time studying/working and b) to learn anything in life you need strong motivation
Devil’s advocate. Why should they? Have you not seen the entitlement of foreigners when they go to Asian countries?
Also, learning English is either like Sunday school or it’s like a returnee with an ivy league degree, some extra “wow”s but rarely have much impact.
Unfortunately the world beats to the Anglophone drum. Due to the economic hegemony of the US, English is highly sought after to rake in those dollars.
@@GWT1m0 Well, not anymore it isn’t if they keep shoving their disrespectful attitudes and entitled “morally superior” views in every country.
Most of the English teachers aren’t even that good either but are hired because white guy. And then you got those returnees and expats that speak really bad English to show off.
For now, English is just the convenient lingua franca. Before that, it was French. And before that, Classical Latin or Classical Chinese.
Exactly what I think. I became reasonably fluent at English out of necessity. From what I've experienced living in Japan for 3 years, I rarely if ever got myself into a situation where I need to use English, and I think it's safe to assume that's also the case for the vast majority of Japanese people. They don't need to, so they won't. As simple as that. Just like how most native English speakers can't speak any language other than the one they were raised with, because they simply don't need to.
Agreed. This feels like a pro-colonisation video
@@crov43 It is. It’s subtly saying Western values and morals and ways of doing things are superior. Can’t do actual colonization so they’re trying to do cultural colonization.
What is wrong with Japan having Japanese views?
I just learned about the English Aerobics because of you! Holy cow, great editing, fart jokes just hit it sometimes man
Thank you for your comment and support.
But why do people care so much about the Japanese not speaking English or being interested in other countries? Lmfao I don't get it, I keep seeing this conversation on the internet and it's like y'all want to force the English language on them when they're clearly not interested. Contrary to popular belief that Japan is "westernized", the culture actually doesn't care about the western world that much, western music and films don't do well, neither do people travel abroad that much, Japan has always been a very isolationist country and it's like y'all so desperately want to force yourselves on them lmaoooo
Exactly. Obviously these people want one country, one language, and one measuring system. Having multiple ways of doing things in the world is inefficient, or something.
I had a group of Japanese elementary school students come up to me to interview me for a school assignment just like in your video. But since I'm a Japanese language enthusiast, I couldn't help but just answer all their questions in Japanese, which they were thrilled about since it trivialized all their work lol. I'll try to encourage their enthusiasm for English next time, maybe.
Thanks for sharing your experience. The Japanese were probably impressed with your language skills. They really enjoy it when a foreigner speaks their language.
Great presentation and humor. You earned yourself a new subscriber. Keep up the good work and don't give up!
Thank you so much for your kind message. I really appreciate it.
I think the reason reforms mess with the students and make it even worse is because it breaks the flow of their education and creates jumps in difficulty. For example, in my childhood, we weren’t expected to learn times tables / multiplication, but in our final year of primary education they changed the rules and we had to know all of our multiplications up to x12. This means a handful of years randomly were expected to know multiplication. We did not learn it, because we were mad that it was suddenly expected of us. Many of us are still bad at this.
I laughed so much while watching your video -- really funny! 🤣🤣🤣And your Japanese at the end is very fluent, you seem to study Japanese hard (I wish my English pronunciation was as good as your Japanese). 👋👍
Thank you for your kind words. Japanese is a very beautiful language -- for some strange reason, I also think that I sound better in Japanese than English.
@@ShiroiVie Next time try making a video speaking only in Japanese.
That will probably take a few more years, but thanks for the encouragement.
@@ShiroiVie I agree your Japanese sounds more interesting than your English you could be the equivalent of the those Vtubers to pretend to shock Japanese people with their decent Japanese skills.
Morning Musume, 0:14 and 3:35 ... haha. but 14:05 can I ask for the link to that?
0:43 so while k don’t agree with the Twitter rant I see it from both sides
Of the owner doesn’t come across people who need an English menu often then he won’t feel obligated to spend money on getting one and also if you’re in another country you should know some basics of the language (how much you know should be determined by how long you’ll be there)
The tourists just need something accessible to them and the Japanese menu isn’t so asking for an English menu, which a lot of Japanese restaurants have, isn’t a big deal. However if one isn’t available they could try using translation apps if they don’t have a friend to help them read.
How it should have gone:
Can we have an English menu?
Sorry, don’t have one
Tourists use translate app or ask a friend with them to help read menu
Restaurant gets their money, tourists get their food, everyone is happy
I have never been to Korea (either one), and do not speak Korean, but I have watched several Korean drama series on Netflix, some with English subtitles and some dubbed into English. I was surprised at the number of bilingual signs displayed in public places in large cities like Seoul, not only in corporate headquarters, but in small fast food places. Nowhere near half, but more than the 1-5% I expected. There must be a significant number of foreign tourists visiting South Korea, to have so many signs (and presumably menus) translated.
