JapanForum.com - is English becoming more popular in Japan?

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Quote:

Originally Posted by MMM (Post 652771)

The US has no official language, but pretty much it is English. If you want to call what we speak "American" that is your business. I understand mostly what you say, and I think you understand us.

Haha... yeah I understand. I'm just being pedantic. :D

English is not America's. English is England's. Your (and my) language is a remnant of a fallen Empire. It is not representative of America at all.

Quote:

Originally Posted by CaptainThunder (Post 652058)

Well, if you're a native speaker, of course you'll be able to tell if a word "sounds" correct or not; you've been exposed to it all your life, and no English class for native speakers is going to focus on such basic things as "Ok children, verbs change form depending on the subject being used..." People learning English as a second language, on the other hand, have no ability whatsoever to determine if something sounds right in English without years of exposure, and therefore have to study the grammar rules more closely.

I assume you're a native speaker, anyway. Please correct me if I'm wrong :D

Yeah I am, but as I have stated else where, I have issues with some spelling. It's stupid stuff too. Oh well.

I do hope English does get more popular in Japan, because then hopefully if I go there, I can do conversational English for a side-job or something.

english is useful as the common language that can bridge language barriers. say an albanian and a chinese, if both speak english, communication is so much easier.

have we deviated from the topic? :p

My Japanese teacher who has lived in
Japan for the past 10 years and is going
back after some family issues are resolved
said that in Japan most Japanese (even the
Japanese English teachers) don't know English.

i remember watching GTO (drama) many years back, when matsushima nanako as an english teacher, fumbled like hell when having had to speak english for real. :cool:

Like many things people are saying about English.
A big difference is the spelling of words and how they are pronounced, as opposed to Japanese. When spelling in Japanese all the characters are pronounced the same way every time. Just because the there is a different combination of characters, the individual sounds are still always the same. In English..... it many times seems random. I'm a native English speaker so its easy for me to know how to pronounce something but i can definitely see how it would be hard to know how to pronounce English correct. Especially with silent letters and what not.

Example: lets see here this is a simple one and is true for many letters.

The letter "C" can be pronounced many different ways ranging from a "k" sound to a "S" sound. like "Cake" has a "k" sound and "Cease" has a "S" sound. These obviously aren't the only words or letters that do this, its everywhere.

i thinked that speaking english can help me !! but most are speaking only japanese :(
My first night i was lost at kawagoeshi at 02:00 am, i went to police station to help me to find how can i back home !!
So i learned some survival words in Japenese and then it was ok :)

Obama helping Japanese learn English???

I found this interesting especially the part about Diet members also buying it.

Japan learns English from Obama speeches - TODAY: Book news - MSNBC.com

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ramones1976 (Post 651743)

Um I hear english is still the only foreign language taught in public schools (despite the bigger Chinese, Korean and Portuguese speaking minority's living there), and it seems foreign languages are taught better than in u.s schools.
It also seems more young people in Japan now a days want to know the english language and travel to english speaking countries (esp u.s and uk from people I talk to), than previously.

I think the some reasons for that are because the u.s and uk are 1: using the language they want to learn, and many people who live there assume that everyone who enters their country should speak english 2: they're not poor 3: tourist sights and 4: the english language music, TV and other media.

Japan officially considers English to be the world's language, and that is why it is compulsory in schools. English is the dominant language in many professions and sciences, and Japan sees learning English as a way to help Japanese participate in the first-world marketplace.

Many jobs in Japan require a certain level of English proficiency, mainly because the largest consumers of Japanese products are still Americans.