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u/RueUchiha IDAHO 🥔⛰️ 1d ago
If Japaneese was the international buisness language, I am sure we all would know Japaneese too.
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u/UbiSwanky2 1d ago
Exactly everyone speaks English not to be American/English it’s because it’s the language of money.
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u/blackhawk905 NORTH CAROLINA 🛩️ 🌅 1d ago
It's like how French was the language of business for centuries but was superseded by English centuries ago.
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u/vaccinateyodamkids 1d ago
Is that why it's called lingua franca and not lingua anglia? Or am I just pulling shit out my ass?
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u/mustachedmarauder 1d ago
Also the insane amount of media we "export". And there are several large countries where the primary language is English, US, Canada, UK Ireland, Australia South Africa nee Zealand , And then all of the countrys where English is a second language parts of Europe. Parts of Africa. Almost everywhere you go in the world even in the middle of somewhere like Vietnam or Thailand someone speaks English to an extent.
Some may think it's the "American mindset" being "full of ourselves" it's just that some of us understand that English is a vast language used almost everywhere by educated and non educated people.
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u/mrcrabs6464 OREGON ☔️🦦 1d ago
Yeah, there good reason for America centrism. Most of the scientific research, block buster movies, AAA games(although we share that one with Japan), and importantly military power. Comes from the United States, we are the primary super power of the 21st century. Sure china is getting close economically and militarily but their still no where close to us with pop-culture media.
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u/electr0smith 11h ago
Russia even teaches English as a mandatory second language starting in like the 3rd grade.
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u/SW3GM45T3R 1d ago
english : we will need you to remember these 26 characters, they make up every word we have
japanese : we have 3,000+ kanji that make up our modern spoken and written tongue, you better memorize it and if you don't, we will call you stupid
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u/RueUchiha IDAHO 🥔⛰️ 1d ago edited 1d ago
To give some credit to speaking lanuages like Japaneese. The syntax of speaking these languages is actually a lot easier than English. Not much in the way of conjegations, just learn the small handful of tones (Japaneese only has 2, I learned Mandarin and that has 5), and it actually pretty easy to get to a point where you are actually speaking and able to hold conversations, at least compaired to English. There is just not as many weird conjegations that changes other words in the sentence depending on the sentence structure, different ways of making a word plural depending on the word, etc.
Writing and reading these languages are a completely different story, however. That is where the kanji/character memorization comes in, and thats like, 95% of the difficulty of the language. This is where the latin lettering system English use is handy.
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u/Saw-Gerrera TENNESSEE 🎸🎶🍊 1d ago
Wasn't there also like several prospectively better writing systems Japan could have went with but decided against?
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u/dincosire 4h ago
Yes. There have been suggestions for them to drop Kanji, with evidence that doing so has worked for other languages (take Vietnamese and Korean as examples) and they simply refuse to.
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u/thomasp3864 14h ago
Or for Japanese, they could just use Katakana or Hiragana, and don't give me any of that homophones nonsense--spoken language seems to manage with them just fine.
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u/The_Dapper_Balrog 1d ago
More like (for Japanese): we have three different writing systems, two of which are alphasyllabaries and which both use the same sounds, but different characters for the exact same sounds (hiragana and katakana) and one of which is pictographic and which has many characters which could stand for multiple different words, so context is just as important as memorizing the thousands of characters (kanji). We will use all three of these systems at the same time; hiragana for native words, katakana for foreign loanwords, and throw kanji willy-nilly into the mix in no apparent order and for no apparent reason.
Speaking Japanese isn't horrendously difficult (although the honorific system and the tonal side of things are tricky). But learning to read and write it is an absolute nightmare.
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u/KaBar42 1d ago
Don't forget their counting system, which changes dependings on what you're counting, if I remember correctly, based roughly on the shape of the item you're counting.
Whereas in English, if you have two rocks and two crayons, you have two rocks and two crayons. In Japanese, they have completely separate words for the two used to count the rocks and the two used to the count the crayons.
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u/Karnakite 1d ago
When I was in college and taking Linguistics, my professor was a Japanophile and Japanese language expert, and she said that while she spoke Japanese, she would never speak or understand it like a native.
I also like watching videos of people who have moved to Japan and their experiences there, and one thing a huge proportion of them talk about is how difficult it is to master Japanese. Some admit they’ve lived there for years and still only have a “working” knowledge of it.
