It's difficult to take the author of the article being repudiated (Wingfield-Hayes) seriously when he has lived here for over 10 years and doesn't speak the language.
Any other person who lived in a country for a decade and can't converse in the language would be (rightfully imo) shamed for it.
Idk, say what you like about how journalists operate but living somewhere for a decade and not speaking the language doesn't sit right with me.
> Any other person who lived in a country for a decade and can't converse in the language would be (rightfully imo) shamed for it.
I'm German, living in Berlin, and have wonderful friends who fit that description. They live full lives, and I couldn't care less about their German levels. They do enough good things with their time they put their energy into instead.
People should learn languages if they feel a reason to or if they enjoy it. Motivation probably makes it easier. Guilting people by default doesn't sit right with me.
I've lived in Germany myself (NRW). Idk, from my experience it's cool if you're in the young professional tech bubble but when you step outside of that it didn't feel good to me personally. Going out into smaller towns / cities to me at least it rapidly became evident that you're missing something.
Maybe I'm old fashioned or something. I still think there's something to be said for learning the local language (and c'mon if you've been there for 10 years, I'm sure you can pick it up).
This even goes without saying it's Japan where the level of english is far worse than that in Germany (where honestly the standard of English isn't anything like that you find in Sweden / Norway)
> I still think there's something to be said for learning the local language
Absolutely! I worked in South Korea myself for four years and did a year of Korean school in Berlin first to prepare, and then more tutoring and self-study in country. I wasn't particularly great at learning overall, but did get to survival levels of conversational and it definitely enhanced the experience and gave me a connection to last a lifetime.
It's still a lot of fun to watch a Korean show now and be able to pick up on it when the subtitles are bad and miss all the cultural nuances of word and grammar choices, etc.
I just think it's great when people discover that for themselves.
Especially as the guy was a journalist, he was supposed to go into "smaller towns / cities" and write about the people in there.
Surprised though that the BBC hasn't put that as a requirement before sending him to Japan for a 10-year stint. Afaik The Economist requires of their potential correspondents that they know Chinese before posting them to China, and this is why many of their Chaguan China-focused editorials are really interesting (for example in the latest one [1] the Economist journalist takes a train ride before the Chinese New Year and talks with Chinese people with whom he shares the ride)
My wife and I lived almost eight years in Belgium. I learned enough French that I could get in trouble with cab drivers. And trust me, I really tried. But French is a language that just goes in one ear and out the other for me. Unlike Spanish or Italian.
My wife learned enough business French that she was able to survive, but never became fluent.
There are just some people who cannot learn the local language, no matter how hard you may want to force them to do so or how long they've been living in that country. And I think it's a huge mistake to try to force them, or to judge them poorly for being unable to warp their mind around something that is a fundamentally alien concept for them.
As a linguist, the evidence is simply that your wife (or whoever) simply did not get enough exposure to language she understood, at the level she was at. Unless someone has a true learning disability, the only way one doesn't learn the language is because they weren't able to get the right input. And I say that without any blame - for whatever reason it was, that is the cause.
My wife did much better than I did, even though she never became fully fluent.
I will agree that I didn't go to a full immersion language school. But we did arrange for multiple tutors, some on our own dime and some paid for by her employer or mine. And we interacted with the people in our neighborhood on a daily basis.
I found that those who were Flemish speakers would actively prefer to practice their English with me, while Francophones would usually switch to English grudgingly, once they discovered how bad my French was. There were a few Francophones who couldn't speak English at all, or who refused to switch, and interactions with them were very limited and not very productive.
I honestly tried to learn French, but none of it stuck.
In contrast, during those same years, my wife and I took three different vacations to Italy. Twice to Rome and once to Ischia and the Amalfi coast. And I swear to $DEITY that I learned and used more Italian in those four total weeks, than all the French I ever spoke over nearly eight years in Belgium. Something about Italian and Spanish is just far easier for me to pick up.
This reminds me of a recent experience of mine. I was raised bilingual Greek and English (English is my primary language). For my entire life I heard both of these languages and use them both the same. What I had never heard, until recently, was someone who learned Greek as an adult. I was so excited to speak to them because it was something completely new to me.
When they began speaking (Greek) it was like my brain shorted out. I was so excited for them but it took active mental effort to translate what they were saying. I began speaking to them in English and I nearly couldn't force myself to speak Greek.
This was not elitism or snobbery, it was like my brain decided the path of least resistance was English and I used it automatically. Very strange experience.
It's always a balance between efficiency vs willingness to support their learning efforts.
This reminded me of an article written by an American living in China recounting his early days there. In it he describes the tricks he developed to practice the local language despite the higher interest of the locals to practice their English with him.
You must have missed the part where I said that all the Flemish speakers I met wanted to practice their English with me?
I never got a chance to try to learn Flemish. Every single one of those speakers that I met, were also master linguists (whether they acknowledged it or not), and spoke at least six languages fluently, and those were the only ones they admitted to. They also spoke at least two or three other languages with less fluency, and yet they claimed only the ones in which they were fluent.
During the time I worked at Snow, BV (a Dutch consulting company), part of my employment agreement with them was that they would pay for and arrange to have a Dutch tutor for me, in Brussels. By someone who really spoke Dutch, not Flemish. Unfortunately, that never happened.
To my ears, Flemish and Dutch seemed to be the same language. But not to the Flemish people in Belgium -- to them, these are two distinct languages. The Dutch would agree with me.
And to my ears, both of these languages sound like German but spoken with English word sounds. Every time tried to listen closely, it would nearly break my brain.
> I've lived in Germany myself (NRW). Idk, from my experience it's cool if you're in the young professional tech bubble
The GP talked about Berlin. Berlin is somewhat special as it attracts quite some foreigners. For me as a German-native it is sometimes weird if I go to a bar or something, outside tority, but "hip" areas and the bar staff only speaks limited to no German, so that the orders etc. have to be done in English.
There is quite a live you can life speaking only English. Of course once you leave the "hip" areas it becomes more limited.
I am with OP, if someone is living in a foreign country for around 10 years and still dont speak the local language, that is displaying a certain disregard for the country they decided to life in.
As others have replied, maybe that is less of an issue in a certain tech-related bubble, but...
I have seen foreigners working in customer service who dont speak the local language sufficiently. People like you maybe expect the customer to speak english such that these people can fullfill the job? I don't.
I don't think we should shame people for not speaking the language of the country they live in, however it's important to stress that you're really missing out when you don't speak the local language.
It will vary a lot by countries, because in some of them (i.e. northern european countries) everyone will be able to speak English so not only you have less incentive to learn the local language but it will be very difficult to practice because the local won't make the effort of speaking to you in their language until you're good enough (which you're not because you lack practice).
Speaking of Japan, as someone who lived there for a few years and reached a decent Japanese level, the English proficency of locals is not great so if you don't speak it you'll be stuck in your bubble of foreigners + Japanese people used to hang out with foreigners. I've seen a lot of foreigners not speaking Japanese after living several years in Japan, and most of them were wonderful people but they were like permanent visitors in the country they live which I thought was really too bad.
I think we should shame people for that: A nation is like a big family. You're essentially saying that you don't think that you should be able to talk to your own family in their language.
It’s not only that. It’s just more work communicating with someone in your non-native language. Especially in Japan where many people don’t speak English well. So you’re creating an additional burden on the people around you.
And that absolutely should be shamed, especially when you’re talking about a society like Japan that places high value on individuals acting in ways that make things easier for people around them and society at large.
I don't think this sentiment would go over so well if I expressed it to people here on the West Coast of the US. Not to mention that there are people that will send their kids to bilingual schools for (and this is conjecture) either lefty political points or potential socio-economic reasons (dual language or Chinese immersion).
I personally love learning languages and am that person that tries to learn a little bit and communicate wherever I go. I does seem to be a hot button issue here in the US. I think people have different expectations. You hear stories of immigrants from the early 20th century that would force their kids to only speak English so that they would get on well in society. It seems like a difficult topic here around heritage vs managing in a society, especially for kids.
Are your friends journalists whose job is literally to understand and translate what is happening around them?
There is a guy working for the BBC in Budapest, Hungary, who learned to speak Hungarian quite well in the past ~3 decades. That shows dedication and enthusiasm, because Hungarian is one of the most useless languages to learn (in terms of the number of people you can speak with). Compared to that, learning Japanese even on a basic level is a no brainer... if you happen to live there for a decade!
The US State Department classifies Japanese as a category IV language, "Super hard languages", languages which are exceptionally difficult for native English speakers. They estimate that you need 88 weeks, or 2200 class hours, to reach professional working level in it. That's if you're young, well-educated and very motivated.
By comparison, they estimate Romanian, Swedish and Spanish take 24-30 weeks, or 600-750 class hours.
Ten years is not much to just "pick up" Japanese, unless you're an exceptional linguistic talent.
That's including reading and writing skills, presumably. Spoken Japanese is not a hard language IMO. Reading and writing it without a dictionary on hand is much more difficult.
I can’t help but think that the interaction between you and parent is based on a misunderstanding. By “no brainer,” I think parent didn’t mean that Japanese is easier than Hungarian but that Japanese is much more useful than Hungarian in that you can speak it with around 10 times more people on Earth.
> They live full lives, and I couldn't care less about their German levels. They do enough good things with their time they put their energy into instead.
What an odd mindset. Anecdotally, prior generations of Europeans (and expatriates) valued being multilingual. Having a working knowledge of German, Italian, French, English was fun, valuable, and normal especially when doing business in diverse countries and with diverse peoples.
That generation even taught us that "When in Rome, do as the Romans do." I guess that principle is no longer a thing.
> Having a working knowledge of German, Italian, French, English was fun, valuable, and normal especially when doing business in diverse countries and with diverse peoples.
That's nice with all these very similar languages using latin alphabet and now try it with Chinese characters and tones in China or at least kanji/hiragana without tones in Japan. Characters are huge barrier when learning the language, because you don't see words to memorize everywhere you look, you see just bunch of strokes. I really wish Chinese switched completely to pinyin as Vietnamese did (and Chinese intended, but didn't finish), it would remove huge barrier in communication (and also tehcnologically wise, after all most of the Chinese already write pinyin anyway on smartphones/computers, which just transcribe their pinyin back to characters) and people would realize Chinese is actually very simple language, where you don't have tenses, plural, etc.
As someone speaking English/German and my other two mother languages I can still understand some Italian, French or Dutch (which is basically English mixed with German by drunk sailor), because of how similar these languages are, so picking up some of them would be very easy compared to Chinese/Japanese (well at least Japanese has much more loaned words from English than Chinese).
I don't know about Vietnamese but you can really make a parallel between Korean and Japanese.
Korean was using kanji the same way Japanese are using them now, and Japan could totally switch to hiragana only like Korea went for hangul. I've had some Japanese friends who were advocated for hiragana only, and were writing (on Twitter or blog posts) in hiragana only.
Yes, once you know kanji it's easier to read that full hiragana, but there is a point to be made about how learning kanji is difficult. Not just for foreigners, but also for Japanese students from first grade to high school.
Retro Japanese games displayed text in all katakana because of technical limitations. But it didn't stick, for good reasons. It's incredibly hard to read. Like, imagine reading an ASCII text in hexadecimal representation. That's how it feels when reading a sufficiently long text in all hiragana or katakana.
Abolishing kanjis might've worked for the Korean language, but Korean isn't Japanese. They're entirely different languages. Funnily though, that's something that the Unicode Consortium also needs a reminder on [1].
> Not just for foreigners, but also for Japanese students from first grade to high school.
This is an exaggeration. Native Japanese speakers in middle school would have no problem reading common kanjis in real life. A high schooler would be able to read as well as a grownup.
It would work fine. Japanese people can read Kana-only text - foreigners often can't because they aren't as used to it, but Japanese children read books mostly in Hiragana and they know what things sound like because they speak the language long before they know how to read it.
Japanese children are able to cope with all-hiraganas only because the text they read are so short and simple, accompanied by pictures. No other kind of books are written in all hiraganas, meaning that no person on earth has the required training. Nor do I think it's practical because there are likely to be tons of disambiguation problems with hiragana text.
Also, as I said, what worked for Korea centuries ago won't work for modern day Japan. Hangul was developed in an entirely different era where most people was illiterate, and the means for scaling education was non-existent by today's standards. It therefore made sense to reduce the number of letters in the alphabet. However, in modern age Japan, you'll be hard pressed to find a healthy person who can't read or write. There's no reason nor desire to switch to hiraganas only, and every reason otherwise. Changing a language is probably a terrible idea if there's no documented instance of native speakers actually wanting the change.
> Nor do I think it's practical because there are likely to be tons of disambiguation problems with hiragana text.
Humans are good at disambiguating in context. Those ambiguities can arise in spoken language too (minus those that are differentiated by pitch accent, but that still leaves enough room for homonyms).
> Changing a language is probably a terrible idea if there's no documented instance of native speakers actually wanting the change.
I agree but that has something to do with sociological reasons. I wasn't advocating for changing Japanese.
It's inefficient because it's somewhat unusual, and because when we read our brains are trained to recognise larger patterns instead of just single characters, so of course if you've spent all your like reading 東京 instead of とうきょう, the first would be recognisable much more quickly.
But that's true as much of modern Japanese as it was of Korean before they dropped Chinese characters, or of Chinese before the simplification of Hanzi.
Eventually, people would just get used to a new way of writing things and be able to absorb that quickly and efficiently.
Nah, kana take up way too much space, and with no spaces in the language that makes parsing kana only text a lot slower than kanji.
On top of that, the language itself is phonetically very simple, so if you didn't have kanji there would be way too much ambiguity in written text, which is already very differen from spoken Japanese.
Now, if Japanese invented a new Korean style alphabet that combines sounds into a single character, and introduced spaces to the language then I could see it working, but I don't think most people would want that.
> I really wish Chinese switched completely to pinyin
That's like wishing English would switch to IPA because English spelling is wildly inconsistent - which English would you choose? People who speak different dialects can still understand each other using written Chinese, whereas Pinyin is for Mandarin only.
almost everyone using smartphones and computers already use pinyin anyway when they are inputting Chinese characters, it's just redundant at this point, part of tradition without practical meaning
Prior generations of Europeans were also xenophobic as hell, to the point of going to war with each other. I really don't understand which idyllic past you refer to here.
Everybody has gone to war with eachother in every continent all the way through history.
If you go live in a country (long-term, which 10 years is), you should learn the language and not expect the locals to try to conform to your not-knowing the language... you're there, it's their country, their language, not vice-versa. How can you expect a country where people employed there don't know the local language to even work? Imagine a postman, a service worker, etc. not knowing german.. how is that going to work? When stuff like this happens, you get immiggrant ghettos and yes, in turn xenophobia, because people there cannot get normal jobs and expect the germans to adapt to them instead of vice-versa.
If I live in the country for 10 years, then it is my country too. Perhaps it is in my interest to learn the language, and perhaps it isn't. There are plenty of countries in the world where people get by perfectly fine without even having a unifying language.
