is it true?
 

i dont remmember from where but i heard this statment that..well japanese in general actually do not speak english well or any other language at all. i know that this probably isnt the case in this forum, but the idea is since the nation is big that more or less they are like americans, english, french or russians who simply do not have the need to learn other languages like, for example, were in estern europe its normal for a person to speak 2 or 3 languages.
so it got me wondering...is there any truth to this?

It's true: most Japanese do not speak English well at all.

I know a few my age who speak excellent English and a few who speak decent French/Spanish.

There are highly educated people who speak great English or other languages, though. I heard a few corps there are instituting policies requiring English in board meetings. Uniqlo, Sony, and a few others come to mind.

But just like in the US, the average Japanese person does not speak a second language well at all. But at least the average Japanese knows a few words of English. The average American may know "hola" and "taco" or something.

But, to be fair, it's easy to be very successful in either country while only knowing the home language, so there's not a lot of real reason to learn a second, until you travel up Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

If Japanese people don't speak english well, though, I would believe it's because of the way the language is taught. I think our resident natives have mentioned that in school english is taught to them through rote memorization, which is not a good way to learn a language. Also, without some reason/place to use it, it's harder to put what you learn to use.

yes it is a true statement. Most Japanese speaks little to no English.

My Japanese friend studies here in UK. She speaks very well but her listening skills are very poor.

I have seen some of the textbooks she works on and I dislike them very much.

Mixing with more English people would improve her listening skills I feel sure.

I am sure I would have trouble learning from these text books. Nothing seems straight forward and so many multi questions.

They are the cambridge books set by academics-- concentrating on grammar.

I believe they make the study of English very difficult.

Hi, I'm Japanese and I have lived in Japan. And yes, it is true.
I think there are few people who can speak English fluently except those who have been in foreign countries. Let alone other languages.
I'm probably good at English for Japanese (judging from TOEIC etc...), but I know my English is not so good. (Writing is still better than speaking.)

Your writing is quite good. Obviously I don't know how you sound, though ;)

wow...i dont know how about you but this seems a bit wierd to me..i had 3 languages when i was in shool and now im picking up japanese...i guess these are the drawbacks (on the other hand advantages) if you come from a small country.
well i guess this only means that i will have to work that much harder on my japanese before i go to japan :)

Evanny, I think in a place like Europe learning multilanguages is quite practical. From what it seems like, there is a good chance you would have many opportunities to speak with people from other countries therefore giving you more of a reason to learn the language to a decent level.

As far as Japanese education of English goes, I think TheScrounger is the epitome of it. They are much more comfortable in writing than in speaking, which I think is a strange way to learn a language. It's like they know all those words but cannot say them-- I imagine it would be very frustrating. It's also a characteristic of English I suppose. The way words are spelled doesn't really indicate how they are pronounced (although there are many clues there for native speakers or people who've really read a lot).

This is my opinion, but I think Japanese are doing an extremely good job of learning what they're taught. What they're taught is the problem. The grammar is some kind of weird compromise between actual spoken English and English that somewhat resembles Japanese. The vocabulary consists of words which they are familiar with because they are in everyday use in Japanese, in their Japanese form of course. Also, the spoken parts are either over or underacted... there's not really any inbetween. It's always too slow and the intonation suffers as a result. So given those kinds of circumstances, plus the constant pressure to do better on tests like Eiken or TOEIC (which, no offense to the Japanese who have scored high on those tests, are not even close to revealing a person's English abilities) it's no wonder why most Japanese can't speak anywhere near fluent English. Don't get me wrong though... a lot of the Japanese textbooks (for English learners to learn Japaense) have been pretty bad too.

To me the frustrating part is that there are obviously a LOT of people in Japan who want to communicate with 'foreigners' (which equates to them wanting to speak English). If you've ever been to Japan chances are you've been helped out by or talked to by a complete stranger who was struggling to give you some information in English.

The technology is there... I think it's time a new test comes out where it's all about listening/watching and speaking. There are business-practical aspects to the writing side of English, but speaking seems to be the most rewarding and what most Japanese people are really after when they learn English.