Learning any language is difficult, but one benefit of English is its RELATIVE simplicity. The spelling is absolutely atrocious, but the speaking language is far less complex: There are only two present-tense verb inflections, as opposed to six or more; it does not possess variations in pronouns and grammar depending on rank; objects do not possess gender, outside of popular jargon, such as referring to ships as “she”.
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u/mramisuzuki NEW JERSEY 🎡 🍕 1d ago
Now deal with our 40 more sounds and long expressive language that allows to communicate minute details without justifying “context”.
We have more than 26 characters, that’s just the alphabet.
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u/Azidamadjida 1d ago
Lmao this. Add to that that the meaning and inflection of those sounds changes depending on the region. An “eeh” in Tokyo is gonna be different than an “eeeeeehhh?” in Osaka, and it’s gonna sound even more different depending on if it’s a male or female speaker.
And that’s not even getting into the onomatopoeia that you would never know about learning just business or self-taught Japanese, all that shit comes from common speaking with peers. Which also brings up that you only use certain words when you’re speaking to an older person - at least the pronunciation is pretty easy to get down, it’s all the unspoken cultural rules and idioms and such that bogs the learning process down lol
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u/willowoftheriver KENTUCKY 🏇🏼🥃 23h ago
Sure, but we don't have a pictograph system with multiple readings depending on context (Japanese), and we don't have a system of three gendered articles that are vital to understanding what's been said (German), or an extensive system of different word endings that indicate what they're each doing in the sentence (Latin).
English is honestly pretty streamlined.
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u/YumeNaraSamete MARYLAND 🦀🚢 1d ago
Japan has 3 writing systems: one to write Japanese words, one to write foreign loan words, and one to confuse and anger foreigners.
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u/KaBar42 1d ago
one to write Japanese words, one to write foreign loan words, and one to confuse and anger foreigners.
Sidenote: The one to confuse foreigners is actually three separate writing systems. Which is why signs in Japan say: "Sibuya" instead of Shibuya despite English mainly knowing it as Shibuya. Because Shibuya is the Romaji version of the word and phonetically tells English speakers how to pronounce the word, but Sibuya is (or at least was) the official government Anglicization of the word despite Shibuya being the more popular and well known version of the location.
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u/KaBar42 1d ago
japanese : we have 3,000+ kanji that make up our modern spoken and written tongue, you better memorize it and if you don't, we will call you stupid
There was is a Japanese advertisement and the plot to it is a Japanese company joining an American corpo. One of the workers laments that it's too late for him to learn English and his coworker says: "Man, you're not even super fluent in Japanese."
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u/Jack-of-Hearts-7 SOUTH DAKOTA 🗿🦅 1d ago
If it wasn't the trade language of Europe, they'd be less smug about bilingualism
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u/NoREEEEEEtilBrooklyn PENNSYLVANIA 🍫📜🔔 1d ago
Don’t look at the Japanese English fluency rates.
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u/kotubljauj 1d ago
Even those with a reasonable command generally have a heavy accent, and those in NHK World generally have a rather noticeable one too, like Yusuke Ota, and Honolulu and San Jose don't count as Japan.
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u/AgentBlue14 TEXAS 🐴⭐ 1d ago
I think Gene Otani has more of a slight RP accent, but he's not the host of Newsline like he was years ago when I first saw him.
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u/Dear-Ad-7028 1d ago
Japanese is spoken on a single archipelago off the coast of east Asia, English is the international business language. Like big props to them did going from an eastern to western language in learning it but there’s practical reasons for learning English if you intend to travel a lot or work in a multinational company as it’s the language that give you the most bang for your buck. There just isn’t nearly as much incentive to learn Japanese.
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u/Vegetable-Light-Tran 1d ago edited 1d ago
For what it's worth, at the peak of Japanese colonialism, the language was used in Taiwan, Korea, Micronesia, Manchuria, and tentatively forced on occupied territories like Guam - now they can only force the language on their two remaining colonies, Hokkaido and Okinawa.
There's no real post-colonial discourse in Japan other than J-nationalist weebs like HiraganaNinja whining about how much it sucks to be kicked out of most of their colonies, and Why can't those former colonies just be grateful to Japan???
So a lot of this "Hur dur why do I have to speak English but you don't have to speak Japanese" is just lingering imperialist resentment that foreigners don't "know their place" and acknowledge Japan's inherent ethnic superiority. How dare they make me speak English???
You can see it in a lot of the ethnonationalist weebs' copy-pasted rants - they're so used to being able to talk down to and talk over minorities that when they go on the internet, they lose their mind because the "foreigners" (J-nat'lists never acknowledge that they're the foreigners here) don't automatically defer to them.