Do you guys know how every language came to be? It was through the interaction of people from different cultures, and it is an ongoing process. Germany was not even a country not so long ago. I reject the normative notion that learning a language is central to being a positive member of a community.
> If I live in the country for 10 years, then it is my country too
Lol no. You’re not a sovereign individual. You’re part of a society, and every society is the product of people who have a culture that’s been cultivated over generations. Japan is a creation of the Japanese—the fruit of generations of Japanese people building a society according to their culture—not some foreigner who’s lived there for a fraction of a lifetime.
Japan is not a a lone entity as well. It exists in a concert of nations. It buys and sells products from elsewhere. If you showed how modern Tokyo looks like to a Japanese from only 100 years ago, they would have a breakdown. Meanwhile, to the average Westerner, Tokyo is perfectly understandable, although of course unique.
Let's just take one example. John von Neumann - a gasp immigrant - may have more to do with how America looks like today than anybody alive in the 1800s. Should America make some silly rule like you propose, and say that people like him are not welcome there, or that America does not "belong" to them? I suppose you support giving back the land to indigenous tribes then?
> John von Neumann - a gasp immigrant - may have more to do with how America looks like today than anybody alive in the 1800s
Not at all. Bangladesh, where I’m from, has computers too, but its government, institutions, infrastructure, constitution, etc., are still what Bangladeshis and the British created. Society is a product of culture, and culture runs deep and is extremely sticky.
I'm not sure I understand your point here. All those things you mentioned are not at all a product of the people of Bangladesh alone, they are a collective effort. You live in a system of government invented in Europe, your infrastructure is more and more owned by China, your predominant religion is not from Bangladesh originally. You talk about countries as if they are some independent silos of people who have lived in the area for millennia, and I find that to be absolutely unjustified.
Sure, it’s the collective effort of centuries, and the British, Mughals, etc. The British for example built many of our institutions, and we inherited British common law. Our constitution has language in it that you can trace back to the English Magna Carta. Modern Bangladeshi society fairly claims all of that. But who the country isn’t the product of, and hasn’t been shaped by, is some immigrant who has been in the country just 10 years.
The same is true of Germany or America. My wife’s family fought in the American revolution and were among the first pioneers to settle the Oregon coast. The culture of those pioneers—the rugged individualism, etc.—was passed down over the generations and has had a manifest influence on American culture and identity. My ancestors “didn’t build that.” I wasn’t socialized into those values growing up. My ancestors were from somewhere completely different that’s had civilization for a millennium and has completely different values and attitudes. My family came here in 1989 to a country that was fully formed in its modern incarnation by, among other people, my wife’s family. It strikes me as absurd when people assert out of misplaced political correctness that America is my country just as much as it is her country. It reduces culture and nationhood and citizenship to a shallow and impoverished concept.
We found newspaper articles that ran at the time my grandparents eloped from Misourri. They have headlines like "Kansas City woman marries Chinese", "she confirms he does speak English", "is pregnant with his son", ... etc. My father of course, when he came around, wasn't seen as an American boy in 1930s Kansas. His experiences there left him feeling like a "twilight child" for the rest of his life, caught in between foreign and native lands and not belonging in either.
Why is that alright? Were the anti-miscegenation laws wrong, but the newspapers not?
If you're from here or reside here and are committed to the future of the country, you are American. The country in its history has mostly not offered that assurance, and the law and culture behind it was badly racist.
I definitely feel American (on the same level as my white cousins I guess if that's how you want to pin it) and my dad did too. He rebuked my oldest brother once very strongly for suggesting he was first generation.
> caught between foreign and native lands and not belonging in either
That’s just a state of affairs that arises when people immigrate. Nobody gives up the culture of old country completely in a single generation, nor do they fully maintain that culture either. Desire for belonging can’t change who you are, which is a product of your parents and their parents and their parents.
> If you're from here or reside here and are committed to the future of the country, you are American.
That defines “American-ness” as an individual characteristic, but nationality is a group concept. When you go visit America and say Japan you can easily observe aggregate group differences in culture, customs, attitudes, etc. That’s what makes one place america and the other place Japan. And if your ancestors were the ones who cultivated that culture, customs, and attitudes, and you were born and socialized into them, you’re more American or Japanese than someone who wasn’t.
> The country in its history has mostly not offered that assurance, and the law and culture behind it was badly racist.
You’re conflating race with culture and national origin. For example, most Bangladeshis wouldn’t consider me Bangladeshi, because I was raised in the US. Obviously that’s not “racist”—I’m the same race as 95% of that country. It’s because I was raised in a foreign cultural environment that’s alien to Bangladesh. For the same reason, it’s not “racist” for Americans not to consider me American. Because I’m not. As a first generation immigrant there’s huge swaths of my socialization and world view that comes from old country, not from America.
And that’s true of my kids too, who are being socialized very differently than the cousins from my American wife’s side of the family. Maybe generations from now their grandkids will be American, both in the sense that they’ll be assimilated into the dominant culture, but also in the sense that continuing south Asian immigration to America will have changed American culture, the same way that Germans and Italians did. But in the meantime there is no better way to describe them than observing that they have one foot in each world.
I disagree thoroughly. This was an extremely important moral for my dad, he imparted these lessons to us from birth (I know that might sound strange but I can't elaborate): we were to expect no more or less from our country than any other American boys of our generation, and it is no more or less our own than it is theirs. I can't put it to you the same way that he did to us, but it is in no way an "absurd", "shallow", merely "politically correct" attitude. This means something to people. In politics because of the serious backdrop of family separation/deportation policy, the "shithole country" nationality, overall 18th-21st history of this continent (not to be discounted), etc. And personally because it's not like rare to have your own family story in America, even if your folks didn't set out to Oregon in a wagon.
... and don't get me wrong that is pretty rad. I have driven to and from St. Louis and the West coast a few times on different routes, and it is insane that anyone ever packed their family and shit from there to there in anything less than a huge truck/family minivan with cruise control air conditioning and radio all set to maximum.
Strong statement about a country that completely reinvented itself in 1868 (largely by copying the West) and then was forcefully reinvented (again by the West) in 1947.
Yeah, sure, you're able to get by without learning anything in some places... but you are a foreigner who came to their country, and instead of you adapting to the local culture (..well language), you expect literally everyone around you to adapt to your culture (..language) and use a non-native language to interact with you.
Imagine a brit going to france, driving his car on the "wrong" side of the road and saying "it doesn't matter, people just drive around me, it's not an issue".
As you age and require more and more services from the state of those countries do you think that country should provide you with an interpreter? You might encounter government employees, healthcare professionals or elderly care that does not speak English.
Yes and then maybe expats will go contribute their skills elsewhere, in a clear loss to the arrogant locals who think speaking language X is more important than living peacefully and contributing to the social welfare that depends on a young workforce that Europe can no longer produce.
It will be a three-way loss. For the natives who lose out on services, for the expats who clearly actively chose being expats in a particular location over all other options available to them and finally for the natives where the expats relocate who have to suffer those assholes (in exchange for services).
Prior generations were more likely to remain in a specific geographical area (eg. central or western Europe) and so taking the time to learn these specific languages made sense. Learning other European languages as a European is also not that far of a leap (unless we're talking Hungarian or Finnish).
Modern generations are constantly on the move in a globalised world. It's not uncommon for that European to end up working in Asia nowadays, where their knowledge of other European languages is useless.
It is still a thing, however, not for hardcore leftists. They will be very fast in calling you a nazi or at least faschist if you utter sentences like that. I am guessing they dont want to see their utopia fail, so they ignore everything which would be evidence against their view of the world.
And its fucking sad, because I used to see myself as part of "them". However, this inability to reflect about ones own failings has totally alienated me.
But (I'm assuming) they're not journalists whose _job_ it is to _understand_ and report on events in Germany. So I think the OP's critique is valid in that context.
Edit: Also, you can get by perfectly without knowing the local language in some cities on the continent, such as Berlin (Stockholm, Copenhagen, Oslo would be others). That is not true of Tokyo unless you're staying in an expat bubble. I spent 6 years in Beijing, and you had the expats who didn't know Chinese and all lived in one section of the city where you could get by on English alone, but that section most definitely did not represent the rest of China or provide a deep understanding of the country and its people.
Berlin is full of people with attitudes like that (both local and foreign), and that's part of the reason why the city is in such a sorry state. It's funny, in addition to those expats who only speak American/British you get a ton of immigrants who speak neither English nor German in a way that any sort of meaningful conversation would be possible. But it doesn't matter because no one cares, not even the government. And then every other week in a moment of brief clarity, some of them wonder why nothing works, from mail delivery over construction to even just holding an election.
>And then every other week in a moment of brief clarity, some of them wonder why nothing works, from mail delivery over construction to even just holding an election.
Berlin has plenty of issues. But I don't think the points you raised here are meaningfully connected with people's language skills.
It's not about skill, it's about willingness to learn the language. It's about people not caring to learn the language and choosing to not be able to communicate with the people around them (except for that small bubble of their friends and the wait staff they expect to adapt to them).
That willful ignorance to anything around you is typically not limited to learning the language, and I agree that it seems to be at the core of Berlin's identity. Berliners love it. I loathe it, and I'd prefer not to send money to Berlin each year so they can continue in their ways.
Amsterdam is like that, maybe just a bit less dysfunctional. I think it's a matter of respect and decency to learn the language of the country you live in.
That seems rather confused. The circle of English-speaking expats doesn't really intersect much with the circle of people responsible for local politics, all of whom speak German.
Blaming expats for the fact that Berlin's politicians are incompetent (which they are) makes no sense to me.
There is a good reason: not being antisocial to the people in the country you are visiting. Most Germans speak English, sure, but dealing with someone that doesn’t speak your native language is incrementally harder and your friend is externalizing that cost onto everyone he interacts with.
It's not verbose but it seems pretty self-evident to me. In Europe most people speak only the local language and little English, if you don't speak the language you're not integrated.
Your local businesses won't speak English, your baker, the cab drivers, the people working the public transport, at your local convenience store, the government officials, the deliverymen, your child's school-teacher, other parents at school, 90% of the people you will cross path with on the street, most written and recorded information about local events...
> Your local businesses won't speak English, your baker, the cab drivers, the people working the public transport, at your local convenience store, the government officials, the deliverymen, your child's school-teacher, other parents at school, 90% of the people you will cross path with on the street, most written and recorded information about local events...
And why would I wanna speak with baker, cab driver, public transport workers, convenience store workers, deliverymen, etc.?
I don't speak to these people even back home, I just buy what I want in shop, put it on checkout and pay, only thing you need to learn is answer question about loyalty card or plastic bag and the way you wanna pay (by card), all you need to learn is two words "No" to plastic bag, show your loyalty card if you wanna use it and say "card" and show it so you can pay.
I can order taxi in the app, get in, say greeting and sit there until arrival.
Public transport workers are closed in their cabin and you should NOT speak to them.
Deliveryman will just call you he is on the way, if you are at home and to come downstairs and you just sign or pick up your package, sdo you just need to say "OK, I'm home" to phone.
Other parents in school not speaking English are honestly not worth speaking (similar with obese people since that shows a lot about them), because if you don't speak English it shows bigger ignorance than not being able to speak local obscure language as English speaking foreigner.
School teachers tend to be old, so yes, you could hit language barrier there and would have to deal with that with some English speaking parent.
90% people on the street won't speak English, but for sure majority of adults in productive age will at least in big cities where foreigners move (and in Scandinavia you could hit even that 90% probably).
Most written information online can be easily translated with built in translator.
Honestly only place where you need to speak local language is communication with gov officials since those often tend to be PITA/xenophobic projecting their own complexes since successful people won't work for gov, it's usually job for lazy people who don't mind lower pay and were most likely also lazy to learn English (but to be fair to them, many of them speak English as well).
>> And why would I wanna speak with baker, cab driver, public transport workers, convenience store workers, deliverymen, etc.?
> Yeah, why would you ever want to speak to people who aren't important. Fucking serfs, they should stay in their place and silently serve you
Seems like you are projecting some of your own issues into what I wrote, because I didn't write anything about "fucking serfs" or these people not being important.
I don't see reason why would I wanna speak with them while they are doing their job, same as I don't expect anyone speaking to me, when I am doing my job (unless your job is speaking to people in call centre). We can all speak happily together after work in our spare time (in which case they cease to be bakers, cab drivers, etc. and they are just people), during work time you should work instead wasting time on small talk, so I see nothing wrong with expecting people providing services for money to provide me service I am paying for without annoying small talk wasting everyone's time including them.
90% of people on the street won't speak English in big European cities, no. I'm sure you can find some cities where they do like Stockholm, but that's the exception not the rule.
The rest of the things you said only confirm you have no intention to integrate and to be a pleasant addition to the community you live in. Your comments about people who don't speak English, and your attitude towards local workers are pretty vile.
> 90% of people on the street won't speak English in big European cities, no.
And who chose that percentage as some holy grail or something important? I'd say in big European cities at least 40-60% of people in productive age (18-60) will speak at least basic English, though not sure how is it relevant, even if only 1/3 of people in street spoke English it would be plenty.
> The rest of the things you said only confirm you have no intention to integrate and to be a pleasant addition to the community you live in.
The rest of the things have nothing really to do with integration since I behave same even in my home country, I don't see reason to wate my time with small talks and people doing their jobs, I have better things to do like spending time with my kids or rest. Not even sure what's pleasant addition and what's the community, those are foreign words for me, I am independent adult who doesn't feel urge to be part of some community as some young childless kid looking for their place in the word.
> Your comments about people who don't speak English, and your attitude towards local workers are pretty EFFICIENT/TIME SAVING.
That community is the one where your kids will grow up and adopt at least some if not most of the values of.
You are deliberately deciding to exclude yourself from it, which is likely to have bad consequences for you and your kids (since you won't be competent to help them).
For starters I speak local language of country where I live and this dumb discussion is hypothetical when I defend people unwilling to learn local language, because they can get by with English which is perfectly fine and I have urge to have small talk with other people while they work even in my home country.
But yes excluding myself from sheep in whatever community whatever language they speak whether my mother tongue, English or language I don't speak, is perfectly fine with me, I have no urge to belong somewhere to some category you can put me for your convenience and that's how I (will) raise my kids to be independend and have critical thinking instead just doing same as everyone else just because everyone (dumb) is doing it.
Not sure why would I be not competent to help my kids because I don't do same things like everyone else with need to belong to some community, they seem to be doing fine already in elementary school.
You won't be (as) competent (as you could be) because your understanding of the environment is going to be lacking. And would be tremendously more so if you weren't even competent in the language.
As an adult, you might (or might not) be able to mostly isolate yourself from your environment and its influence on you (probably not if you have to work). IMHO you are foolish to expect your kids to be able to do so (and it's not like it would be even a good idea to try !)
"Independent" doesn't mean "of the society", it means, on the contrary, adapted to it !
(No question that having critical thinking is good, but remember how it starts with trying to being critical of your own biases, a good portion of which stem from your own history : education, upbringing, culture...)