I think it is generally true, you probably could not meet up with your average Japanese and start talking about general things of interest in a natural manner, but I have come to think that many Japanese have more ability than they let on.. or even believe themselves to have. If you were to come to Japan and get lost, I think having a pad and pencil to write things down for someone would do you very well. And many will start to feel much more comfortable speaking to you if you can meet them halfway in Japanese.

I think you're right about that, and that is actually good advice. I've heard of many stories from Japanese people trying to talk to English speakers while in Japan or on vacation somewhere and when they couldn't communicate with speech they wrote down what they wanted to say and everything worked out. The average Japanese probably couldn't care less about writing in English... I think that most of them just want to communicate when they go on vacation somewhere or when they see a foreigner who's kinda lost.

I don't think there's much "agree" or "disagree." Most English speakers are at least bilingual. There are 232M English speakers in India. 79M in Nigeria. Etc.

But most native English speakers are monolingual, yes. The native countries are Canada, England, Australia, NZ, USA, and a few small nations (Liberia, Belize, etc.).

Of these, I think Liberia, Canada, and Belize (and other small nations) are the only ones with any significant number of bilinguals.

I don't know but I feel we in England do not study languages from an early age-- Because English is now used world wide-- we tend to be lazy.

I think that is bad. Young children pick up languages easily and naturally so our education system fails in that way.

Others may disagree of course. I have noticed that many scandinavian people are taught English form an early age and are excellent speakers.

How young do you mean by 'young'?

We were taught Spanish in years 5 and 6 (ages 9-10), and French from years 7 to 9 (ages 11-13). To me that seems pretty young, and a somewhat valid attempt by the government to install the basics of foriegn languages into children.

I do agree though that it isn't enough. . . there is a mentality of 'is everyone else speaks English then why should we learn their language?' This is especially evident in the teenage age group, I can say honestly we picked up Spanish a lot easier than French because we were more willing to learn. So maybe you're right, that learning at a younger age is better.

well we had to start english at 4th grade and russian/german in the 6th grade up until 12th grade.
so yea..i guess it is true and if you are from a small country your best bet is to learn other languages and not count on others to do so.

Yeah, at least where I was in America, I was introduced to Spanish in like 2nd grade. So I was around 7 years old, and we'd have a teacher come in and have Spanish lessons taught to us at a conversational level. I think that's a fairly young age, and more so than other countries may think of us.

But back to Japanese speaking English, already from what I've experienced this is true (although I don't want anyone to think I'm some guru when I'm not.) The only English I was able to convey all day yesterday was "ATM" and "okay." The rest of it was 100% Japanese on their part and about 3/4 English and 1/4 gibberish on my part :D

I think that linguistically speaking the term "young" means like UP TO 7 years old. At about 8-9 you are considered an adult (again, linguistically).

I personally think the reason behind this is that your own language isn't quite fully developed enough to be getting in the way of your second language yet. The goal of all language learners (who want to speak fluently) is to basically have two independent languages-- you don't want your L1 (mother tongue) influencing your L2 (second language) too much. Whether you realize it or not, that is a huge part of it.

There is a way to bypass that part of the brain that causes your mother tongue to get in the way of your L2 acquisition, but it is a very difficult process which takes some people longer than others and requires an amount of immersion (a lot of direct exposure to the L2). I've read many times that something like 3% of language learners seem to have this down from the get go, even when learning their second language as an 'adult'.

It is my opinion that English education in Japan falls WAY short of this concept. Likewise, Japanese education in America can be just as bad and was in my experience (but not standardized like English is in Japan).

Textbooks and the like tend to be written in one's mother tongue (as written language would be EXTREMELY hard to learn from immersion). The textbook approach might be neccessary very early on, but I'm beginning to wonder about that recently. Using textbooks and things like that are great for learning a lot in a short time. The problem is, people usually only get so far. At least I've noticed that certain people give up on language learning quite systematically (in high school it was the 3rd year, in college it was the 2nd/3rd year).

I think that generally expectations set by textbooks are a little bit overbearing. A native speaker of a language can't hold a conversation in 2-3 years, so I think it's a little bit much to expect an L2 learning to pick it up in a year or 2.

Immersion is a lot more taxing on the learning and takes a lot more time than textbook learning, but once something is learned it is quite solid (as it is learned by hearing something over and over until you are confident enough to use the phrase yourself). With this style of learning, you often see someone who is struggling suddenly go from really bad to being able to hold a conversation comfortably within a month or two's time span. This is not unlike a native's own acquisition. Natives usually transform, langauge wise, into a person who can barely speak, to an annoying little kid very quickly ;) .