But that's also why SO MANY comments from these start with, "I'm Japanese, and..." They genuinely just believe that's their trump card, and everyone will just do as they say. Like, if you try to say, y'know, Japan is a bit racist, you'll get told "I'm Japanese and I've never experienced racism in Japan, you are the real racist for disrespecting me."
And it's just like, lol, no, that's not how ANY of this works.
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u/Loud_Insect_7119 1d ago edited 1d ago
My sister lived in Japan for like a decade, and she sometimes complained to me that she'd try to talk to people in Japanese (she is quite fluent in it) but they'd respond in English because she's very clearly not ethnically Japanese. Sometimes she would keep replying in Japanese but a lot of people never switched to it, so it would get weird and she'd eventually switch back to English.
So, you know, stuff like that might also play a role. Japan is a kind of weird example for this because it's a very insular culture that can often be pretty xenophobic.
edit to add: Also, I'm pretty sure JET (the main way that Americans get to live and work in Japan) actively discourages fluent Japanese speakers from applying, or at least used to. My sister tried to apply with them right after graduation (after spending a year in Japan as a student) and was told that her fluency in Japanese was actually a problem, because it's an immersion program and they don't want teachers falling back on communication in Japanese. Or that was my understanding, I'm happy to be corrected if I'm wrong. This was like 25 years ago, my memory is not that great and also things may have changed a lot.
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u/Bud10 OHIO 👨🌾 🌰 1d ago
Honestly, it doesn't surprise me too much. If you aren't japanese, you will never really be accepted even if you speak the language well. I remember a while ago I was bored scrolling through Facebook reels, and this guy was interviewing people in Japan. I remember two he interviewed. A white guy and a girl that was half japanese and half black if I remember correctly. Both were born and raised in Japan and spoke the language fluently. I remember both saying they were always treated and felt like outsiders. They never fit in anywhere.
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u/Dark_Web_Duck 1d ago edited 1d ago
I just watched a short documentary about a young black girl who was raised in Japan. If you closed your eyes and listen to her talk, you would've never guessed she wasn't ethnic Japanese. She says the same thing though, being treated like an outsider even though she was born and raised there. When I was stationed there for 4 years, they were in fact, extremely xenophobic.
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u/Vegetable-Light-Tran 1d ago
If you aren't japanese, you will never really be accepted
This is something I'll always go to bat for Japan on. It's not actually that hard to be accepted here if you just participate in social systems, e.g. join cleaning day with your HOA, or do your turn at the monthly garbage pick-up day.
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u/Youchmeister 1d ago
The struggle to speak the native language is a thing in a lot of countries. When I moved to Sweden, it was so hard to get people to actually talk to me in Swedish because if I said something slightly wrong to identify that I wasn't native, they switched to English immediately. I understand it's mostly being courteous, but dammit is it annoying.
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u/Loud_Insect_7119 1d ago
Yeah, I don't mean to give a negative impression of Japan here. My sister loved living there, and I've visited and had a great time. And she's actually a Japanese-English translator to this day.
It was just initially, she was frustrated because she was trying to improve her already good fluency. And then later, she got frustrated because it made her always feel like an outsider.
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u/Fazaman 1d ago
Not just being courteous, but some will switch to English because they suddenly have the opportunity to speak English to a native English speaker, and so can practice. One of the problems I had learning a foreign language was that, outside of class, I never had an opportunity to speak with anyone in that language, so I just started un-learning it the instant I was out of class.
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u/deep-sea-balloon 10h ago
This is exactly why I refuse to speak English to French people who are fluent in English (unless it's a work related necessity as a result of technical terms). Once you go there, you'll never get back; they'll speak English to me forever more. I didn't bust my ass to learn French in France, endure all of the criticism surrounding that for years and then...not speak it. If they'd like to practice English, I'm not the one for that. I usually let that be known at the onset.
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u/ShakeZoola72 1d ago
JET isnt an immersion program...it's an exchange program.
As far as her Japanese fluency being a PROBLEM? I'm kinds dubious of that...they don't actively seek it and the certainly don't mandate it...but the programme itself doesn't hold it against you...many people think fluency is going to give them a leg up and it often doesn't, maybe that's why she felt that way? I dunno...I was in about 20 years ago...so our conditions were likely similar...