The way you write feels like English isn't your first language. Sorry if I'm wrong, French is my native language. But in case you had to learn English, you need to understand that you had the time, resources and intelligence to learn it to a very proficient degree. This isn't true for everyone. The parents you're calling obese and ignorant, they might be a bit like you in that they don't want to use their time to learn something they don't really have to and rather spend time with their children. Older folks usually had very poor English education at school if any and consumed zero English media, unlike a kid today with access to the Internet.
Also in many countries, teachers and hospital workers, amongst other professions, are government workers. You calling them usually lazy people is insulting and ignorant.
I mean it's quite obvious I am not native English speaker and I don't bother to perfect my language.
> you need to understand that you had the time, resources and intelligence to learn it to a very proficient degree.
English is taught on this level for decades already, so it would be odd if you were in productive age and didn't experience it.
> The parents you're calling obese and ignorant, they might be a bit like you in that they don't want to use their time to learn something they don't really have to and rather spend time with their children.
Nothing wrong with that, same as I find nothing wrong with me for not intending talk to them, while commenter I'm responding to thinks we should talk to each other.
> Also in many countries, teachers and hospital workers, amongst other professions, are government workers. You calling them usually lazy people is insulting and ignorant.
Gov official is someone working directly for gov, meaning (gov) bureaucrat. Teachers, hospital workers I would call state workers, certainly not gov "officials", but maybe my understanding in English is wrong.
Yeah because nobody listens to American music and watch American TV shows/movies to start with. I find it much more enjoyable when you can actually understand what they say.
You seem to live in a bubble. There's plenty of people who don't care much for these things as, say, the German market for movies, books, etc. is big enough (if you include dubbing).
> Honestly only place where you need to speak local language is communication with gov officials
That's what I wrote. But how often you deal with gov officials and various forms, on average once or twice a year? Is it worth learning whole new language to fill bunch of forms, which can be filled with help of friend within few minutes?
Btw. officials are not allowed LEGALLY communicate with you in other than official language (in letters, official forms). In spoken language it's their word against your word in case of argument, so there is no reason (other than being lazy) to not hold informal communication in English, if the official is nice/welcoming person (and it's actually required in some positions with foreigners, despite legal documents being only in local language).
>which can be filled with help of friend within few minutes?
Good luck with Spanish and French tax-related forms. In case of Spain, the documents are full of legalese jargon not even a native can grasp it at 100% without a gov website in an aside tab reading twice or trice the legal terms.
> Good luck with Spanish and French tax-related forms. In case of Spain, the documents are full of legalese jargon not even a native can grasp it at 100% without a gov website in an aside tab reading twice or trice the legal terms.
So you say one more reason not even bother trying to learn language for this reason, since you stand no chance if even native speaker can't understand it.
I suspect that most people who proclaim sentiments like that in this thread (of course, just learn Japanese!) do not speak a second language at a conversational level at all.
That people grossly underestimate how hard it is to learn languages, is why Duolingo is in business. And Berlitz, Pimsleur, and Rosetta Stone before them.
The guy didn't say he spoke _no_ Japanese. He said he spoke _little_ Japanese. And for an adult native English speaker, who probably could not get very good social immersion even if he wanted, that is not surprising. No, not even after 10 years.
Two of my friends were into Japanese culture in a big way when I was young in the 90s. Both watched a lot of anime, obviously. Both had excellent second language (English) grades and at least decent third language (French) grades, so it's safe to say both had above average talent for language acquisition. Both went to study Japanese at university. Both moved to Japan. Both struggled with the language.
Isn't it opposite? IMO English natives tend to think that English should be okay in everywhere. European multilingual may think "just learn Japanese" but it's harder compared to european language for europeans
I'm an American living in Norway, in a larger city (for Norway). It's hard to learn, because when I try my burgeoning Norwegian, they immediately switch to English. I don't blame them at all, but I see how someone speaking English could not learn Norwegian in 10 years and be very happy.
That's because you are visibly American. If you looked more like a southerner, you'd have much better, they wouldn't switch to English. On the other hand, they wouldn't even speak a Norwegian to you.
I don't think it's looks, it's accent. Often someone will start a conversation with me in Norwegian before I've spoken, then switch when I answer. Granted, My Norwegian is not great yet (A2/B1 level), but it still definitely makes it harder to practice and learn here.
You could answer their English in Norwegian, or even some other language, e.g. French. If you have started the conversation in Norwegian, they should not assume you can speak English anyway.
True, but politeness feels like continuing in English, because I have no idea if they care to struggle through a conversation with me, and asking people that 5 times through the course of every day starts to wear me down.
Yeah you have to get over the "politeness" hurdle if you want to seriously learn a language.
When I go to Spain, I will always try to speak Spanish and if they reply in English (which they often do because I make mistakes and/or have an accent), I just keep replying in Spanish. That may be seen as "rude" or inefficient by some (although others probably appreciate the effort), but it's really the only way you can keep making progress. (Of course, if it really gets too complicated you can still switch - but usually people switch way before they've reached the end of their skills.)
In my opinion there are lots of external factors to it. I’m also German and we probably both know that especially lots of years back we could’ve set things up differently in terms of integration (which to some degree included learning the language).
> I'm German, living in Berlin, and have wonderful friends who fit that description. They live full lives, and I couldn't care less about their German levels. They do enough good things with their time they put their energy into instead.
I know many people like that too (also in Berlin), and they usually get stressed out whenever they have to deal with their landlord, or any government agency, etc. In addition, there are still areas even in Berlin where the baker or shopkeeper will not speak English well enough. Finding doctors could also prove more difficult, and so on. And what if you have children at some point and they go to school? Unless you can afford some fancy private school, everything will be in German.
Sure, you can get by without German for a while - especially if you have friends who can deal with certain things for you. But you'll just really be very dependent on others and their goodwill instead of being in charge of your own life.
I agree with you in principle. In practice English is often all you need if you live in a big city. When I look at my country (Poland), I can see that a person can live in Warsaw (capital city) or any of the biggest 5 cities without knowing any Polish. Even having an appointment with english speaking doctor is not a problem. OTOH when you adventure outside of big cities you suddenly find yourself in a land where nobody can understand English very well (in that case it's better to chat with teens than adults, most pupils have B2-level English at school).
That being said I know a person that spend 3 years in Denmark and they do not even attempt to learn Danish. Their argument was that the language is very niche, and they are not sure for how long they will stay there. If I was in their place I would probably at least learn Danish to B2 level, just in case e.g. an accident to be able to call a police or an ambulance.
I think the real problem here is that learning a language is a lot of work and requires a lot of efford. If you live comfortably with English they why to put extra effort for something that will provide little or not benefit at all.
I got my hair cut by a Greek barber in Copenhagen. He had been there for 12 years and didn't know any Danish. Somebody came in speaking Danish and he said "I'm sorry but I don't speak Danish" and the rest was in English. For many English speakers it's their third or fourth language and the value of Danish is pretty limited - even for a Copenhagen resident. Obviously, that Greek barber would probably love to speak Danish but as an adult, even a decade of effort won't get him to the level any Danish person can speak English.
> but as an adult, even a decade of effort won't get him to the level any Danish person can speak English.
Children don't have any special ability to pick up languages, but they do have certain advantages: they aren't afraid to make mistakes, they are fully immersed in the language from the moment they wake up, they have no responsibilities like jobs and other adult stuff and they have people (parents, school, teachers, family) constantly talking to them at a level they can comprehend while gently pointing out their mistakes. If you put that barber in the same environment he will be fluent in no time.
>Children don't have any special ability to pick up languages
They do. One example I recall from a neurology class is that the auditory cortex of a young child is able to differentiate more sounds than that of an adult. As a child ages, they lose the ability to distinguish sounds not common in their native language. The inability to distinguish the sounds also applies to the inability to tell the sounds apart when speaking it which decreases their ability to produce the correct sound. There is some research showing it is possible to relearn the ability to differentiate, but this requires training specifically in identifying sounds, not training in learning a language.
This doesn't mean fluency as an adult is impossible, and there are many actions that an adult could take to better align their learning environment to that of a child's which would improve their learning, but we should recognize there are some difference that cannot be replicated in adults.
You’re right that one might only need English to live in a given country.
But then how much insight has that person into how other people think (they can’t hold a conversation with the vast majority of non english speaking people), or access to local news and studies...
I think many Spanish speaking countries are in the same boat: not speaking the local language means you end up in a foreign friendly bubble with limited access to anything that didn’t get picked up by that english speaking sphere, which will often include the really interesting stuff.
> I agree with you in principle. In practice English is often all you need if you live in a big city
that might be true in Europe (not everywhere though) or in the US, it is certainly not true in Japan.
There is also a fatigue associated to speaking English for non native speakers that often leads to being identified as the "foreigner" and in practice you end up hanging out only with other English speaking "foreigners".
You also miss a lot about the local culture, because the language barrier forces you to only visit places where people speak English.
It is like living in Poland and never eat pierogi.
> When I look at my country (Poland), I can see that a person can live in Warsaw (capital city) or any of the biggest 5 cities without knowing any Polish
Poland is good (but not great) in that sense, a lot of people speak English, many of them don't speak it well enough to actually hold a meaningful conversation with a native speaker. I understand them as a non native speaker, but I also recognize many of the mistakes in the construction of the sentences they make (and that I make as well).
But that's not true in general, not even in rich and well educated Europe
Now the real advantage of speaking some local language is knowing a lingua franca.
It's not uncommon here in Italy to witness a conversation between immigrants coming from wildly different backgrounds (say, for example, North Africa and Eastern Europe) happening in Italian. Their version of Italian, of course, but it's good enough to communicate and they also can practice the language they actually need to interact with Italians.
Of course it takes a lot of time to learn a new language, especially if the language doesn't even have the same alphabet you already know, but after 10 years I would expect to actually have learned at least the basics of it.
There's a difference between, say, a tech worker not making an effort to learn the language because they can get by in English, and someone whose actual job description is to understand the politics and culture of their host country not bothering to learn it. In the second case it looks like professional negligence.
English language is really a superpower. I speak a little Spanish and was chatting up with an Argentine couple in Thailand. They don't speak much English and were telling me stories of being stuck and lost and swindled while traveling abroad.
I've managed to travel to 30+ countries and never felt out of place because most places will somehow accommodate English speakers.
The only place I felt a little bit of language hostility was in Russia. Moscow was probably the least English-friendly major city I've ever been to - but that makes sense from a historical perspective.
I think there’s a very big distinction between the usefulness of English for travel vs living in a country. Sure, English is a great for tourism, but outside of that I would not say it’s as useful as a lot of English speakers like to say. As someone who moved to Spain, I would say it’s pretty much impossible to get by (living) here with only English.
I think you are correct about "need". However when I was in Japan, people were very patient and absolutely thrilled when I inflicted my limited and low quality Japanese on them. It made it an excellent environment to learn in.
>learn Danish to B2 level, just in case e.g. an accident to be able to call a police or an ambulance.
I don’t think Denmark is the best example here. English competency is _extremely_ high and Danish is quite a difficult language to grasp (as far as I know as an A2/B1 Swedish learner).
It's about making the effort to assimilate with your host country. Embracing and empathising with their way of life which begins with learning their language.
I've always found it frustrating whenever I meet people who don't try to integrate with the country they're living in - both when I've lived at home and in foreign countries...
Some people are really bad at language, and depending on the context it’s probably fine to let them off the hook. I once participated in a French class in Paris with a guy whose wife was French, and he was utterly hopeless. I’m not sure he was ever going to develop the skill, even though he tried. Though I hope I’m wrong about that.
I think a journalist writing about a country is a special case though, that doesn’t get affordancee.
I don't really believe this. Of course some people have more of a tendency to be good at languages than others but I think the guy from you story probably didn't try hard enough or maybe had a completely wrong approach. There are many countries where virtually all people speak a foreign language which shows that it is possible for almost anybody to pick up another language.
I really dislike the “didn’t try hard enough” angle. He seemed to be trying, he really wanted to be able to settle in to a productive life with his wife there. It’s lacking in empathy to assume you have all the relevant facts to pass judgement.
Countries where people are multilingual from a young age clearly have some major differences to those where they are not, and even in those countries many people are not multilingual.
There is a theory that children have a "language acquisition device" that goes from muscular brawn to a flubby dough-boy with age in most people. IDK if that's accurate but there does seem to be something to it.
The countries where everybody is multi-lingual this almost assuredly happens in middle to early childhood.
It is true that the plasticity of children's brains is higher than that of adults. Research also suggests that in very early childhood, children have an exceptionally good ability to discern different sounds and the ability to learn how to make those sounds, although this ability is lost at some point.
However, I believe many people overestimate the advantage children have in learning a language. For example, a four-year-old can have a basic conversation and communicate their needs, but they are not yet able to have a complex conversation. Their vocabulary and pronunciation may not be fully developed yet.
It's important to note that this child has spent a significant portion of their life learning the language and is exposed to it daily, and likely has parents or others to practice their language skills with. Despite this, their language level is not yet perfect.
The point I am trying to make is that it takes a significant amount of time and effort to learn a language, and there is no shortcut or "hack." Most adults would likely do comparably well if they dedicated the same time and effort to learning a language as children do.
I think one of the problems is that many people know about this child super power and then give up. OTH, I live in Italy which is full of adult African immigrants, and they all speak Italian.
The fact is any adult can learn any language, they just either don’t have to or don’t want to. I’m not saying it’s easy or it’s the best decision for every situation, but it’s definitely possible. This is true even more so if it’s a popular language with a lot of resources to learn it, and you live in the country where practice is virtually free.
I don't want to be too presumptuous here but my understanding is there are a lot of desperate broke African immigrants finding their way into Italy.
In such a situation you would be forced to rapidly acquire the language to survive, move on somewhere else, or possibly resort to crime because you are unable to communicate to secure a job (which <should> rapidly leads to expulsion from the country). Bad learners get tossed into the last 2 bins, and thus unseen.
Comparatively if white American hacker guy shows up flush with tech cash there's really not much chance I'm going to find myself on police radar or starve not learning the language, even if I'm there for an extended period and even if there illegally.
Probably, but I don't think it challenges the legitimacy of the original point at all.
> Comparatively if white American hacker guy shows up flush with tech cash [...] not much chance I'm going to find myself on police radar or starve not learning the language
Tbf to my original parent comment, a close friend fits the description of someone who wields English extremely well and is hopeless at foreign languages so I'm not completely unempathetic to people who struggle
So if you live in 4 countries over four decades in your adult life you will learn 4 new languages?
I don't think you must've lived more than one place abroad, or somewhere with good English. For example I speak 4 languages, understand another 2, but don't speak the language of the country I've lived in for the last 3.5 years, and I'm not even learning. At some point it's just absolutely not worth it and I'm just gonna occupy memory that will be more useful for work or life.
This is the most common take you hear from people that never lived abroad, only speak one language, or lived abroad in a single place where they learn their first ever new language. Then judge someone who'd be learning their 4th or 5th. It's absolutely not the same thing for a native english speaker to learn one single foreign language when they move once and compare it under the same light.
>So if you live in 4 countries over four decades in your adult life you will learn 4 new languages?
Well, first I would argue that you're a massive outlier to the norm. I don't think living in multiple countries for decades at a time each that don't share a language is at all common.
