is English becoming more popular in Japan?
 

It may be a silly thread but....anyway.....I wonder if English has turned out to be a true fever among many Japanese, not only the youngest ones....what's led many people to study English over there in Japan?...music, globalization, economic issues, films, etc...

What do Japanese members of this forum feel about the language itself?

If English wasn't the world lingua franca, would you study it somehow?

As far as I know, in China that issue has been in right lately, mostly at schools...the same happens in South Korea.

English study is required in all levels of school from elementary through high school.

I don't think there is an "English fever". The Japanese I know find it difficult an illogical...which it is.

the same happens here in Brazil but I wonder how good is the level of English just taught at schools over there.....here, English classes have turned out to be boring and silly and the result....no comments....even at private schools the reality is tough to bear...

.............................

It's not English itself some Japanese are interested in, but the doors it unlocks. In my experience, English language teaching is improving in public schools, but is still awful compared to Japan's neighbors like China and Korea.

In my own opinion, the english language doesn't make much sense to me.
There are all these extra words that aren't really necessary, but only
make the sentence sound better and don't contribute to the meaning.

If I spoke a different language natively, I would probably find English
really hard to learn, with words like Articles and all. (the, a, etc.)

Though it is a necessary language if you want a job that does
business with other countries, obviously.

I wish the schools here in the U.S would offer more languages
to learn from, seeing that Spanish and French aren't the only
growing language out there and aren't the only languages that
people want to learn, just because they're common.

as far as I know Mandarin and even Arabic has been offered at some private schools out there......am I wrong?

Well Mandarin, I would expect ^__^
In general, at least in my area, Spanish and French is all that is offered.
I have a friend in California who is taking Mandarin I think, I forgot about
that. Though I also go to public schools, so :/ that may be the problem.

Could you explain how it's illogical?

I think I can.
Even though I have been born and raised in america, Even I can see how illogical english is. And I am HEAVILY into studying japanese. the best way to say it is to give a compairison.
A simple example is SPELLING. In english it is nessesary to spell each word right. even though if just one of the letters are incorrect, sometimes you can still understand it. While in japanese there is only 1 way to write each word.
english also has punctuation to deal with. while in japan the only usual one is the exclaimation point.:vsign:

Books could be written on this, but just to give a few small examples...

The third person singular present tense conjugation typically ends in 's', right? "He buys the item", "She goes to school", "The teacher likes to play basketball"... pretty regular, right? What happens if we change our simple statements to questions? The 's', for some inexplicable reason, disappears: "Does he buy the item?", "Does she go to school?", "Does the teacher like to play basketball?" The fact that we're asking a question has made our third person singular verb change to a second person singular one, for no real reason! And don't get me started on these silly little auxiliary words at the beginning of questions, like "does", which other languages simply eliminate.

This is just the beginning of verb conjugation randomness in English; it's probably the hardest part of the language to learn. Just look at the past tense, it's a complete mess; I'm a native speaker and I couldn't even come up with a verb that uses the "standard" -ed pattern within a few seconds, everything is irregular like "came", "bought", "went", "shot".

On the subject of not following patterns, there's a way in most languages to determine if a word is a verb: Spanish verbs all end in -ar -er or -ir, Japanese verbs end in -u, and so on. English verbs don't end in anything in particular.

I have to give the English verb system credit for its use of modal verbs to change tense more often than conjugations, but that's about its only positive point. And that's just one aspect of the language; we still have to go through spelling, noun cases, adjective conjugations, and plenty more before we've uncovered all the nasty little surprises English has in store for us.

In conclusion: English is a completely illogical language, due to its heavy use my many groups of people throughout history, and I feel sorry for foreign children who have to learn it.

It`s simply because English has drawn so much from other languages (both words and patterns) that it has few definite rules. There are always exceptions that make the "rules" hard to remember for a learner... Especially as the exceptions are usually quite common and encountered just as much as the patterns that do follow the rules.
Not to mention the pronunciation discrepancies that come about from melding so many different sources.

Japanese, on the other hand, is largely independent. It doesn`t draw from every which direction and therefore the rules are generally much more definite.

I like what you said Nyororin. Just like how the USA is a melting pot, so is it's language. That's not to say it isn't difficult. I will take my Roman letters over kanji anyday.

I do thank you both MMM and CaptainThunder for your responses. I guess for me, I can just tell when a word is correct in past tense or not. It just doesn't sound right. I also never learned how English is "conjugated". I never heard that word until my Spanish class. Then again, the English classes at my school were never that strong.

On the "does" thing, I guess English is trying to be more specific?

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

It's a language that derives it's origin from multiple languages from various cultures.

That, and there's the word "equestrian".

Not entirely true... all of the Katakana words are drawn from other languages, and Kanji is drawn from Chinese, right?

No, the real difference is that in many cases, English keeps the spelling and pronunciation of the words it borrows, or makes only minor changes. This leads to words that sound the same but are spelled differently, and different ways to make the same sound, etc. But Japanese converts the spelling and pronunciation of words it borrows to follow its own rules, changing spelling and sounds in many cases. This keeps it more consistent, even though a great many of its words are borrowed.

But that has little effect on grammar. You can pull in all the vocabulary you want, but if it doesn`t effect grammar and word order it`s just additional information.
English was formed from and surrounded by a number of different languages, and this had a huge effect on the development of the language itself.

Japanese developed without that sort of influence, so in the end, linguistically it`s a more "pure" language.

English is not America's language. If anything it's England's language and you guys simply use it because you haven't/can't be bothered invented American yet.

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.

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

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.