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u/Vegetable-Light-Tran 1d ago edited 1d ago
it's an immersion program and they don't want teachers falling back on communication in Japanese
Kinda yea, but not really. English classes in Japan aren't immersion classes. JET and all ALT and eikaiwa is mostly just about foreigners being used as training dummies.
English class here isn't about teaching fluency, it's mostly about reiterating the children's Japaneseness in contrast to the foreign teacher, and teaching children that they must control and manage foreigners, and teach them basic behavior, and how to do that.
It's one reason you have so many people rushing to help tourists - it has nothing to do with hospitality, it's people excited to finally have a chance to teach a foreigner something - it's the same thing that the old ladies dumping trash bags on immigrants' doorsteps are doing - they think it's their job to "teach" the foreigners.
ALTs and eikaiwa teachers aren't banned from speaking Japanese for immersion, it's because their real job is to play clueless foreigner - the entire purpose of the class falls apart if the children realize you're just a normal member of society with a family and home here.
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u/Zyphil2 1d ago
Tbh, it's moreso Japanese wanting to practice their English than anything bigoted really. They're very socially awkward, and they often do that. When I was in Japan I would respond in Japanese and they would do the same thing, but some returnees (born in Japan, moved overseas, and then moved back to Japan) assured me they deal with the same thing even though they're ethnically Japanese. Once they found out they were returnees, random people would respond in English to them as well even though fluency was apparent. Granted there are still bigoted reasons but I found it's mostly just practice opportunities for them, at least in Nagano, Tokyo and Osaka.
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u/Vegetable-Light-Tran 20h ago
it's moreso Japanese wanting to practice their English than anything bigoted
Kinda yes, kinda no.
Two things: first, assuming any racial minority you meet 1. can't speak Japanese and 2. therefore can speak English is, in fact, a kind of bigotry.
In the US, we consider it rude to say "ni hao" to every east Asian we meet, and Japanese people agree that it's rude to make assumptions like that. We all agree that it's inappropriate and rude, so it's strange to hold Japan to a lower standard.
But also, the Japanese education system basically teaches children that they only need English to teach foreigners how to behave, so "just wanting to practice English" isn't really what's happening. Like, why would you assume I'm here to give free English lessons? Why can't you just talk to me normally? If I'm a customer, how about addressing me properly?
Like, fine, let's debate if it's bigotry or not, but I can think of very, very few situations where treating a stranger as a"practice opportunity" isn't super fucking rude.
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u/Zyphil2 17h ago
In the U.S we speak in Spanish to most Latinos who don't speak English despite there being Portuguese, and regional dialects, so lets get passed that. Happens in the service industry, medical industry, etc., so i don't agree with you on your first point. Same with how we forget Canadians often speak French, or confusing Europeans with each other (i.e., Germans and Swedes).
Also, the majority of tourists in Japan are either from English-speaking nations, or have a firm grasp on the English language. It'd be silly to assume foreigners speak a different language besides English, unless they're privy to the foreigner's background.
Second point - it happens in the states as well. In college there were people who would try and practice languages of different nations with those hailing from those same nationalities. Same in the military, whenever we had joint operations and training with foreign nations despite these scenarios being in English. No one took offense. Also, I don't get your second point entirely. Are you jilted by the Japanese speaking to you in English, or are you jilted that they aren't reciprocating conversation in Japanese? Another point is that they're taught English because English is the universal business language, and because they've had a history of it. It's why English was compulsory before and during WW2, despite there being very little tourism from western countries.
So is it bigotry? No, because they're not being prejudicial. If it's rude, then just ask them to speak in Japanese. If they continue to disregard that then, sure, it's rude.
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u/Vegetable-Light-Tran 13h ago
In the U.S we speak in Spanish to most Latinos who don't speak English despite there being Portuguese, and regional dialects, so lets get passed that
Is it considered polite in the US to go up to brown-skinned people and speak Spanish at them "as a practice opportunity"? Since you're either being dishonest here or pretending to be stupid, I'll answer for you: no, it is not.
the majority of tourists in Japan
We're not talking about tourists, though. I'm not a tourist.
it happens in the states as well.
Again, is it considered polite in the US to approach people, assume a language based on their race, and use them for practice? Again, you're being dishonest and clearly not pretending to be stupid, so I'll answer for you: no, what the fuck are you talking about? You will get your ass kicked in the US if you do that.
in the military, whenever we had joint operations and training with foreign nations despite these scenarios being in English
Wait, what??? Nobody's talking about joint exercises.
No one took offense
Because they signed up for a seminar in English you dipshit. That's a completely different thing from what everyone else is talking about.