>This is the most common take you hear from people that never lived abroad, only speak one language, or lived abroad in a single place where they learn their first ever new language. Then judge someone who'd be learning their 4th or 5th. It's absolutely not the same thing for a native english speaker to learn one single foreign language when they move once and compare it under the same light.
I don't really see the need for the presumption. If you move around that much and speak that many languages, all the more power to you. I was just saying generally if you live somewhere for a decade you should (probably) be reasonably competent in the language, especially if you're a journalist attempting to write insightful articles aimed at broadening a foreign understanding of the place.
Why does the number of countries matter? You go to a foreign country for a week, and you learn a few phrases (please, thank you, where is the toilet, ...) before you enter, just in case someone there doesn't know english, because why should they, if they're not from england/usa/canada.
If you live there for 10 years, you should definitely be able to learn the language enough to do daily tasks in the native language there.
> So if you live in 4 countries over four decades in your adult life you will learn 4 new languages?
If those 4 countries have 4 different languages then yes…
I’ve spent most of my adult life in foreign countries, and I’ve never spent time in a country without starting to pick up the language. I speak 3 languages fluently, another 2 I can have a conversation in, and there’s a few more that I have a decent foundation of the basics with. I don’t even know how it’s possible to live in a country where everybody speaks another language without starting to pick it up rather quickly.
Unless… you’re intentionally refusing to or simply do not spend any time with the locals, which is something people should rightfully be judgemental about.
He’s a journalist though - his job is to talk to people and ask questions. Surely that’s got to be much easier if you can do it in their native language?
If you're living in each place for a long time then yeah, you should learn the language. If you're just a temp worker then it's nbd, but then you also shouldn't be writing articles about the culture you clearly can't integrate in and don't understand.
English speakers are notorious for not bothering to learn local languages, eg:
Migrants failing to assimilate, 200-year-study finds
Migrants to Australia have displayed an inability to assimilate with local values and refuse to speak anything but their native tongue, a study covering the last 200 years has found.
The study confirms a popularly-held belief in parts of the country that migrants simply refuse to fit in.
Boat people from as far back as 1788 didn’t bother applying for passports or visas, were set on introducing their own laws, and, in many cases concealed criminal records, according to the damning report.
It is referring to English colonisation of Australia a few hundred years ago. The English did not learn the indigenous languages there, and they brought English law with them. It also refers to the fact that a lot of convicts were sent to Australia.
Joke: An Englishman gets off the plane, and immigration asks him if he has any criminal convictions. He replies “I didn’t know you still needed one”.
"There's nothing I would rather be
Than to be an Aborigine
And watch you take my precious land away.
For nothing gives me greater joy
Than to watch you fill each girl and boy
With superficial, existential shit.
Now you may think I'm cheeky
But I'd be satisfied
To rebuild your convict ships
And sail them on the tide.
I love the way you give me God
And of course the mining board,
For this of course I thank the Lord each day.
I'm glad you say that land rights wrong.
Then you should go where you belong
And leave me to just keep on keeping on."
I've lived abroad for over a decade and spent considerable effort learning the local language but I wouldn't shame someone for not doing the same. Learning a language as an adult is incredibly difficult and imo the benefits are limited unless you are learning the absolute basics (e.g. learning the 200 most common words) or you're able to get to a high level (which again is incredibly difficult to do).
But you don't need a lot more than those absolute basics to do day-to-day stuff in that foreign countries, and i despise people who cannot even learn that despite living there for years. If someone lived there for 5, 10, ... years, and cannot order beer, ask for a bag in a store or buy a bus ticket in the native language, that seems really disrespectful to the locals, who are expected to know and use a foreign language all the time to deal with them.
I spent about half my year in Japan and half my year in Sweden and I speak both languages. It's always shocked me how many expats feel it's not necessary to speak the language but the justifications are totally different.
In Sweden they say "Everyone here speaks English anyway"
In Japan they say "All of my friends are expats anyway"
I think if people don't want to learn a language they will come up with any excuse.
> I spent about half my year in Japan and half my year in Sweden and I speak both languages.
Yeah, I really doubt that you can move to Japan with zero Japanese and in half year learn enough to hold normal conversation and be able to read/write Japanese, all that while working full time and not being immersed every day in Japanese language course.
It's perfectly possible to learn a language in 6 months if you spend a lot of your time conversing in it, avoiding English as much as possible. They also said "speak", not "write". It's possible and even natural to learn one and not the other.
Almost anything is possible, even time travel, it's just not very realistic under certain circumstances. In case of learning Japanese in 6 months while working full time in English speaking enviroment with 0 Japanese foundations to start with.
> Yeah, I really doubt that you can move to Japan with zero Japanese and in half year learn enough to hold normal conversation and be able to read/write Japanese, all that while working full time and not being immersed every day in Japanese language course.
If you're working full time in Japanese you could absolutely get conversational Japanese within half a year. Indeed I suspect that's the most practical way.
Happens all the time with menial or physical jobs where they're desperate for labour - construction, fishing, forestry, that sort of thing. You can't get a work visa for that kind of job, but if you have a visa for other reasons (spouse, child of Japanese national, etc.) they'll take you.
Yeah, but I assume in that case you don't talk much during the job and don't have really time to talk to practice the language, so it's complete circle - can't learn it in job which doesn't require the language, because there is no reason to use there language. Sure you could learn few phrases or at least improve your comprehension I guess, but I don't think you could get fluent after half year of such (hard) work.
Weird way to generalize the problem. The difficulty of learning Swedish is not the language itself, but because Swedes default to speaking English with you if they see you struggling. If you want to truly become fluent in Swedish you have to constantly ask them not to do that, and most expats get sick of it by the 10th or so time.
>I think if people don't want to learn a language they will come up with any excuse.
In a world where it was actually true that you don't have to learn the language wouldn't it appear that they always have an excuse not to? So how does your experience give evidence we're not in that world?
> It’s got to the point that in central Helsinki, you often can’t get service in Finnish in bars or restaurants.
That would really suck if you were a native Finn and don't speak english, and the service worker in your own country doesn't speak your local language.
On one hand it's just part of a continuum of language transitions in a city that never was monolingual or even Finnish-dominated for most of its history. 110 years ago many neighborhoods in Helsinki were majority Swedish-speaking and the official language mandated for the government was Russian. A lot of people spoke all three languages. (I'm 42, was born in Helsinki, and I remember from my childhood shops in fancier neighborhoods where the service was in Swedish.)
On the other hand it's a real shame that it risks sending Finnish into a vicious circle of decreasing usage: the elites start speaking English and working in English, and Finnish once again becomes the insignificant language of country bumpkins.
Between 1860 and 1940, the nation collectively worked very hard to "uplift" Finnish into a real written language that is actively used in literature, science, audiovisual culture, and so on. People translated their family names and started speaking Finnish to their children. I can see that work being undone over the next century. (My own two children probably would have lost the language if we hadn't returned to Finland now; we were living abroad for years and they'd already started talking English between themselves.)
This is also starting to happen in Prague city center, though the real reason is those overpriced tourist traps are not frequented by locals so there is no need for staff to speak local language, it should be enough warning for you (as local) that you are in tourist trap.
I've been to prague every few years for decades now, and the whole city center has become just a giant tourist trap. Sadly the same is happening to many other old european capitals to the point where they all look and feel the same... some old buildings, a river and tourist traps and scams.
I live in ljubljana, and the same is happening here too...
Prague, bratislava, budapest, vienna,... it's all the same.. buildings are slightly different, landmarks slightly different, but the general feeling inside the "old town" centers is the same... pretty much same restaurants selling same overpriced food, same stores selling same made-in-china souvenirs and some obscure "locally made" stuff that's useless and way too expensive, same boat tours, same bike/scooter guides, same weird hidden supermarkets for the last few locals still living there... same tourists, same loud spanish girls, same japanese people with huge cameras, same groups following the same guides holding up same flags and umbrellas not to be lost in the crowd, same tourist cards, same corruption with guides (recommending shitty restaurants that pay the guides to steer tourists there)... it's kinda sad to me personally... tourism has destroyed so much sadly.
If your Norwegian isn't good enough (even if it is just that one day or you are having a moment), folks quickly switch to English.
Some Norwegians have trouble understanding other Norwegians as well and wind up using English. Dialects vary greatly from the written language and they just sound... different. Children start learning when they enter school (6 years old) and I think half of the graffiti is in English.
That is certainly true, but your experience is quite different if you speak Swedish or not. I definitely experienced a barrier when I mostly spoke English. I was working in an environment where everyone was speaking English, so it was harder to learn Swedish, however my relationship with swedes definitely improved after I tried to use more Swedish.
A lot of countries require a certain level of language knowledge to gain permanent residency. I can't imagine Sweden is too different than its western neighbor, where I have and still reside. I guess they realized that they aren't moving and need to have a plan when they retire? (I did read something in Norwegian immigration rules that it is possible if someone has lived for a significant amount of time, they can achieve permanent residency. Maybe there are stipulations. I don't know if the same thing is present in Sweden.)
It takes a bit a passion to keep on learning. I experience well enough, even though I still struggle with it. But living here, I do have a sense of FOMO though if I don't know what is happening where I live and having to be stuck translating everything or asking for summaries is extremely tedious.
I did think in the past that if universities require students to sit through local language lessons, in part to be prepared for other classes, what is the other part? My sense is that students have a lot of potential for local economies. The same "welfare" grant is rarely given by companies, where maintaining a workforce of contributing and skilled professionals could be equally as important. Yet, I found exactly one company in my own job searches that offer a stipend for a basic language course for a job that otherwise requires just English abilities. That actually sounds like an excellent job perk. This is really why people could sit 20 years without knowing more than a few phrases and can read signs. Maybe the cost of courses is not within a budget for something that is mostly optional for work life. But it is a damn shame anyway. For myself, I never took a course. I wish I did, but my language knowledge played a significant role in getting a lead developer position at a very good company (I kept saying in interviews that this is exactly something I want to improve :) )
Not only is there not much pressure, it's actually more difficult as Swedes are generally happy to speak English and will often switch as soon as your accent gives you away as a foreigner. After 15 years living here I am now fluent, it was a challenge though!
TBH, there's only one you need to know in order to feel like a native - english.
> But I'm sure on average most people know more than ONE.
Guilty, unfortunately. The non-english one I know is pointless, useless and has too much emotional baggage attached to it to make me happy about speaking it.
Although he jokes about not speaking Japanese well in that tweet, I've seen him conversing in Japanese in some reports. I think he probably speaks Japanese well enough, but is lamenting that it's a hard language to get really good at.
Have you lived in country with completely different language with characters instead of simple <30 letters alphabet for 10+ years? It's very different for English speaker to learn Spanish or German and learn Chinese or Japanese, characters are VERY big barrier when learning, since even when Japanese learns German they just need to learn like 30 letters and they can read and write anything, while vice versa German must learn 500-1000 (Chinese) characters one by one at very least to be able to read some Chinese.
It's one thing to see everywhere words you can memorize when seeing it every single day in shops and online and very different thing when you see just bunch of strokes.
I lived in China for 5+ years and didn't learn the language because the characters are huge barrier. In a few weeks with Duolingo I learned more Spanish without ever visiting Spain than Chinese in few years living there. Same while travelling in Indonesia (where you are/were forced to learn Indonesian), I picked up comparable amount of phrases within few weeks as in China in few years. Of course I learned some basic Chinese characters at very beginning, so I can read at least menu in restaurants and bunch of phrases (how much does it cost, where is nnn,etc.), but I couldn't have any conversation at all with anyone not speaking English (or my mother tongues) and honestly I was not really interested in people who don't learn at least English as I had to learn as well since it's not my mother tongue. It probably helps I've found girlfriend (wife) who can be my translator if needed (which was not really needed even when dealing with paperwork most of the time).
But if author is journalist then I agree there should be set a higher bar for them, so they are able to research independently and make interviews with locals. It's one thing to be journalist covering the country and other thing just living your life working in English speaking enviroment without writing stories for thousands of people abroad.
> It's one thing to see everywhere words you can memorize when seeing it every single day in shops and online and very different thing when you see just bunch of strokes.
They become much, much easier to grasp once you notice they're nearly all composed of the same hundred or so radicals and you can break them down and memorise them that way.
> and honestly I was not really interested in people who don't learn at least English
That may be the real issue here. Mandarin has nearly as many speakers as English. Why should anyone be interested in people who don't "learn at least" Mandarin?
Going to China for that long and not trying to learn Mandarin is a misstep. Chinese is spoken by a lot of people, but spoken fluency isn't that high. Moreover, outside of the major cities, you will meet very few English speakers.
Where I lived, Shanghai, there was a western community that essentially interacted with each other in their enclaves and never developed any meaningful relationships outside maybe dating someone who was Chinese. In Shanghai at least you can get along just fine without learning the language, but you will miss out on so much because most people around you can't hold conversations in English.
> Going to China for that long and not trying to learn Mandarin is a misstep.
I went to China with intention to stay there one year to save some money and continue travelling. Then after less than a year I met my future wife.
> Where I lived, Shanghai, there was a western community that essentially interacted with each other in their enclaves and never developed any meaningful relationships outside maybe dating someone who was Chinese. In Shanghai at least you can get along just fine without learning the language, but you will miss out on so much because most people around you can't hold conversations in English.
I lived in Beijing and avoided foreigners outside work enviroment (well we had drinking lunch breaks and ocassionally drank even during dinner after work), didn't frequent bars/clubs for foreigners and first few years even avoided western food. In my first three apartments I had Chinese flatmates (no foreigners, always only me) and we had no problem to communicate in English. The problem in general are different hobbies and culture, not really the language, most of the westerners will have more to talk with other westerner even in broken English than with Chinese who is perfectly fluent in English, it's just fact and speaking Chinese won't change a thing about it.
I share a bit of that experience when trying to make Chinese friends. The first place I lived was with a family who had a son around my age. He was solely interested in practicing English but he had virtually no life outside of school.
I moved into a foreign students dorm and most of my classmates were Korean and Japanese, but I spoke to them in Chinese. The friend I hung out with the most was Korean and I didn't feel like there was a gap in hobbies. We had a group that would go out and play pool, drink soju, and sing KTV. I never had good opportunities to meet and hangout with other Chinese students. When people go to bars, they really don't go and socialize with others. Socializing is usually contained to the group you are in.
I think I'd say though there is still a big advantage in just being able to converse with taxi drivers, retail workers, etc. People are pretty chatty because westerners speaking Chinese is kind of novel. It is a great way to better understand what I consider a fairly misunderstood country.
I don't think understanding the country and not speaking the language are mutually exclusive. I've met my fair share of foreign students who studied Chinese at home, then stayed in China for a year to not overstay their honeymoon period and yet their understanding of China was completely shallow and they were clueless about China as much as they were when they came, because all their life was dorm parties and clubbing or shagging CN girls and enjoying their student bubble, while speaking local language. Meanwhile I worked for multiple companies over years, talked with plenty of Chinese coworkers whether they were interns or fulltime, dealt with apartment hunt seeing at least hundred of apartments in person, tons of various paperwork with various offices, dealth with hospitals because of wife's pregnancy and visited places that hardly seen any foreigners. You can still understand China even without speaking the language and not understand it while speaking the language.