So in other words, to repeat myself, "young" (linguistically speaking) is generally considered to be that small window of 0-7 or so. I personally believe that "young" (again, linguistically speaking) is a state of mind that you can train yourself into having. This also seems to account for those 2-3% of "adults" who seem to somehow "get" their L2 from the very start.

In Kyoto it's very small. But if you move towards massive cities such as Tokyo ,etc you'll find much more English-friendly speakers.

I agree, and that's why Spanish has actually stuck with me even though I haven't used it in a practical sense in over 3 years now. Starting young, I built a foundation and as I got older I was able to just able to add on to it. Now I can speak conversational Spanish with hardly any mistakes.

I think that in any big city (I don't mean to contradict you, but in many ways Kyoto included) you have a lot of people in a small area, therefore the chances of someone knowing English and willing to help foreigners with English are higher than in the inaka where you might have like more rice fields than people.

The last time I went to Tokyo, I was travelling with my parents and there was a woman who I could kinda tell was eavsdropping in on our conversation. I, not being too familiar with Tokyo, didn't really know exactly where to go, but I had a general idea. I was basically explaining that to my parents. I think we were on the train heading to Harujuku. The lady, in very clean and natural Enlgish, told us where a good place to go was. I can never imagine that happening in my area. The closest thing I've had is a drunk old man scooting next to me and struggling to tell me IN JAPANESE that he loved John Wayne movies, especially growing up.

Yes I meant from a very early age young children just pick up language easily.

I believe there also needs to be an incentive to learn a language. Will you be travelling to these countries?

French and German used to be the main languages apart from Latin but now Spanish seems very common also and with so many people holidaying in Spain thats not surprising.

I am not sure when UK decided to introduce Chinese and Japanese into the curriculum? I believe much is led by Business interests.

I am also a believer in sign language for the deaf being taught everywhere as then deaf people and hearing folk can communicate so much better than often happens.

Actually, I think you've touched on two very important things about language learning.

The first one being pretty straightforward- incentive. That is probably the biggest factor in language learning. For a baby, learning their L1 could possibly mean life or death... or at least communicating very important things to your parents, who are usually 100% of the people you know (unless you have siblings).

Finding an incentive in second language learning is an extremely difficult area. If you grow up in a small European country smack dab in the middle of the continent, I would imagine there would be a lot of incentive to learn many languages. If you are someone who travels a lot on business, there would be an incentive. If you are immersed into a language, which can often mean living in one of that language's countries, then you also have incentive. Finding incentive while studying from a book is very hard for some people (unfortunately myself included).

The second thing you brought up is the idea of sign language being taught to all deaf people. Not to take the focus away too far from what you originally said, but there is a huge degree of language that doesn't include words, and that is a big part of language acquisition. Drawing pictures to get your point across is even good. Teachers and schools seem to avoid this aspect of communication, which is unfortunate because that's usually what communication will boil down to for some people. There are a lot of things about a language that are specific to that language (or at least different from some other languages). Like for example, if you see a kid drawing a picture of the sun in America it will most likely be yellow. In Japan, however, the kid will most certainly color it red. It's hard to say just how heavily that impacts language, but I believe that is a huge part of it. General body language and really watching/looking at the person you are talking to will give hints that spoken language will not always convey. Both the way you look and how you act, however, are bound to your languages rules.

I feel a little bit rude bringing this up, but I feel like it connects with the topic at hand. I was talking to some friends recently (who are in their 50's - 60's) and they were talking about how lately when Japanese go on trips to Asian countries, like Guam and places like that, they try to speak English to the people to communicate what they want. Unfortunately something hasn't been working out communication wise recently to the extent that people of those countries have been learning simple Japanese phrases in order to deal with the Japanese. I think it's interesting to note that a lot of practical English use will happen with non-native English speakers for Japanese. I've seen it happen in hotels and other places like that- a Japanese person speaking English and maybe a French person speaking English. Those conversations usually take a long time, but usually seem to work out. I still can't get over the idea of a Person from Guam speaking in Japanese to a Japanese person who is speaking in English. That would be a trip to watch :D