Also, I don't get your second point entirely. Are you jilted by the Japanese speaking to you in English, or are you jilted that they aren't reciprocating conversation in Japanese?
Huh? I live here. I want people to act normal around me? What the fuck are you not understanding here?
they're taught English because English is the universal business language
Again, you aren't understanding - I'm not talking about the reason why they study English, I'm talking about how it's taught. Y'know, because I used to teach English here.
So is it bigotry? No, because they're not being prejudicial
Except they are. Like, they will openly say it to your face.
If it's rude, then just ask them to
Or maybe people can just have manners and not say rude shit to strangers?
Except, I guess that is actually too difficult for you because you genuinely think it's ok to go up to random Latinos and speak Spanish at them just because of their race.
Holy shit, you actually are just too stupid and racist to understand why that's not okay.
Never mind, sorry I wasted my time on you.
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u/deep-sea-balloon 10h ago
The tourist thing made me laugh. I get the same thing when I talk about people singling me out when they hear my accent. "Well maybe they don't like/aren't used to/curious about tourists".
Living and working here close to ten years, paying taxes, owning property, taking children to school, etc = tourist? Yes they know I'm not a tourist; I'm everywhere a tourist wouldn't be 😂
The assumption is if you're different, you're only here for a short time and should be singled out. Hmmmp.
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u/Ilovehhhhh AMERICAN 🏈 💵🗽🍔 ⚾️ 🦅📈 1d ago
Idk why people think this is an american problem, this is an anglophone problem. Aussies, brits, and canadians are just as bad
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u/learnchurnheartburn 1d ago
English is the international language of diplomacy. There’s a reason you can “get by” with just English in a lot of countries if you’re apologetic enough. The same is not true for Japanese.
Plenty of Americans are bilingual and plenty of Japanese are monolingual. The idea that every Australian, European and Japanese person is cultured and well-travelled is ridiculous. Even most Canadians can’t be bothered to learn French, which is one of the easiest languages for an English speaker to learn.
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u/RoutineCranberry3622 8h ago
I just didn’t understand why it’s only American people that are expected to learn Japanese. Why aren’t people from Italy expected to learn it then? Everyone in every other country on earth gets a free pass?
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u/TatonkaJack UTAH ⛪️🙏 1d ago
More like
Other countries: If you want to succeed in life you must learn English! That's why it's mandatory every year of school!
USA: You could learn another language and it might be helpful at some point but probably not. Here's a smattering of language electives you can take for fun
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u/throwawayforthebestk AMERICAN 🏈 💵🗽🍔 ⚾️ 🦅📈 1d ago
Not only that, but for Americans who live on border states, many of us can speak Spanish at least at a basic level because there is such a huge Mexican immigrant population here. I've been in healthcare for many years now, and because I've had so many Spanish-speaking patients I can understand fluently and speak conversationally, as do most of my coworkers.
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u/SnooPears5432 ILLINOIS 🏙️💨 1d ago
Well, I'll tell you even as an American who's lived in a relatively similar country, culturally, in northwestern Europe (Belgium/Netherlands), where they spoke a related language, good luck trying to learn the local language, especially in the Netherlands, as locals will immediately switch to English rather than having the patience to deal with you. I'd imagine this phenomonon is probably the same in lots of other countries, like the Scandinavian ones and others. So it's not even always that Americans and other English speakers don't want to attempt to learn another language, they're just not really enabled to do so in many places. I'm guessing the situation would be much worse with a language like Japanese, which has fairly isolated usage and a much more difficult structure and writing form, for an English speaker, or a speaker of any European language, for that matter.
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u/mramisuzuki NEW JERSEY 🎡 🍕 1d ago
It’s kind of interesting as the NJ accent might be heavy influenced by the original colonization by the Dutch and Swedish because a very fluent Dutch speaker accent reminds me of a soft South Jersey accent.
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u/CandyFlossT 1d ago
Spain might be a good place to learn Spanish, as a lot of Spaniards won't speak English to you, since a number of them simply don't speak it. At least, that was my experience when I was there. I had to speak Spanish in order to get my needs met.
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u/SnooPears5432 ILLINOIS 🏙️💨 1d ago
Agree. Most Spanish speaking countries would probably be good choices. Probably Brazil too, for Portuguese. Northern European countries, not so much for the most part.
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u/readyornot27 1d ago
True. Native English speakers seem to have more flexible listening comprehension and adapt well to others speaking their native tongue poorly. The native speakers of many other languages don’t seem nearly as accommodating or forgiving of mistakes on average.