But I agree western MSM is heavily biased against China and their "journalists" living in their foreign bubble are joke, especially if it's older unmarried men, where you can clearly see what they are doing with their spare time.
> That may be the real issue here. Mandarin has nearly as many speakers as English.
Completely different league, English has by magnitude more speakers than Chinese.
> Why should anyone be interested in people who don't "learn at least" Mandarin?
Because not learning any foreign language is quite sign of ignorant character, while English is foreign language in most of the world and most of the world English speakers are non natives including me who learned 2-3 foreign languages besides my mother tongue. But you are right Chinese not speaking any other language besides Chinese is less ignorant than me...
Those numbers are native or second language. I bet the English numbers shoot way up vs Mandarin if you drop the bar to basic language skills or holding limited conversations.
It’s the one thing where I’m That Old White Man by now. My favorite is user groups meetups in Germany where there are one or two people who don’t speak German, and then request the talk to be held in English.
Imagine me attending a meetup in London as the only German and requesting to have the talk held in German. It would be ridiculous.
German is not lingua franca spoken by people all around world, so yes, this comparison is ridiculous comparing lanugage taught everywhere in world with niche language, which is less popular than Chinese as foreign language.
English is spoken by people all around the world, but not all people around the world speak English.
Also, those expats living an English life in Berlin etc. are doing themselves a huge disservice — you learn a language if and only if you are forced to hear and speak it. By attending meetups and softly forcing your language onto the group, you are never going to break out of your bubble.
It’s a lose-lose situation for everyone involved, really. The German speaker is limited in what she or he can express, the German audience is limited in what they can understand, the English audience doesn’t progress in learning the language of their new home country.
> It’s a lose-lose situation for everyone involved, really. The German speaker is limited in what she or he can express, the German audience is limited in what they can understand, the English audience doesn’t progress in learning the language of their new home country.
Maybe, but by not learning German they expats miss out on access to about 40 million Germans/Austrians/Swiss who don't also speak English (and they are likely not the smartest ones either). By not learning English, the locals block themselves out of a vast amount of knowledge and resources contributed by over 1 billion people.
Expats miss out on local job opportunities that need German speakers.
I am not in Germany, but the point applies to other countries. I missed out on extremely good opportunities a few years ago because I didn't speak the local language well (like opps that would have gotten me an easy 20-30% raises. I was constantly having to say no to recruiters because of that one detail, that I was not good enough at the time. I did get good and I did get a good opportunity and I hope in the future that I don't see it any other way that the investment of putting my head into something like that will have a great return in the future.
With Spanish and English you can communicate from Canada to Patagonia except for Brazil (and the Brazilians will understand an 80% of spoken Spanish and a 90% of written one because of Romance similarities), among UK, Spain and Scandinavia. Also a good part of France, Portugal and lots of Southern Italians will understand you in Spanish too.
You are working with assumption people don't live in their bubbles even when living in home country speaking mother tongue and that not breaking bubble is something bad. Many people voluntarily choose to live in bubbles which overlap with other bubbles.
For instance I live in bubble where in general I avoid having conversation with obese people, since these people have complete lack of self control. It would be also quite odd to me to have (deep) conversation with person not speaking English (even if we both talk to each other in different language), since that shows ignorance to learn basic necessity to exist in present world and lack of education and world views (I mean how the heck can you learn anything about the world not speaking English just from limited local sources). I'd probably for various reasons avoid talking to people with dreadlocks and/or large amount of tattoos. You may think I am doing disservice to myself by living in bubble without talking to all these people, but I am fine with that and have my reasons for that.
How do you know it's disservice, if they are happy with their choice, you know better than them what's good for them?
Only thing I agree with you it's forcing 90% of local language speaking group to speak English because of just few people who don't wanna learn language, this will get tiresome pretty quickly, so they better find group with larger percentage of local language non-speakers or just make smaller groups or talk one on one (personally I prefer this option than some big group conversations even in my mother tongue, because there you end up fighting for word).
> since that shows ignorance to learn basic necessity to exist in present world and lack of education and world views (I mean how the heck can you learn anything about the world not speaking English just from limited local sources).
My parents' generation learned Latin and French instead of English, and there's an argument to be made that you also can't really understand a lot of the world without at least some passing familiarity with both of these languages. In the GDR, people used to learn Russian, for obvious reasons, and that's not so long ago - many of these people are still in the workforce.
That's not really an excuse, my retired father learned Latin, German (to the level he was translator) and Russian and he still late in his age learned also at least basic English.
Meanwhile my ignorant low educated mother learned just very basic German needed in shop to be able to communicate with German speaking customers.
I can cut you some slack if you are above 50 and know at least some other languages, but honestly you should still know at least very basic English even without formal education. I also learned at least very basic Spanish without any formal education. There is no excuse for anyone below 50 to not speak English even if they speak Latin or German.
There was a time when German was the language of science and widely studied in many countries. (Japanese has disproportionately many loanwords from German, for example).
Tragically, it was in no small part the fault of the Nazis that led to the decline of German for science. A huge number of German scientists emigrated to the US in the 1930s.
I'd give it a go if you want to speak German for a bit. However, the conversation is very likely to be skewed towards talking about Kraftwerk, Nue! and careers of Eric Zabel, Jens Voigt and Andre Greipel.
(To be perfectly frank, even if you're speaking in English the conversation is going to be skewed towards Kraftwerk, Nue! and careers of Eric Zabel, Jens Voigt and Andre Greipel. Sorry about that.)
Joking aside, I don't think I've ever met a local that didn't appreciate my attempts to start a conversation in their language even if we eventually switch to English.
I upvoted you because I appreciate the sentiment a lot.
As a non-native speaker in my country, if I seek to participate in meetups, etc. with the expectation that the language used will be the local one, I would prefer not to switch to English. I deliberately go to tech meetups partly for that purpose. It's fine to switch to English if the presentation is specifically in English, but I do not want the audience to accommodate to my lacking; I'd rather be clueless than be accommodated.
Japanese is rated as either the #1 or #2 hardest language for a native English speaker to learn (and the reverse is true which explains why you often run into people with little or no English there as opposed to in, say, Western Europe, where many people are practically natively fluent in English). People can and do learn Japanese, but it isn't something that one can easily learn in their spare time the way English speakers can learn French or Spanish.
I hear this frequently, but disagree strongly, at least regarding the spoken language. As a native English speaker who learned Japanese easily to the "could get by as a tourist" level with two semesters of college classes and minimal self study, I find French much harder (and I took 4 years during high school).
Unlike many southeastern Asiatic languages, Japanese doesn't have any sounds that the average English speaker doesn't already know how to make (possible exception in the 'l' sound, but, if you can roll your 'r's, it's the same tongue position). There are no articles, only two tenses, relatively normal conjugations (though adjective conjugation is odd relative to English), no declension, and sentence structure has strong hints of Latin. The simple-polite forms of verbs are sufficient for daily use. Pitch accent and ga vs. wa are hard to pick up without immersion, but neither are necessary to be understood.
The written language is a different story. Lots of memorization. The hiragana and katakana come quickly, but there are a lot of kanji. Probably not needed for tourists (particularly in the day of image translation on phones), but still a factor. Arguably still easier than Mandarin in that regard, though.
Additionally, there are an overabundance of resources for Japanese learners. The economic potential of American occupation under MacArthur and the subsequent boom years, the enduring popularity of Zen Buddhism, and the rise of anime's popularity in the West have likely all contributed to Japanese being one of the best-supported Asiatic languages in academia and self-study courses. Its support in the USA is exceeded (in my estimation) only by Mandarin due to
the large immigrant population and ongoing trends in trade.
In short, I'm sure the number of native English speakers who can "get by" in Tokyo eclipses the total number of native English speakers with basic Lao, Thai, Khmer, Vietnamese, and probably even Mandarin skills.
Written Japanese is a difficult language for native Japanese people. One would be in high school before one has learned enough Kanji to read a typical daily newspaper.
Let me introduce you to wild idea that language is just tool and has nothing to do really with the country/culture. I may loved China (at least first few years) where I lived for years without loving their politicians and learning language (beyond few useful phrase and numbers), same goes actually for many countries I travelled.
My kid is citizen of country A, was born in country B and lives in country C speaking languages B, C and D without actually speaking language of his citizenship country, because it's just language, you are not defined by your passport or mother language. I'm from country A, his mother from C and I speak to kid in B and D. The world is not black and white.
That idea is insane, it's well established that language shapes thought. Ask any multilingual person and they'll tell you their personality changes from language to language. I'm glad your kid speaks a bunch of languages, but if they don't learn A they'll never be able to fully culturally connect with country A either.
> it's well established that language shapes thought
I don't think is necessarily true. There is empirical evidence for linguistic relativity, but my intuition is this is often culture getting encoded in the language and then passed on. However, the way the language is used can change.
Most of the world's languages are spoken by a limited number of cultural groups, so if you analyze language L only spoken by group G, then you will find the way people of G use L is quite similar.
But if you look at languages with native speakers of diverse culture backgrounds, you will find the way they use the same language is quite different and often a reflection of their culture, not the other way. Like the way native English speakers from Wyoming speak versus native English speakers from Dehli, or a native Spanish speaker from Bolivia versus one from Northern Spain.
> Ask any multilingual person and they'll tell you their personality changes from language to language
I experience this too to a mild degree. My intuition is that it is the context in which the languages are used.
> if they don't learn A they'll never be able to fully culturally connect with country A either.
That's true, but at the end of the day a parent has to make a decision. It is tough to juggle lots of languages with kids and have time to do other things. Many kids will reject home languages if they don't get to use it outside of a single parent.
> Ask any multilingual person and they'll tell you their personality changes from language to language.
I disagree with this, I'm same person whether I communicate in English or my mother tongue, you could ask what people speaking English think of me, people speaking my mother tongue think of me and you would get pretty consistent decription.
> if they don't learn A they'll never be able to fully culturally connect with country A either.
I'm fine with that since A) they are not living there anyway, B) language of country B is actually very similar to country A, so much that people from these countries can talk to each other in their own local languages, C) I don't have really high opinion about culture of any of these countries or some "country culture" per se.
I am beyond some stupid lines on map or languages, although it may be difficult to comprehend for children when their school books are intended for kids born here, so they read there nonsense such as "Our mother country is A" and I have to correct it at home, that this is not our mother country, this is country where we live.
As mixed race/country kids living in country of neither of their parents it will be a bit confusing, but not necessarily bad, at least they won't be tied by concept of single home and some single country, which I find limiting when I look at others being proud about country they were born in as if it were some of their accomplishments. I have same attitude about people being happy about some athlete from same country winning some medal as if country had anything to do with that, great for the athlete, but it has nothing to do with you.
> Let me introduce you to wild idea that language is just tool and has nothing to do really with the country/culture
This is a wild idea because it's false. It's hard to be a part of any culture if you don't speak the language. All you've said is that knowing a language doesn't make you part of a culture, which nobody would disagree with in the first place
We are talking here about country and country's culture. What you say works for homogenous societies, but there are plenty of countries with multiple official languages where none of the citizens would be part of their country culture then, look at Switzerland, Belgium, US, etc., these countries don't really have single country culture defined by one common language, but at same time I'm sure all these people living there share similar country culture despite some of them being able to talk to each other.
If you say "any culture" then sure you can be always part of some (sub)culture if you narrow it down, it just matter how much you are going to narrow it, in the end you can be part of culture of foreigners living in specific country.
Have you ever lived in Switzerland? Because I grew up there and if there's ever a group of people who don't accept you if you don't speak their dialect it's the Swiss Germans.
Swiss languages are regionally segregated, meaning that if you want to settle in to Zurich, you'll need to speak German (and at least understand Swiss German), if you want to live in Geneva you'll have to know French and you won't get anywhere in Lugano without knowing Italian.
I would be very surprised if in the case you all stayed in C, your kid wouldn't adopt at least some of the culture/ethnicity/values of C, which would be through the language of C (or possibly a C-derived subculture/creole).
Ability to learn new languages (as an adult) follows normal distribution. Moreover, the further the new language is from one’s mother tongue the more difficult it is. Furthermore, people who excel in mother tongue (with enhanced writing and expressive abilities) often fall on the lower end of the spectrum with the ability to learn new languages. Shaming people over that is quite … shameful.
Whenever I find a language hard to learn, I always remind myself that the vast majority of every population can speak their own language.
"Chinese is hard" -> 1.5B people figured it out.
More recently, on observing my niece and nephew, something we take for granted is how exhausting it is being a child. You are learning 247 non stop for best part of 2 decades. Can't understate how hardcore it is. No wonder why we adults have less stomach to learn a new language. The kind of immersive learning required for language acquisition is all encompassing, and really kind of needs to take over your life - especially one distant from your mother tongue.
I say all this while figuring out how I personally muster the motivation, routine and immersion to gain fluency in Mandarin by the end of this decade (a personal goal).
> "Chinese is hard" -> 1.5B people figured it out.
Yeah and at least 90% of them were immersed in it since birth at home. Learning mother language while growing is very different from learning foreign language as adult.
> Can't understate how hardcore it is.
No, it isn't for kids, my kids are trilingual without any issues and much effort, kids are like sponges absorbing new information/languages easily, if you start early.
Btw. you won't be fluent in Chinese without living in China.
> at least 90% of them were immersed in it since birth at home
Bullshit... Maybe at best half of Chinese have Mandarin as a home language - of which half again speak Xinan Mandarin at home which is barely intelligible to a Standard Mandarin (Beifanghua) speaker. So the majority of Chinese learned Mandarin as a second language.
And obviously the writing and ideograms is something that every one of them had to painstakingly memorise over 15 years of schooling...
> Btw. you won't be fluent in Chinese without living in China
I know plenty of people in Singapore and Taiwan who wouldn't even bother to make fun of your ignorance...
Mandarin is language taught in Chinese kindergartens/schools regardless of province, so yes while their parents may speak different dialect at home, they learn it from very early age.
And you know very well I meant that 90% of those Chinese language speakers are ethnic Chinese and not foreigners. So congrats you won Nitpicker of the month prize!
> I know plenty of people in Singapore and Taiwan who wouldn't even bother to make fun of your ignorance...
1. Maybe you should check on official name of "Taiwan". 2. I am talking to non-native Chinese speaker (not you), not sure how does that apply to ethnical Chinese wherever they live, whether it's Singapore, Taiwan or US. Even the person I addressed my message to agrees with me, so congrats once again on completely pointless nitpicking.
>No, it isn't for kids, my kids are trilingual without any issues and much effort, kids are like sponges absorbing new information/languages easily, if you start early.
My point isn't that it's hardcore for children to be trilingual. My point is that the way of life of a child is exhausting - learning 247. If you try it later in life, eg doing a masters/bootcamp/intensive hobbies you realise how hard work it is trying to learn.