…aaaand Seoul has a certain amount of international business, diplomatic, and military personnel all quite beneficial to the country’s survival more so than in most places.
They are smart enough to learn it easily… I am glad they refuse to learn though. In fact why should they? I found it refreshing to not listen to English while traveling locally in Japan, it created a sense I was really traveling, and also encouraged me to put effort into learning Japanese instead.
I totally get that! There’s something special about immersing yourself in the local culture and language. It really enhances the travel experience and makes you feel more connected to the place. Learning a few phrases in Japanese can open up so many more authentic interactions too. Thank you for your comment.
@@ShiroiVie my pleasure
Back in '72, I hitchhiked over southern Japan, particularly Shikoku and Kyushu. It was very easy because so many people wanted free English lessons. Bless them, some drivers went miles out of their way to take me to my destination. In England, for comparison, some of my landlady's family would not speak to her because she bought a Datsun.
Very cool video. I’m in the “why should Japanese bother learning English” party myself, though. I mean, so many people who got good at English around the world either did so because they wanted economic success or because they were interested in American (or British) pop culture. Japan undeniably has the second biggest (and better, may I add, as an American) pop culture after America. I read they have the second largest music industry after the US.
There’s so many great things that only Japan has, and besides some black companies, natural disasters, and other stuff, it’s one of the safest and most enjoyable countries to live in. If I was Japanese, living in a country with a first-world economy, such good entertainment, cleanliness, safety, etc., I’d also have little motivation to learn English. And frankly, I think it’s best that Japan doesn’t get systemically Anglicized like so many other countries and lose its own identity.
Not to sound like a boomer, but we need to keep the bar high for foreigners who want to live in Japan; the Japanese quality of life will go down if every English-only foreigner can easily move in, and if Japanese can understand more of the English online social media bubble the younger generation might be influenced by the ident!ty politics, science denial, hyper-individualism, race wars, etc. that’s so common online and it will influence their ways of thinking and disturb the peace too. I’m all for Japan becoming more progressive but in a natural way and not because a bunch of foreigners want to strong-arm western ideas of right and wrong onto Japan. Colonizer mindset. Japan does need to improve in women‘s rights, workers’ rights, and some other areas, but that’s not for outsiders to fix.
History shows that western colonizer influence always ruins cultures and if they get Japan there’s nothing left. Japan is so unique and beautiful, it’s not “perfect” but it does so much right and I love it how it is.
People visiting Japan should just learn Japanese. The world doesn’t revolve around us English speakers. Of course, some Japanese like economists, lawyers, and politicians will greatly benefit from good English but I think the layperson doesn’t need to bother.
Thank you for your insightful remarks.
Careful they'll call you racist for saying the truth out loud. But I'm glad someone out there shares the same philosophy as me regarding mass westernization of japan. I hope more people will realise this sooner. LEAVE. JAPAN. ALONE. it's fine as is
Your admonition to "just learn Japanese" if visiting Japan is a little bit impractical. If I visit for 2 weeks, should I spend years learning the language just to get by and avoid offending the locals? I'm all for learning foreign languages, but perhaps it should be a case of meet you halfway?
I'm on holiday in Latvia at the moment. People visiting from all around the world are using English to get by - it's a common language.
But as you are in the camp that says Japan shouldn't bother learning English, do you apply this to all other countries? Germany, Korea, Uzbekistan, Slovakia, Croatia, Thailand? We all stay a world of monoglots, making it hard to communicate with each other and enjoy travel?
Or are you cutting some special slack for Japan, so that it can continue its gradual decline in blissful ignorance to the rest of the world?
@@johnjones6601 Do you think the UK, Canada, the US, Australia and all other English speaking countries should make their citizens learn every single language in the world so tourists can visit without having to become fluent at English? I bet your answer is no, and maybe next you'll say "Yeah but Japanese people only need to learn just one other language, not all of them" which is a logical response, but it has nothing to do with the core issue here. It's their country, not yours. When in Rome do as the Romans do. No one says you should spend years learning advanced level Japanese, but you do need to learn the basics like common etiquettes, greetings, how to ask for directions, and how to ask for prices of goods.
It's also funny that you claim it's impractical for foreigners just visiting for 2 weeks to learn Japanese, but ignore how it also applies the opposite way. It's extremely impractical for the vast majority of Japanese people to learn English just for a 2 minute interaction with a tourist that they might experience once or twice a year, if at all.