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u/SnooPears5432 ILLINOIS 🏙️💨 1d ago
I one hundred percent agree with that. My foreign language skills are pretty good and I often find myself corrected over the smallest issues when speaking other languages - like the accent on the wrong syllable - that a native English speaker would not likely do with someone speaking our language.
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u/valonnyc 1d ago
I'm from NY. We have plenty of people here who don't speak more than 5 words in English. Many of them have been here for decades. I'm not shitting on them, just pointing out the hypocrisy.
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u/Dark_Web_Duck 1d ago
Id say learning the international business language is far more important than the occasional tourist learning a language just for a week's long visit. I was stationed there for many years so I became proficient enough to get around. It's not as difficult as one may think. Then I got stationed near the southern border in the gulf coast, guess what language I had to learn.
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u/CrueltySquadMODTempt 1d ago
I've been learning Japanese for a long time now and let me tell you there's a reason most people don't learn the language just for fun, it's difficult as hell. English is a simpler to understand language for most people since it isn't from an isolated language family and most people belong to that language family or have something to compare it to, I've had an easier time with Persian and Hindi since they're both Indo-European. Japanese is just really difficult.
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u/Kuro2712 🇲🇾 Malaysia 🌼 1d ago
Japanese people don't speak good English anyway, their education system failed hard on English language class. Also, if tourists are expected to speak the native language of the country they're in, then Chinese tourists are easily the worst offenders.
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u/JustinTheCheetah VIRGINIA 🕊️🏕️ 1d ago edited 1d ago
Japan is below Mongolia in English competency, 80th out of 111, and their rates continue to drop.
This seems like really dumb stone to throw, since the reality, if we're going to assume the American one is true, the Japanese beaker should look exactly the same.
For reference, the US population is about 23% bilingual "Haha, well in Denmark we" the European Union's combined average bilingual rate is 25% (same link). So yeah, if you take an area and population roughly the same size as the US, then you have an impressive 2% advantage on us at speaking different languages while, mind you, nearly every country in Europe speaks a different language and the US we have about 2 that are very commonly used (Yes I know New York City has like 140 different languages spoken, i'm talking nationally) So with far less pressure or necessity, Americans still keep up with Europe as a whole.
To take it back to Japan, Japan's bilingual rate is 13%, a bit more than half of America's. Which, again, a really fucking weird stone to be throwing.
I'm an American, and I have a degree in Foreign Languages and have studied German, French, Spanish, Arabic, and Japanese. I very much like Japan and their culture and would love to live and work there one day, so this subject is close to my heart. Whoever made this meme either A- Isn't Japanese, because they're aware of how bad English is in their country, or B- Is Japanese and also a nationalistic fucking moron.
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u/DaLordOfDarkness 1d ago
Oh how DARE English contains English. The hypocrisy of the internet.
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u/Comprehensive-Finish 1d ago
One. Japanese is a tough language to learn. It's even more difficult to learn how to speak it well enough to be conversational with native speakers. In terms of language learning, Japanese is hard mode.
Two, Japanese are real pricks when you try to speak their language to them and you're not doing it perfectly. Believe it or not, there are Americans who are self conscious and sensitive about offending other cultures. Americans who are attempting Japanese are likely to be highly intelligent but also high self critical. They don't want to come off as the stereotypical dumb American so they likely are going to stick to English when overseas unless they have a lot of confidence in their abilities. Also, even Americans who speak Japanese well are likely to get a degree of mockery because Japan is kind of a racist country.
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u/PhilRubdiez OHIO 👨🌾 🌰 1d ago
I picked up enough to get around town when I was stationed there in the military. So did all of my friends. I can’t read it, but I can ask for directions, beer, and that girl’s phone number over there who is totally into me guys.
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u/StrangeHour4061 AMERICAN 🏈 💵🗽🍔 ⚾️ 🦅📈 1d ago
Which branch?
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u/PhilRubdiez OHIO 👨🌾 🌰 1d ago
Marine Corps
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u/StrangeHour4061 AMERICAN 🏈 💵🗽🍔 ⚾️ 🦅📈 1d ago
Nice… That was my guess
My friend was in the marines and got to spend lots of time in japan also.
TY for your service
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u/EchoChamberReddit13 1d ago
I know a LOT of undereducated people who can speak multiple languages.
We live in North America. There is very little reason for us to learn a language outside of English. Even if we did, it usually isn’t used enough to retain it.