Having met people who have replicated learning like a child in adulthood, I posit that some of it is that children don't have responsibilities and also don't have a choice in the matter. The upside is also considerably greater - learning to walk + communicate.
> Btw. you won't be fluent in Chinese without living in China
I have lived in China before so this is very apparent to me. When I was there, my brain was always processing the language in the background. Remembering new vocab, trying to recognise new characters. Thinking about how to express specific ideas. That is worth so much more than any class or course can teach - and time spend learning like that really compounds. A week in a country like china can be worth months of study for me. And that style of learning is also how I imagine children are - constantly processing consciously and unconsciously...
> Yeah and at least 90% of them were immersed in it since birth at home
And the guy from the article has been immersed in it since ten years ago. Thats long enough to learn enough to be able to do day-to-day tasks and not expect every local there to adapt to your lazyness of not learning the language.
In France it is virtually impossible to function of you do not speak good French.
In a company you will miss all the important things that are usually conveyed in casual French (this includes subtleties that change the meaning of a sentence).
Yes, people will speak English with you, usually fluently (and with plenty of errors), but this is not the language of choice for the off the record conversations.
Outside of work you will get by in supermarkets, but for more complicated shops your will have problems.
For the administration it is clear: without being fluent in French there is no way to do anything. Even if you are a native speaker you understand just half of it and hope for the best.
People in the street speak English [citation needed] but they will get tired after some time and then the English becomes unbearable.
Source: native French married to a foreigner who struggles to understand everything (not to mention the subtleties) after 15 years of active use of the language.
Switzerland has four official languages (Romansh was added in 1996 and was a "national language" since 1938).
In any case, particularly in Canada and Switzerland the official languages tend to be far more geographically divided than the unofficial languages in those countries, or the many languages in South Africa or much of India, or even Chinese in Singapore, Spanish in the US, etc. It's usually clear which subset of languages, official or otherwise, are useful for the city/region in which you live.
You should definitely get off your high horse a bit, world is a bit bigger than your opinions. There are millions of very smart high earning expats all over the world that see no reason to learn local language well if its ie too hard for them, they practically never use it (ie at work its english, at home its XYZ and for basic chit chat you get by with few hundreds of basic words), or simply don't have time to learn due to ie parental responsibilities.
I applaud to every parent who rather spends time with their kids rather than studying language because 'you should'. Ideal is both of course, but that's not how reality usually looks like.
I only hope those expats are ready to pick up and move either back home or to another country because they can't find a job in English in their country. They might be fine though. However, I'm being serious and am not joking, because it was my own concern. I am probably ok though as a software developer, maybe, but the thought of picking up and leaving at this point is really tough. At the very least, securing my assets and collected pension is well worth the time I am putting in to learning a language. Hey - you even get brownie points when you can mutter something in the local language.
As an example, here in Norway, I have read of expats, specifically British expats, being denied various earned benefits because their residency permits have expired and/or they decided to return back to where they came from. The collected pensions were not afforded to them. IANAL definitely, so if this is ok or not in terms of EEA rulings is maybe another story, but this, even being pre-Brexit, was still worrisome to me. At the time, years ago, I was not a citizen here nor a citizen of the EU/EEA, so tying my wife and my benefits' fates to whatever employment we were able to attain is a bit concerning. Not being explicitly tied to employment and maintaining the full rights of every other citizen by being one myself is a relief. Of course, one of the requirements was reaching a certain language level (it was A2 when I got it, which I aimed for specifically, but the government has since decided to push it up to B1.)
Also, I don't have children, but I have had co-workers who do, who sought to learn enough to be involved their children's education and also really can't afford expensive international schools. I mean, we all make salaries that are average to our profession, citizens and non-citizens alike; I mean, if you want your children to only speak English, work in a English-speaking country.
Look, good for you if you refuse to learn the language of your society.... As long as you don't attempt to write opinion pieces about that society you have no hope of integrating or understanding.
Nobody said outright refusing, I specifically mentioned even with few hundreds of words you can get by in many societies (probably not Japan or ie China though). Its about priorities, one has very little free time and for some there are more important matters than talking a bit better to strangers. Many languages require multi-year frequent commitment, you can learn tons of other skills or sports instead.
You can certainly write opinions, that's what they are, internet is still mostly free for speech. Not sure why you feel as an authority on who can write what. Something about high horse again? Living somewhere you can get tons of positives and negatives of state, society etc. even if not understanding a word. Maybe not 100% picture, but enough to form an opinion and write about it
My country has no official language and the lingua franca of my neighborhood is not a language I speak. Shit just got weird because basically no one would not consider me part of this society and I sure as hell understand it roughly as well as anybody else in my hood.
Maybe America is just weird but you can come here and not learn English and if someone refuses your right to comment on our society they'll probably just be called a straight up racist.
I would think one would look at the original quote and see it says:
"私は日本語がかなり下手です" [0]
Not being good at something is not the same thing as having refused to learn it. From the authors response I honestly can't assess their level of Japanese well. I routinely have had people tell me they don't speak English well but then have a full conversation with them.
It's fine to live somewhere for many years without learning the local language. Even learning a relatively "easy" language, like German for a native English speaker, takes about a year of full-time dedication. Not everyone has time for that.
It's definitely not ok, however, to act as if you're an expert about the local culture. There is so much you can't grasp unless you speak the native language. Talking to people is important, but equally important is consuming native media and the news.
Hayes said he didn't speak much Japanese. That he speaks any at all, is probably evidence that he tried.
People vastly underestimate how hard it is to learn languages. A few people seem to have the knack for it, but the large majority of us don't. Especially not when we get older. Japanese is also famously hard for native English speakers.
hogepiyo was saying someone who lived for a decade and cannot speak native language does not have enough credit for us to believe his/her comment on the entire country's changes. The fact that people do can live this way does not change this point.
I'm finnish and work with a lot of international people, many of whom have lived here for decades. None of them speak Finnish, and I, and all the other Finns I know, would never expect them to speak it. It's not that big of a deal.
That's great, but you also wouldn't expect them to write a relevant critique of society and culture since they can't even read the local news paper much less understand the living mindset of people.
Everyone here keeps anectoding about their trip to other places when the issue is not daily living but writing an opinion piece about a society they don't understand enough to live in.
Yeah, I get your point. Of course their point of view about the culture and society is unique and important and absolutely worth listening to, but it is true they will certainly miss a lot of the cultural nyances for exactly the reasons you described.
Why? What's so important about that? Pleasing the locals?
Not a hypothetical question for me. I've lived in Germany for fourteen years. And while I can mumble my way through some basic conversations, I'm far from fluent in German. I'm sorry but I'm not interested in sacrificing an enormous portion of my time to such a project either. Seems to be quite common here with foreigners. It's very rare that I get angry/annoyed reactions from Germans on this. The opposite actually, there are quite a few Germans here that are attracted to the notion of living in Berlin partially because it is more international focused.
In the time that I've lived here, automated translations have gotten much better. Which helps with the inevitable bureaucratic stuff or interacting with people who only speak German. There is very little practical need for me to speak German beyond that. And otherwise, the business language in the companies I deal with is mostly English. I of course live in a bit of a bubble with lots of foreigners that have invaded Berlin. I've also lived in places like Finland. Finnish is much harder than most other languages to pick up. So, I never even pretended that learning was going to be a thing. This might not even be my last country.
Most countries smaller than Germany or the US tend to be a lot more pragmatic about people speaking their language. People appreciate it if you do and generally don't really feel threatened by non native speakers.
With some exceptions of course. This is a popular topic with populists/xenophobes worried about people stealing their jobs, women, and real estate, becoming marginalized in their own country. You get that in a lot of places. I tend to not have a lot of sympathy for such people though. The opposite actually. Those aren't their jobs. You need the right skills and typically for skilled labor there isn't a whole lot of unemployment. We foreigners show up because we are wanted and needed to do a job. Women aren't property and are perfectly capable of deciding for themselves whom they form relationships with. Fun fact in Finland, a dis-proportionally large part of the local women end up marrying foreigners. And the real estate value indeed goes up if smart people move in and start creating economical value. Economic growth is generally a good thing but indeed annoying for the locals.
I think there's going to be more migration due to technical progress with translations between languages and the removal of language barriers. And I think that is a good thing. While I like English (the only language other than Dutch that I mastered well enough to use it professionally), there are large parts of the worlds where people just don't speak English very well. We literally refer to some parts of the world as third world countries, which is very condescending. It means that they are poor. But the implication of course is also that they are somehow inferior and a bit retarded. And that there are second world countries as well that are slightly less inferior. Language has created this elite bubble that keeps it like that for some of these countries. Being able to go to such places and live there without first having to learn a language is very liberating and is probably also going to be great for e.g. trade relationships. I think that should be welcomed. English optional. Also in the US, which of course has plenty of migrant groups that don't speak that very well.
I thought this was a good read, but I think there are some things he minimizes. For example, he talks about increasing foreign worker visas, but only has this sentence about citizenship:
> Permanent residents are allowed to apply for Japanese citizenship after five years.
I recall reading a news article from a few years ago that said that the Japanese citizenship test is almost impossible to the point that few people try. Everything I've read about Japan has stated that the overall culture is extremely hostile to granting citizenship to non-native people, even to many mixed-race people of Japanese descent (e.g. from Brazil).
Having a culture that just says "we're happy to have you work here for a while, but you'll never really belong here" isn't really a good sign for long-term integration.
As far as I know, naturalization only involves a basic language test at around the level of N3; which should be very easy if you picked up any Japanese at all during the years spent living in the country.
The reason so few people acquire Japanese citizenship is not because of the difficulty doing so, but because it offers little in terms of tangible benefits beyond those already acquired by virtue of having permanent residency status.
1) Citizenship is needed in order to vote. Important for the health of any democracy; but in a country where it seems to be LDP all day every day anyway, immigrants can hardly be faulted much for not placing much value on this aspect.
2) For Americans, Japanese citizenship allows them to revoke their American citizenship, in order to avoid double taxation. (Not an issue for other nationalities, where the ludicrous concept of double taxation doesn't apply.)
That's about it as far as I can think of. Add to that the fact that Japan doesn't recognize dual citizenship, it's no surprise most immigrants are satisfied to just stick with permanent residency.
Note that the bar for permanent residency has been lowered in recent years, making it more easily attainable than an equivalent status in most other industrial nations.
> The reason so few people acquire Japanese citizenship is not because of the difficulty doing so, but because it offers little in terms of tangible benefits beyond those already acquired by virtue of having permanent residency status.
This. I've been in Japan for 15 years, and have permanent residency. Citizenship would basically only grant me the right to vote for (or against, I guess) the party that has been in power almost uninterrupted since the 50s. In exchange for that, I would have to give up 3 other citizenships. Not a great deal...
>In exchange for that, I would have to give up 3 other citizenships. Not a great deal...
Obligatory IANAL, but the "no dual citizenship" thing is a Japanese thing and it's not like the Japanese government will go around informing other countries of your new citizenship status. You would have to make the rounds yourself informing the governments concerned you renounced their respective citizenship.
Which is to say: I'm an American, if I went and got Japanese citizenship then the Japanese government won't care to inform the US government about the proceedings, nor will the US government care even if I personally tell them because the US government permits dual citizenship. Japan would care about my holding dual American citizenship, but again: They wouldn't care to inform their American counterparts.
> You would have to make the rounds yourself informing the governments concerned you renounced their respective citizenship.
The Japanese government requires that you have renounced your other citizenship(s) as a condition for acquiring Japanese citizenship [1, item 5, in Japanese]. I know a number of people who have taken Japanese citizenship, and they all had to go through a formal citizenship-renouncing process at the embassies of their previous countries of citizenship.
Exceptions seem to be made only in cases in which the applicant, for some reason, cannot renounce a previous citizenship.
The Japanese government, however, doesn't go around checking other countries' citizenship lists (nobody does). I know of several Japanese citizens who accrued other nationalities but never informed the japanese government. Obviously they'd be stripped of their JP rights if it emerged, but until then...
I'd expect them to ask for this only to the non-Japanese-looking, or people who acquired citizenship after birth so might be in some particular database. I have a friend who goes back to Japan fairly regularly and afaik they were never asked as such when entering with her Japanese passport.
I heard of an interesting case. A red-haired friend of mine who was born in Russia and, after living in Japan for many years, took Japanese citizenship was detained and questioned when trying to enter Canada on her Japanese passport. The Canadian immigration authorities were suspicious because she didn't look Japanese to them.
She said that she has never had any trouble entering Japan on her Japanese passport.
This is my point. Japanese people can have multiple citizenships but in order for a foreigner to gain Japanese citizenship, they must renounce at least one of their other citizenships to fulfil the "single citizenship" criteria.
So Indians are on the top of the emigration food chain and I wonder why Japan is not one of our top destinations.
There are like 50K Indians in Japan, mostly Tokyo. This is a surprisingly low number. Sure there is the language barrier but that barrier holds true for Germany also which has a lot more Indians.
My hunch is education - Japan does not have too many universities to attract young talent, as compared to Germany, Australia or the UK. I'm not sure if this is by design or if there are some other factors at play.
If Japan built a lot more universities and made it easier and relatively affordable for foreign students to sign up with English classes etc, perhaps there will be a lot more immigrants from countries such as India, Vietnam, Cambodia etc.
For Indian migrants, Japan is not nearly as attractive as the US, Canada, Australia etc. Wages particularly in engineering/IT are comparatively low, working conditions are tough, the language is difficult, and Japanese society is known for being xenophobic. Politely so, for most part, but still: you might not get beaten up, but neither nor your children will you ever be accepted as Japanese.
It's no coincidence that the biggest groups of immigrants to Japan are the Chinese and Vietnamese, who have a leg up on the language (Chinese characters for the Chinese, obviously, but Vietnamese has a lot of Chinese loans shared with Japanese too) and blend in better in terms of physical appearance and culture.
Both India and Germany have much stronger cultures of English usage than Japan -- and Australia and the UK are English speaking countries. Educated Indians learn to use English in a business setting, but this is not really as useful in Japan; and German has a lot more common with English (and with the many Indo-European languages, like Hindi and Sanskrit, that are familiar to people in India even when they are not their spoken language) than Japanese has with either language.
Japanese university entrance exams are also notoriously difficult; if it weren’t for the declining birth rate, the exams would probably be a push rather than a pull factor for students, the same way large numbers of South Korean and Chinese students try and opt out of their similarly hard exams.
> the same way large numbers of South Korean and Chinese students try and opt out of their similarly hard exams.
Chinese university entrance exams can be hard or easy, but in either case it doesn't really matter because admissions are done on a quota system. When I was looking at score data a few years ago, the threshold for being admitted to a second-tier (二本) university was around the 40th percentile, which is to say that if 55% of people in your province are better than you, you're still comfortably going to get into a university.
Individual schools may of course apply much higher thresholds (for example, there's also a first tier!), but at that point you really have to admit that the difficulty of the standardized test is irrelevant. What matters is how you score relative to everyone else. The point of the test is to have a high enough ceiling ("be difficult enough") that you can tell the difference between someone at the 99.9th percentile and someone at the much higher 99.98th. The optimal test for that purpose is infinitely difficult, but you need to balance against time requirements, testees getting demoralized and giving up, etc.