5 yrs ago I had a conference in Japan and every topics are cover in English. Many undergrad students who attended the conference they had a courage to speak to gaijin like me and other ppl in English instead of Japanese, this made me feel impressive for their courage.
Although they said they might have a bad skill in speaking English and I replied them that please do the mistakes those will make your English better and better and your speaking skill is good I can understand what you say thats all, you guys are "eigo jouzu".
And I had to add the fact to them that English is not my first language just like you guys and Thai's English education is also sh*t as well
So I only hope they might get better English skills at least better than their past selves from 5 yrs ago. At least this is some few percent of those who can use English in Japan and I hope nihonjin will use English more fluently :D
A lot of the excuses we make for the Japanese and their failure to learn English just tacitly accept Japan's own self-indulgent belief in being unique.
They are an island. Sure, and so are a lot of other places.
English grammar is hard. Yes, it is hard for Japanese, but not impossible - I've gone the other way - progress is slower, but after six years of studying, you should be able to make some basic sense.
Don't need English to progress - what makes Japan different to other countries?
Not interested in abroad...sure, but that's just Japanese insularity coming out again and their desire to be unique.
Yesterday i heard a conversation between a Finn and two Ukrainians having a chance encounter in a bar in Latvia. It happened in English. A Japanese cannot participate in an experience like this.
Even the internet is a global community of billions if you understand English, but one of millions of you only understand Japanese. There are people whose first language is not Japanese or English commenting on this thread - this can only happen because English is widely spoken around the world.
It’s also fucking Japan and not England. It has no requirement to learn English at all seeing as they already have a language that is quite suitable for communication
This video shows how ignorant western English countries are. No one should expect to go to JAPAN and speak ENGLISH and be broadly understood. You’re the dumbass if that’s the case and you should address “western English countries allergy to Japanese”. This is some crybaby nonsense because Japan speaks Japanese. Please let’s use our brains
Google Translate has entered the chat
@@YoniBaruch-y3m eh?
Ukrainians in Latvia will usually speak Russian when speaking to Latvians. It's interesting you brought up these countries because by your logic they'd need to embrace Russian even more but they in fact move away from it. They see it as imperialistic and artificial and prefer to support their local native language and culture. Why wouldn't this also apply to English then? It's a tool of US imperialism and settler colonialism.
@@gamermapper I don't think you understood my post properly - the encounter was between a Finn and two Ukrainians. Latvia was simply the place that they met. The point was that the encounter did not happen in either of their home countries or in a country where English is the native language.
I study music at a college in Tokyo. In one of the classes, the teacher presented a slide to the students saying that, in order to learn English, you should focus way more on output than input. I had to stop myself from laughing. If this is what they believe about learning a language, it actually explains a lot.
Thank you for sharing your experience. Sadly, it seems most English teachers in Japan believe in this approach.
The real problem is in the backwards mentality of Japanese policy makers, government officials and educators alike. Learning methods in schools are antiquated and useless, drilling grammars for hours on end, with students not being able to say even one or two basic sentences after years of schooling, even the teachers themselves speak crappy English if any at all. Instead of looking at modern language teaching methods and trying to improve the curriculum, they import tens of thousands of "native English speakers", just because a person is a native English speaker it does not make him or her a good language teachers, many of these are fresh college students with no real professional skills to get a real job, so they do a "how to become an ESL teacher" course and go to Japan for a year or two, the result is god knows how many Japanese students with crappy English proficiency.
I recently traveled around Japan and Taiwan and some fact that shocked me is that the taiwanese are much better than japanese speaking english despite there are a lot more foreigners in Japan than Taiwan.
When I was a kid I learned English from watching cartoons.
But if jou are Japanese there is no reason to learn English from cartoons
That’s a perspective that I have never heard before.🎉
Cartoons are bad example since they're meant, in the most of countries, for the kids and thus are in local language.😅
@@kurolotus4851 I was a kid in the 80s and more then half of the cartoons where in English.
Even now with kids on iPads the videos are mostly English
Speaking as a long-term bilingual Japanese resident, I can tell you that many jobs requiring bilingual skills are in demand in Japan. But companies generally want people who are native level in Japanese with only basic fluency in English. The reverse is much less in demand. A few foreign companies in Japan mostly operate in English and employ many foreign workers. But the overall trend in the last 30 years has actually been to require more Japanese and less English. A non-Japanese speaker is limited to only a few jobs like programming or English teaching. Other roles usually require close interaction with Japanese-speaking co-workers, vendors and customers.
Practically speaking, Japan operates in Japanese and most Japanese people actually prefer it that way. The motivation to learn English is not very strong.