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u/Whentheangelsings 1d ago
You cannot tell me like half of Americans in Japan are not weebs speaking Japanese in the most broken cringy way because they learned it from anime.
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u/External_Chip_812 AMERICAN 🏈 💵🗽🍔 ⚾️ 🦅📈 1d ago edited 19h ago
Japanese English literacy rate is like 20%, with mandatory education starting from 5th grade. Most Americans don’t know Japanese because 1: they don’t care, and 2: they don’t need to when all business is conducted in English anyways. All the Americans I know who wanted to learn all spoke it perfectly in 1-2 years.
Edit: just checked, Japan ranks 87th out of 113 in the english proficiency rankings, sitting between Malawi and Afghanistan.
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u/nmchlngy4 NEW JERSEY 🎡 🍕 1d ago
The inclusion of a full-screen translation function on the Google Pixel devices that I use have severely diminished my Japanese skills, and I want to rebuild them, so I don't become a subject of the meme.
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u/CandyFlossT 1d ago
Why should I learn Japanese when all Japanese kids do is copy my American youth culture, as Japanese kids have done?
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u/thoughtsofsolitude 1d ago
I have no good motivation to learn a language for a country I’m going to visit for maybe two weeks maybe once or twice in my life time.
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u/ofrm1 1d ago
Japanese sucks as a language. Japanese people won't fully accept expats even if their Japanese is perfect. Why would anyone invest a mountain of time learning a useless language?
The same is true for Korean as well. I remember reading ESL forums for Korea several years ago, and they were just flooded with the absolute worst experiences ever.
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u/Ordovick TEXAS 🐴⭐ 1d ago
This completely ignores how integrated English is in Japanese society. I mean just look at all the english loan words the language has, the list is very long.
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u/Catatonick 1d ago
I’ve been studying Japanese for almost a year now.
I have absolutely zero reason for it and it serves no practical purpose… but at least I can sort of speak Japanese.
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u/Vegetable-Light-Tran 1d ago edited 1d ago
HiraganaNinja is a well-known J-ethnonationalist racist weeb.
It's a funny thing, it's rare to find people here in Japan that are fluent in English, but if you go on Twitter or reddit, you'll find that the ones who are just use English to be racist.
We've gotten a few in this sub - they literally just search for "Japan" and then copy-paste racist rants in the comments.
But it's funny, because a lot of it is exactly this, resentment that they were "forced" to learn English, but what about Americans???
And it's hilarious because, first of all, Americans are pretty much fine with immigrants keeping their culture and language (the racists screeching about "this is America, speak English!" being exceptions that prove the rule).
But these weebs are always like, oh, but we poor, oppressed Japanese are forced to provide English language support, but if I went to America, would there be any Japanese language support???
And it's just like, yes? The Indiana DMV provides driving tests in, like, 15 languages. You can vote in that many plus another 15. Why would Japanese not be included in that...?
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u/Superpilotdude TEXAS 🐴⭐ 1d ago
Why would I learn your language when we both already speak English?
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u/racoongirl0 1d ago
Now switch American with French. Or Italian. Or Colombian. Or Qatari. Or Indian. Will those people speak Japanese? If OOP didn’t have room temperature IQ, they might’ve realized that English is the international language and least common denominator. In fact, if a Japanese person went to any of those countries, they TOO would speak English instead of French or Spanish or Arabic or Hindi. It’s not our fault no one wants to learn their language and make it more common 🤷🏻♀️
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u/DevilPixelation 1d ago
I think this really exaggerates the English fluency of a lot of Japanese people lmao
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u/The_Ace_Pilot 1d ago
The real reason:
1. Americans primarily speak English in an unofficially English speaking country, hence why we dont speak Japanese
2. English is the universal trade language, hence why Japanese tend to pick up English in addition to their native tongue. They learn English because it makes them money. Americans learning Japanese would most likely be a net loss economically due to paying for a teacher or teaching service.
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u/Timelessclock859 20h ago
what if I was an asshole to a Japanese guy for not speaking English while visiting America? I know there's a word for that and it's right on the tip of my tongue
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u/KawazuOYasarugi LOUISIANA 🎷🕺🏾 1d ago
Hmmm... maybe just me but I think its less that our brains are small and more that we try to do it all at once without giving ourselves room to do so. Notice the leaking faucet on the left versus the fully open tap on the right?
It's difficult to retain information when overwhelmed by it which is why it's important to do it often and in bite sizes.