The difficulty is not necessarily just the test but its structure.
Gaokao et. al. are held once a year, if you want to retry you need to wait a full calendar year, and the single-time test covers all subjects simultaneously. To compare to SATs, those can be retaken multiple times a year, and the non-core subjects are separate, so any individual sitting is much lower stakes.
It is not exactly a secret that a big push factor for Chinese and South Korean university students is how competitive their local systems are.
> Gaokao et. al. are held once a year, if you want to retry you need to wait a full calendar year, and the single-time test covers all subjects simultaneously. To compare to SATs, those can be retaken multiple times a year, and the non-core subjects are separate, so any individual sitting is much lower stakes.
You don't get to know your gaokao score when you apply to schools.
But you do know what your score is likely to be; that's how people choose what school to apply to. It's not very difficult to predict your score in advance of taking the test.
Given that, why do we think the annual frequency makes the test "high-stakes"? The normal case is that you go in expecting a certain score and get something close to it. If you wanted to take it again the same year, you'd expect a similar score. If you wanted to spread it out over several days... you'd expect a similar score. There just isn't a large population of people who perform one way on practice gaokaos that are very similar to the real gaokao, and markedly differently on real gaokaos that are very similar to practice ones.
Student visas and work visas (the stepping stones on the path toward permanent residency) are admittedly relatively tricky. Lots of pointless bureaucracy, and requests for "guarantors". Which basically amounts to finding some random Japanese acquaintance or employer to put their signature (hanko) on a piece of paper.
Still, I expect the numbers from Asian countries to steadily increase—unless we go into some pandemic lockdown again.
Dual citizenship is kind of gray area in Japan. As long as you don't talk about it, nobody really cares. (And this attitude kind of sums japan as a whole)
Obviously: rules are rules, and in Japan rules just cannot be broken or bent.
However the level of proactive enforcement of such rules can be very variable. Dual-citizenship can be trivially hidden and nobody will hunt you down for it, particularly if you live abroad. If you bring it to the attention of some authority, though, they will be forced to take action.
1. N3 isn’t that easy. You need to learn 600 kanji, plus reading and grammar. It takes over 1000 hours of focused study [1]. It’s a stretch to call it “basic” or “very easy”.
2. There’s no double taxation for US citizens living in Japan, thanks to the foreign tax credit [2].
1. I guess it depends on the situation. I assumed N3 was very easy, because I passed N1 with ease. I don't really like to bring it up, because it sounds like bragging, but that's my experience at least. Maybe using the language in a professional context on a day to day basis helps more than I appreciate. Then again, I'd expect some degree of familiarity to form naturally if you live here as a 社会人 of sorts.
2. True, but the credit is only up to a certain amount AFAIK. And still having to file taxes to the IRS every single year sounds annoying. (But I don't know. I'm not American.)
Nothing special or insightful, but a few thoughts come to mind...
1) Having a limited vocabulary was one of the more long term challenges. What worked was simply developing a habit of consistently looking up any unknown words overheard or read. Whether jisho.org via Google or Google Translate or a dedicated app doesn't really matter. Either way the meaning should become clear within a few seconds. Don't wait. Just immediately look it up as soon as your hands are free.
Want to speed things up? Read more. Start with manga or light novels. A bit frustrating and slow going at first, but certainly effective.
2) Train your ears with random entertainment. Configure Netflix to play Japanese content as-is without subtitles. Hear something new? Immediately pause, and apply 1) above.
3) For reading kanji the same principle applies, except looking them up can be a bit more cumbersome. There are dedicated apps (phone camera -> OCR) and tools (browser extensions) out there that automatically show furigana, which can be a life saver. (I'm hazy on the details, because I haven't had a need for them for a number of years.)
BTW, I wouldn't consider any of the above to be test preparation. Just day to day habits of living your life in a foreign country. That should get you about 80~90% there.
For the final 10~20% (test prep):
1) Use a spaced repetition program such as Anki to fill any Kanji and vocab gaps remaining.
2) Buy and read a grammar text book for some of the old-fashioned/clunky expressions that you're less likely to encounter in daily life, but nonetheless show up on N1 (and N2 to some extent).
Finally: probably best not to bother learning how to handwrite kanji. Huge effort. Not much reward or need in digital times. And of course, not part of any standardized tests either.
> I recall reading a news article from a few years ago that said that the Japanese citizenship test is almost impossible to the point that few people try.
Did they substantiate this claim at all? All available public information is that the vast majority of those who try succeed.
People largely don't apply for citizenship, in part because Japan requires them to renounce other citizenships to do so, and in part because a permanent resident can do almost anything that a citizen can in practice.
I've heard the driver's license test in Japan is quite hard and fails people on the first try just to teach them humility. Maybe they were thinking of that? (whether or not it's true…)
Depends on the circumstances. If it would render you stateless, no (at least for signatories to the relevant convention). Otherwise, it's up to the country; Japan revokes permanent residence (but not citizenship) for those who have left the country permanently (after many years) or those who commit serious crimes, so that's a genuine difference (OTOH citizens can be subject to the death penalty, which I guess amounts to revocation of citizenship in a way). However if you acquired another citizenship, or failed to renounce your previous citizenships when naturalizing, then your citizenship can be revoked as a simple administrative procedure.
> the overall culture is extremely hostile to granting citizenship to non-native people
Sorry, I need to disagree with you.
The process is fairly straightforward and formal. You need to fit very few and fair formal criteria, but if you do, then there is nothing special about the process.
For a sincere applicant, there should be severe reasons why citizenship is not granted. There are statistics by nationality. I think Chinese, Korean and South Eastern nationalities are topping the statistics.
1) Have continuously lived in Japan for 5 years or more?
2) Be 20 years of age or above, and be a legal adult in my home country?
3) Be of upright conduct? [///]
4) Have a way of supporting myself and my family?
5) Be willing to give up my other nationality/ies upon acquisition of Japanese nationality?
6) Have never plotted to destroy the current government of Japan?
7) Have a Japanese skill level enough to go about daily life, and be a functioning member of Japanese society?
Note: Requirement 7 is not explicitly written in the Nationality Law of Japan, which has only 6 requirements. Nevertheless, as a prospective citizen, it is still a good idea to know the language, as it indirectly affects requirement 4 by affecting what kind of jobs you can take.
It's the classic "are you a terrorist or a member of the Nazi party" question on US entrance forms... the point is obviously not to catch those people, but being able to easily convict them of something (lying to authorities) if they emerge.
The "Japanese language requirement" is technically part of requirement 4... the rational being that if you can't understand Japanese and you aren't wealthy enough to support yourself without working for the rest of your life, you are too dependent on English language workplaces. While they exist, they are a tiny niche of Japanese society in the bigger scheme of things.
This is a common misconception. The reason you don't hear more about English-speaking westerners gaining Japanese citizenship is because they don't recognize dual citizenship. Renouncing your non-Japanese citizenships is a prerequisite to gaining Japanese citizenship, which is understandably too big a hurdle for many.
Technically, it's not a prerequisite, but a requirement. You can't renounce your old citizenship before gaining new citizenship. Japan requires you to renounce within a certain time after gaining Japanese citizenship, with a few exceptions (like Iran where you can't really renounce).
Huh? Renouncing first would make you stateless, which is against UN resolutions. I've never heard anything like this about Japan's naturalization process, just that you're required to renounce after acquiring it (and if you don't and they find out, they'll revoke your citizenship).
Many countries (including mine) allow you to renounce your citizenship but then void that renunciation if you don't acquire a new citizenship within 90 days, so as to prevent the risk of (long-term) statelessness.
The only dual nationals I know with Japanese citizenship are operating under the argument that they were born with both citizenships and the non Japanese one is legally impossible to remove by coercion. So they claim that the Japanese state is doing the coercion and don't mention it to the authorities. This would be an interesting case in international in law, but I hope it's never a problem for them.
Many countries, like mine, France, also allow to reclaim a nationality you abandoned for social reasons (marriage being the one it aims at explicitely). So you can give up your French one, take the Japanese one, then go back to France without telling Japan and ask for the French one back, it's a few forms away.
IANAL, but from my understanding of Japanese law, technically you renounce your Japanese citizenship when you acquire a foreign citizenship. So, even though Japanese authorities might not know it yet (or ever), you lose the Japanese citizenship at the very time you recover your French one.
My understanding (again, not a lawyer) it that this could have legal implications if you do something of your Japanese citizenship after reclaiming a foreign citizenship. Although apart from running and winning an election, or maybe holding a job restricted to Japanese citizens, I'm not quite sure exactly how you could get in trouble.
The loophole dual citizens (since birth) use is actually just that: since they never acquired a foreign citizenship (they are born with it), they never lost the Japanese one... so all Japan can do is order them to make unspecified efforts to renounce their foreign citizenship. Looking it up on the internet and concluding it's complicated seems to count as "efforts".
If Japan catches you, however, that's an automatic loss of Japanese citizenship. Japan has a specific law that says if you voluntarily acquire (or re-acquire; it doesn't distinguish) a foreign citizenship as an adult you immediately lose your Japanese citizenship.
And if you lose your Japanese citizenship, you go back to being a foreigner. Without a visa. Meaning you risk losing your ability to live and work in Japan.
As most people who naturalize do so because they've established deep for-life roots in Japan, their Japanese citizenship is not something they're willing to gamble.
People who were born with dual citizenship because of their parentage are a special case. They're supposed to make a choice by age 22 IIRC, but in reality you're allowed to defer it for a while because you're "considering it". So people in this situation just keep doing this indefinitely. Not really legal, but it's not really enforced much AFAICT.
For someone who gained JP citizenship through naturalization, it's a different matter. From what I've read, they will check to make sure you renounced your old citizenship, and will revoke your new JP citizenship if you don't (which probably also means no visa eligibility).
Is Japan any different from the USA in that respect?
From what I've heard it goes like this: British person applies for US citizenship. He has to "renounce" his British citizenship and hand over his British passport to the US authorities, who shred it. The next day he goes to the British embassy, tells them what has happened and asks for a new passport. The British authorities give him a new passport and, of course, they don't say anything to the US authorities.
(There might be different cases to consider here, depending on how you acquired your British citizenship. As I understand it, if you were born in the UK of British parents then you have a right to a British passport regardless of how old you are, where you have lived, and what other passports you've had. It's not possible to "renounce" that right. It might be different for someone who acquired British citizenship in some other way: perhaps some people could "renounce" their citizenship.)
>U.S. law does not mention dual nationality or require a person to choose one nationality or another. A U.S. citizen may naturalize in a foreign state without any risk to his or her U.S. citizenship
Thanks for the correction! What I'd heard on several occasions in face-to-face conversation seems to be inaccurate. I wonder where the inaccurate story came from: a different country, a long time ago, or totally made up?
I know some people with citizenship. All it requires is fluent Japanese. They came from a d̶e̶v̶e̶l̶o̶p̶e̶d̶ developing country so getting citizenship was an almost no brainer for them. There's no real complicated test, it' just that the whole process is done in Japanese so you'll have to fill out paperwork and do interviews in Japanese.
>Having a culture that just says "we're happy to have you work here for a while, but you'll never really belong here" isn't really a good sign for long-term integration.
For a lot of people this isn't really a big issue. Having a small group of close friends matters way more for people. If anything, it can feel like a relief to not have to be held to such a high standard where you start to lose your identity.
Well, it kinda sucked when they wouldn’t let the permanent residents into the country during the first year of COVID, so you were essentially unable to visit family (or worse, unable to return to your life, home and work after such a visit).
Who the heck downvotes this and think it's normal for person LIVING in country for years not being allowed to return to their home and family, just because they don't live there long enough to gain citizenship yet? It's extremely xenophobic/racist approach (which should not really come as surprise in Japan).
I’d be one thing if I hadn’t lived here long enough to get citizenship yet, but after 10 years?!
Like, it’s clear whoever wrote that law didn’t deliberately exclude foreign residents, he just didn’t consider them a thing at all. Like ‘Japanese Nationals’ should comprehensively cover everyone in Japan.
There's a popular Japanese streamer who had a whole mental breakdown character arc since she was studying abroad in Australia and couldn't go home for a year or two because they wouldn't let her back in if she did.
And being in Melbourne she couldn't leave the house for some of that either.
If you score enough points on the HSP visa (you don't even have to get that visa, just look at the point scoring), you can apply for PR in 3 years (70 points) or 1 year (80 points). Anyone on this forum probably can easily score at least 70 points just be getting a decent tech job in Japan.
Don't be so dramatic, it's not that bad. If you're Indian, for instance, it's really easy: you just need to wait on a waiting list for 180 years. How is that not welcoming and easy?
> I recall reading a news article from a few years ago that said that the Japanese citizenship test is almost impossible to the point that few people try.
I did a quick search and as far as I can tell there is no Japanese citizenship test. There is a test of Japanese language skills but even that is not described as a high bar. Maybe this has also changed?
> Having a culture that just says "we're happy to have you work here for a while, but you'll never really belong here" isn't really a good sign for long-term integration.
It depends on what living on a visa acually means in practice. Under what circumstances can you lose your visa? If it can happen overnight if you lose your job (like the H-1B in USA) that is bad. On the other hand, if renewal is pretty much guaranteed until retirement age unless you did a crime, that's perfectly fine.
Losing your job on a HSP visa means you need to find a new job in 3 months. For a regular work visa, there's no such requirement; you have until the visa expires, whenever that is (which could be less than 3 months, or much more). The regular work visa is also not tied to an employer (HSP is though).
It's not nearly as bad as the US. And yes, from what I've heard, renewal is pretty much guaranteed unless you badly fuck up somehow.
> For a regular work visa, there's no such requirement; you have until the visa expires
That's wrong. The same rules apply. After 3 months immigration can (but is not required to) force you to leave the country. Both for HSP and e.g. specialist visa types.
For a regular work visa the requirement to engage in activities appropriate to your status of residence can be covered by job seeking etc., whereas for HSP (i) there is no way to satisfy it except working for the specified employer.
> Permanent residents are allowed to apply for Japanese citizenship after five years.
Is it really strange though? It's same in Czechia, first you must hold temporary residency for at least 5 years before gaining permanent residency, then after 5 years of permanent residency you can apply for Czech citizenship, so it takes minimum 10 years to apply for Czech citizenship, by then most foreigners who moved here are already gone.
My understanding is that the Colombian citizenship test is quite hard too.
I don't think one can meaningfully use the difficulty of a citizenship test as a data point in an argument with zero contextualization. How hard exactly is it compared to the test your average country has in place? Maybe no such survey exists but
> Hiring 6 people to do the job of 2 is sadly common in Japan, and it’s a big reason why Japanese people earn such low and stagnant wages.
Median wealth in Japan is 119,999 USD whilst in USA it is 93,271 USD.
I see way more misery in American cities than I ever seen here. I also had an ex (with a masters degree mind you) who was a cleaning lady for a short while, and they worked her to the bone, 12 hour shifts, and she literally had to run from company to company to be able to make it. Sure the company earned more money but that didn't mean that she earned more!
