I LIVED in Japan...

[ozkai]

Awesome stories.. English schools in Japan used to be all over the place.

Japanese love to study and learn English

[sarasi]

There are still English schools everywhere in Japan, just fewer Nova schools than there used to be. I'm kind of surprised that spoonybard is surprised that there are English conversation schools in Japan- why is that surprising? Other countries have them too...

[Ryzorian]

I wonder if they like learning english because it has so many words to describe so many different things with?

[komitsuki]

Originally Posted by Ryzorian

I wonder if they like learning english because it has so many words to describe so many different things with?

Then they would describe in Japanese instead of English. You have 2000 Chinese characters that would dwarf English's many meanings in individual words.

As for English's position, mostly it's because English is the medium of modern pop culture and "advanced" sectors of academia.

You gotta live in Asia to understand this.

[IcewindDude]

Originally Posted by komitsuki

Then they would describe in Japanese instead of English. You have 2000 Chinese characters that would dwarf English's many meanings in individual words.

As for English's position, mostly it's because English is the medium of modern pop culture and "advanced" sectors of academia.

You gotta live in Asia to understand this.

From my understanding, English has far more words than Japanese, for description or otherwise, and for good reason. English is a hodgepodge of many languages and was developed by numerous cultures. Japanese, however, is somewhat limited by the available phonetic sounds. Currently, the main purpose of kanji is to help separate the language into parts when written where without intonation of spoken Japanese, can blur together. Also, Japanese relies heavily on context to understand unspoken meanings (which can be rather deep) so the words need not be as varied as English.

[Ryzorian]

Yeah, English has nearly 1 million words, each with a slightly different meaning. Gets really confuseing.

I understand the script part as poetic and conveying meaning artistically. What I was infering was english through it's verbal componants. It relies more on "colorful" words than many lanquages do, to describe things. Probably because so many cultures influenced it's developement.

[komitsuki]

Originally Posted by IcewindDude

Currently, the main purpose of kanji is to help separate the language into parts when written where without intonation of spoken Japanese

Not exactly if you consider a million of on'yomi words, suffixes, and prefixes in the Japanese dictionary.

Originally Posted by Ryzorian

It relies more on "colorful" words than many lanquages do, to describe things. Probably because so many cultures influenced it's developement.

English language is more of a mixed language of old Norman French and old Anglo-Saxon. English is exactly like an African creole today.

English isn't that special. It's only because English-speaking countries are the top tier of world's modern politics and modern culture. People don't like English; people are forced to learn English because the circumstances and try to find positive reasons to learn English.

[trunker]

ever since forever i've wondered why the japanese "like" english. and not just the japanese really, but many other cultures have a thing for using english for things like catch phrases or shop names etc.

now my experience is limited to the middle east, south east asia and east asia to a lesser extent,.....

but yeah komitsuki is right in that modern pop culture plays a massive part in this.

however, having asked them why it is they use english, when they clearly dont have to, the response i've gotten is not just that its the lingua franca so theyre forced to learn it.

they say its more direct, as in its easier to get to the point than their native tongue, probably because it is such a mishmashed language, and because it is the lingua franca.

i've met arabs who both speak arabic choosing to converse in english. the same with chinese, indians, some thais, indonesians and malays of course. (spoken english is considered a status symbol as well, the better your accent the more educated you are, supposedly. a hang over from the colonial days no doubt.)

this might be an example,.... heard on tv recently: getto no chansu ( get no chance)

its wrong on so many levels, yes, but you get the point it is trying to make right?

what would that translate to in proper japanese? and why would getto no chance be prefered ?

and yes english can get stupidly flowerly, just as much as the next language, but perhaps it has to do with the fact that mediocre english is sometimes good enough to get your point across, perhaps easier,.... and not as looked down upon as say non polite japanese, or coloquial arabic, or street malay.

just my 2 cents.

[Ryzorian]

I agree that English can be a stupidly hard lanquage to learn, I'm barely proficient with it and I was born in America. Still, it can describe things effectively partly because it utilizes so many different words from different cultures.

For instance, Bacca ( might be spelled wrong) means idiot in Japanese, roughly anyhow, since it also seems to mean stupid and dumb as well. least in how I've seen it used. English of course has stupid, dumb, idiot, moron,goofball, dingaling, fool, about any combination you can think of. The big thing though is that these words can be used to show dagree's of idiocy. IE, a big dummy isn't as stupid as a dithering idiot.

[JustinATTACK]

This thread is SO off topic now...