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u/HetaGarden1 ALASKA 🚁🌋 1d ago
Bring a Japanese person who only took English classes and a language-learning app to an English-speaker majority country and see how much they struggle to speak the language. They’ll also be horribly out of their depth.
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u/SnooObjections6152 CALIFORNIA🍷🎞️ 1d ago
Almost like English is an international language one is expected to know while Japanese is local and almost any tourist who speaks anyone language shouldn't expect anyone from Japan to know their language
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u/MiketheTzar NORTH CAROLINA 🛩️ 🌅 1d ago
I'm too busy having a survey understanding of Spanish, Punjabi, and Mandarin so I can order the bomb food from the local places
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u/ZerotheR 1d ago
That's what happens when you lose a war to a country that speaks the holdover of lingua franca.
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u/Redmonster111 1d ago
Japanese in Japan is already translated most everywhere in the city. Why learn when you can read it in english
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u/Crepes_for_days3000 1d ago
This is just a moron online. People in Japan and Korea don't dislike us like Europeans do. They are very open minded and not prejudice specifically against us, generally speaking. They do have a culture that only sees ethnic Japanese as Japanese but it doesn't seem to be with malice.
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u/Adventurous_Equal489 22h ago
The most issue they have with us are pretty reasonable things as disrespectful tourists.
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u/Tenos_Jar 23h ago
If Americans have small brains then why is the English language considered to be one of the hardest languages to master? While we have a fairly simple alphabet, the spoken language is extremely hard to master.
There's a huge amount of vocabulary that's needed just for basic day to day living. And then there's the vast amount of specialty vocabulary that's needed depending on the subject matter.
A large amount of meaning in English is transmitted via word order and context. And as we've all experienced a single word out of place can throw of the meaning of an entire sentence. And don't even get me started on grammar rules that most of us know and use even if we don't realize it.
English is an international language precisely because of it's modular nature and it's ability to use compound words and absorb loan words from other languages.
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u/Revolutionary-Cup954 21h ago
I mean Shohi Otanhi has been playing in MLB for a while and still speaks through a translator
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u/DeadRabbit8813 20h ago
I lived in Japan for almost 4 years and you will be hard pressed to find Japanese that speak conversational English. It’s bizarre because a lot of people (especially young people) in China and Korea speak really good English.
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u/LickNipMcSkip 19h ago
I've lived in Japan for years, and the % of expats, to include Americans among others, who are fluent in Japanese is much higher than Japanese even conversationally competent in English.
Hell, my dad, who is so white he turns red just thinking about the sun, used to teach Japanese literature at ICU to Japanese students, in Japanese. Americans have been in Japan for so long, stories like his aren't even rare there.
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u/Nine_down_1_2_GO 16h ago
I love how this image basically represents that Japanese people would have a greater knowledge of English than Americans, too.
I have never been outside of the continental US and can speak some conversational Japanese because of books I've read and being a general fan of anime.
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u/Calm2Chaos 11h ago
English is the most spoken language in the world, I'm pretty sure somebody's going to understand us
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u/PopeGregoryTheBased NEW HAMPSHIRE 🌄🗿 9h ago
i thought we all agreed that Phrenology was a bunk pseudoscience used primarily by racists in an attempt to justify things like slavery and genocide?
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u/RoutineCranberry3622 9h ago
Yes. All those Nigerians, Finnish, Argentinians, antarcticans all are known to have consistent fluency in Japanese because it’s only people with an American social security number that can’t fathom the language.
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u/Happy-Suggestion-892 3h ago
I’m currently in Japan and witnessed a chinese couple speak to a japanese waiter in english, so ya
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u/_Sheillianyy 🇫🇷 France 🥖 3h ago
Because Japanese people surly all speak English fluently…
/s if that wasn’t obvious
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u/DonnyDonster 1d ago
Japanese speaking English and Americans speaking Japanese actually share the same braincell, they are both equally bad 😆
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u/evil_illustrator 1d ago
Japanese is one of the hardest languages to learn from English. Especially the wording system.
Japanese people will usually prefer try to speak to you in English if they know it, especially in tourist areas. And some will out right refuse to talk to you in Japanese unless you’re Japanese, no matter if you’re fluent.
So why would most foreign people try to learn the language when the locals won’t communicate with you in it?
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u/DisorderlyMisconduct OHIO 👨🌾 🌰 1d ago
As an American living in Japan. I second this. Every bit of it is true. There is honestly not much of a reason to become fluent in the language
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