CEOs have smaller salaries in Japan than in US and shareholders make less to compensate for having more workers, is this really a bad thing? Do we really need more Jeff Bezos in Japan to be called productive?
Here [1] is a graph of the Japanese markets. Keep in mind the logarithmic scale. Japan's economy was substantially healthier 30 years ago, and that's not cherry picking COVID stuff since it had nothing to do with that. Similarly, they've also seen their population start to die off by the millions. [2]
That makes it impossible to really compare US and Japan on many things. 30 years of economic stagnation/decline paired with population decline are going to be a driving factor in things like corporate compensation and shareholder returns.
Your chart kind of drives the point home. Who wants to own Japanese stocks when those companies are giving money to the employees? Compare to owning amazon stock where the employees are treated inhumanly to drive the stock valuation up.
You need to check what the common man has in the wallet instead.
I'm not sure how much measuring median personal wealth makes sense though - you can generally rely on household/family members/close friends in a way that's not measured. I'm sure children of billionaires have access to a lot of resources they don't own.
>>> I see way more misery in American cities than I ever seen here.
The grass is always greener on the other side. Even Japan has misery, but due to their cultural norms you are not supposed to show that publicly, you are just supposed to eat it and grin.
Compared to all that the "anything goes" culture of the US is always preferable. (Ofc the US has its own problems)
Things you don't see publicly in Japan are lots of homelessness, crime, and general bad behavior. It's pretty hard to hide homelessness and (violent) crime.
"In 2020, the Japanese government’s homeless count was 3,992, making up just .003% of Japan’s population. On the other hand, the United States has a homeless population of about .2% [...] The Advocacy Research Centre for Homelessness, an organization consisting of students and reporters, says that Japan may have a homeless population 2.7 times greater than the government’s statistics..[...] Around 92% of the Japanese homeless are men older than 50. " https://www.borgenmagazine.com/japans-homeless-population/
I'm with the researchers on that one. Go for a walk through Nishinari on any afternoon and you'll be able to tell that those government statistics - like many of the stats I see from the Japan government - are clearly not to be trusted.
I heard recently that one reason for homelessness is that without an address no debts you owe can be collected, so some people make themselves homeless for a few years (something like 5 or 7 years, if I recall) and after that period the debt is void. I cannot say if this is true or not but it wouldn't surprise me. If bankruptcy is more difficult or ruinous then perhaps it's a viable alternative.
I also notice very well dressed homeless men sometimes, using the park facilities to wash their stuff. They'll have business attire that would make you think they're an average salary man, until you look a bit more closely. Whether these people are counted, certainly by tourists or the inattentive, I don't know either, but they're around.
Wingfield-Hayes is also right to decry the low-productivity menial jobs that Japan has in abundance. Hiring 6 people to do the job of 2 is sadly common in Japan
I’ve always felt this was a strength of Japan since it ensures employment of even unskilled workers. I remember one time walking near my hotel along a sidewalk in a construction zone, in the USA there'd be a “caution” sign (probably facing the wrong way), but in japan there were live workers at each side of the zone , and they called out a warning to pedestrians to be careful and when a construction truck needed to cross the sidewalk, the workers would physically block the sidewalk to keep pedestrians clear.
I’ve noticed around here that more road construction projects have replaced human flaggers with automated traffic lights… almost certainly better for efficiency and productivity, but probably not better for the people that would have done that job otherwise.
And maybe this leads to lower salaries in Japan, but that doesn’t necessarily mean low quality of life, I know someone in Japan that’s working as a suit salesman (retail sales, not administrative back office) and he can afford to support a family (stay at home wife plus 3 year old child) and a 2 bedroom apartment. I think that’d be much harder for an American worker selling suits at The Men’s Wearhouse
The excess of safety workers is partly a system to give older people something to do, but is also a cultural hangover from the 60s when Japan had an enormous rate of pedestrian deaths from cars, much worse than the US ever had. (Not sure how that happened, just that it did.)
Impractical as it may be, the imaginary world where people are paid a living wage to stand on the sidewalk reciting poetry sounds lovely. Imagine being able to sit on a public bench with your neighbors any given day and listen to someone's creative writing! And if this also implies that more people are paid for other artistic endeavors... sign me up :)
> Shopping centers, bars, clubs, and glittering zakkyo buildings (the ones with all the signs) continue to multiply. How could you live in Tokyo for a decade and miss all that?
Emphasis on Tokyo, which was basically the only place in Japan that's still growing, until it too started shrinking during COVID.
Go to any second-tier city, or even much of suburban Tokyo, and you'll see urban collapse in action: emptied-out "shutter-gai" shopping arcades, closed restaurants and hotels. Then drive out into the countryside, and you'll see completely depopulated hamlets and virtually all businesses not catering directly to agriculture have already collapsed.
Kind of related, but the slightly odd thing about a lot of Japanese commentary is that people forget the suburbs exist.
And these suburbs are very car centric.
The major difference is that the suburbanites will not visit the major city by car, and most young people do not become stuck in the suburbs and instead leave for Tokyo or any of the other big cities.
“Very car centric” is incredibly relative. Compared to Tokyo, yes. Compared to anywhere in America except NYC, not even close. In suburban and even rural areas, there’s still a centralisation and comprehensiveness of public transit that makes it possible to get by without a car. Look at all the apartment buildings with no parking or like four spots and 30 homes.
> Emphasis on Tokyo, which was basically the only place in Japan that's still growing, until it too started shrinking during COVID.
A few days ago I commented the opposite of this: most of Japan's major cities ("Osaka, Yokohama, Nagoya, Sapporo, Fukuoka, Hiroshima, Sendai, and more"), per Wikipedia, have been growing. The inaka is shrinking, but that's part of the same migration away from rural areas that's happening across the developed world. Are you basing your claim that everywhere in the country - besides and now including Tokyo - on data that contradicts Wikipedia, or is it just intuition?
In Japan the inaka is shrinking, but the cities are shrinking too. In 2021 every single prefecture except Okinawa saw net population loss: https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h01310/
Virtually all municipalities in Japan, large or small, are already shrinking or will go into negative growth by 2025-2030. These 2018 projections predate COVID though, which has sped up the decline.
And yes, there are a few exceptions, but they're mostly things like ski area Niseko, which boomed on foreign tourism investment, and a few towns in Fukushima that grew because people were evacuated from the reactor zone.
“Shutter-gai” shopping arcades are a special kind of depressing because you know that just 20 minutes away by train business is booming in the hip new downtown shopping malls.
An interesting view of Japan, outside of the big cities, is blog written by Richard Hendy (an English ex-pat) back in the early 2010s called Spike Japan[0].
He focuses on areas such as Hokkaido where there are glimpses of past prosperity but due to an aging population and the younger people moving to the cities, the communities that remain are crumbling, but in a very Japanese way. Hendy has a great sense of humor and the photography and storytelling is top notch.
This is a rabbit hole you won't mind falling down if you're at all interested in different cultures and comparing decaying rural areas to those in your own country.
I had Japanese resident friends at the time who were very mad about this blog because he kept claiming totally-not-abandoned places were abandoned. He just showed up on holidays when everyone was somewhere else!
I'm sure it happened to an extent, but he couldn't have faked all of physical decay photos or actual demographic and population data. He showed up on holidays when everyone was away, but they were always away in many rural areas.
Spike Japan is great. He needed an editor though. It's a great reminder of the collapse of rural Japan- that's still ongoing today. Those parts of rural Japan should never have had the development that they did have during the 80s/90s bubble years.
Ironically his last blog post was a commissioned article[0] from The Guardian and he complained[1] about editorialization. But yes, he liked his words, but I also wish he would revisit some of these places now.
I recently spent 3 months in Tokyo and I have say, that the quality of life, service, food, consumer products, safety, air/noise pollution, are the best I've seen anywhere.
It's especially pleasing given that the prices are very low in comparison to other world-class cities. I did, however, witness prices rising during the time I was there.
It's hard to see how Tokyo might have been stagnating given the quality of life I witnessed. It saddens me to say this but, I'd visit Taiwan to see what economic stagnation looks like - it feels like time-traveling back to the 90's.
In the 90s, Taiwan was much poorer than Japan, but its per capita GDP is now at parity with Japan and likely passed it last quarter.
Occasionally, I’ll visit an area I knew from 15 years ago and it will feel like a completely different city. In particular, it’s shocking how much better the infrastructure and transportation has gotten. The cities have a lot more green areas interspersed into them also.
Taiwan's numbers looks good on paper (until you dig further), but the reality on the pavement, or lackthereof, is dire. The noise, air, visual pollution are as bad as it was from 30 years ago, maybe worse. Traffic is bad, and salary to cost of living is extreme.
Japan's numbers look bad. But its quality of life is one of the best in the world.
Has there been progress in infrastructure/housing in Taiwan? Sure, in small areas, such as new housing developments, where all the capital sits, extracting rent or sitting empty, contributing nothing.
We need to do better, raise our standards. Otherwise we're going to get left behind even further.
I would think fear of being blown up by mainland China at any moment is bad for capital investment... meanwhile you have a highly skilled and educated workforce vying to man the capital in the country. I would think that would make labor artificially weak.
IMO Taiwan needs world recognition and solid assurances their capital investments won't end up in the opium pipe of some CCP party man. Until then you'd have to be kind of insane to bet the farm providing jobs to Taiwan.
Taiwan offers a really easy "gold card" for Americans that I considered getting but I realized what they needed wasn't my labor but lots of foreigners from powerful allies living in the crosshairs to make sure allies will get really really pissed if they get blown up.
In my own experience, being a foreigner who (seemingly) doesn't speak a local language actually does open doors to unique insights - the people who do speak English are quite ready to tell all the ins and outs, pros and cons, ups and downs, subtleties, gripes, concerns, cultural tidbits exactly because they think I won't go around talking about what they said.
And then you end up as a subculture relying on the host culture, but at the same time staying away with it. Coming from ex-Soviet country, that gives sad vibes of our infamous russian-speaking soviet-era settlers who never bothered to integrate. Nor their kids and grandchildren. In the end it creates a lot of friction and that friction brings very fringe political views. E.g. subscribing to Moscow viewpoints while living cushy life in rotten West. I've seen very similar patterns in english-speaking bubbles in Japan :/
As someone who often finds himself on the other end of such conversations that's not my worry at all.
My worry is that those who normally don't speak foreign languages will get to you first and instill in you a vision of my country that has little to do with reality and a lot with delusions of grandeur.
Yes. Being at location for a long time but as an outsider can allow a critical view. Adopting the language and the culture can make you blind to stuff or unwilling to frankly talk about it out of politeness.
Assuming in case of BBC correspondent Rupert it's not the same as with a typical foreign English teacher in Asia who doesn't care much about outside world and mostly hangs out in the same circle of foreigner friends (I'm slightly familiar with the culture).
A fertility rate of 1.3 is still a demographic crisis. Just because the neighbors degraded to the same level also isn't supposed to be a point of pride.
Japan at 1.3 and China at 1.2 are both far below replacement rate of 2.1 and both are heavily detrimental to a nations economic and demographic outlook and on par with only the European with the worst outlooks like Spain, Italy and Ukraine.
Sure, but the people saying Japan needs to become more like western Europe, or like non-Japan countries generally, to solve its demographic crisis, are barking up the wrong tree.
"Non-Japan countries", also known as the rest of the world. Despite the beliefs of Japanese nationalists and Japan fetichists, it's not a special country and there's no special solution for it.
I wonder how long it will take our societies to stop asking questions like how can we make people have more babies, and start asking questions like is it smart to plan our entire economy around continuous exponential population growth.
2.1 is steady state of just one for one replace those dying with new people.
What numbers around 1.0 are are logarithmic decline as the population functionally keeps halving which is also hard to plan an economy around paying for two old people and child on the taxes per single worker.
Then maybe the welfare state is no longer suited to the country population profile, and each person show be saving for their own retirement and children?
You can save money but what are you going to do with it? If there aren't enough young people providing the goods and services the retired people need in retirement, the prices of those goods and services will skyrocket and many who saved won't be able to afford the goods and services.
That's what people do, but to do so they need to work in growth industries and geographies. Otherwise you don't make enough to do just that. Thus they go somewhere that does, in this case Tokyo mostly. Which makes the situation worse for the prefectures that they leave causing brain drain, and now those that stayed need to have the taxation to cover for the two they were already on the hook for, and now the two that the person gone to individualistically "save for their own retirement".
This generally leads to services and infrastructure getting shut down. Not more stuff spread out to less people because certain modern lifestyle features, things like hospitals, need a minimum level of patients and experts to function well above zero.
Saving doesn't solve the problem. In fact, no re-allocation of money would provide a good standard of living with only a small young population to do all the work while a large old population consumes.
Societies are asking questions about how to maintain a stable population, not achieve exponential growth. As it is, they're facing exponential shrinkage.
Reading "The Limits to Growth" and having a passing understanding of the consequences of global warming will have you start to ask these kind of questions fairly quickly.
The Shift Project [1] did exactly that for France: they elaborated a plan to completely transform the French economy with the explicit goal of not wrecking climate further, aptly called "Le Plan de transformation de l'économie française" (I assume the name is understandable to an English speaker).
An interesting take of this plan is that instead of thinking in USD (or EUR, being in France), they reason strictly in terms of physical resources available, like land, water, oil, wind, sun, crops, wood, various ores, etc. Resources available within the next few decades, not in many centuries with future techs...
Degrowth is completely false and is basically cope invented by the British to explain why it's actually good that their economy is so bad.
Economic growth does not mean using more resources (because that's expensive), it means more productive use of the same resources. The US emits less carbon and uses less water than it did in the 60s with a much larger economy.
(70s US degrowth environmentalism, like Limits to Growth, Cities as Growth Engines, The Population Bomb is the main cause of the US housing crisis due to NIMBYism, but also caused China to doom itself via the one-child policy, so the US wins yet again.)
Does that also factor into account that manufacturing has largely been moved to other countries? That is, does the average US consumer spend fewer resources than in 1960, taking imports into account?
Oh, and forests are growing back some places too, though I don't know about the US on that one. (That's why technological advances are good - it's harder to get clean energy than is it to burn wood for warmth, but it's worth it once you have it.)
Why can you not repurpose the land used for those 20 million houses back into green space or better uses for the remaining 30 million? Not to mention that there is much less competition for resources when the population is 60% of what it used to be.
You're acting like this is a major problem, but it seems like a great opportunity.
Who’s going to pay to repurpose the land? There’s zero economic value for anyone involved. Plus the workforce is half what it was, they have other things to do. That’s assuming they’re not already broke from spending 20 years supporting retirees that outnumber them 2:1 while watching their own businesses halve in size.
Saying there is 0 economic value in repurposing land is just silly. And just because a business has half the customers does not mean that the standard of living gets cut in half. You're only looking at one side of the economic equation.
The depopulation is not even. You can’t really abandon a few people in a neighborhood without services ethically or legally, and the last holdouts may not move for anything.
Similar issues occurred in Detroit and other Rust Belt areas, and those had extreme population declines but could not abandon services and infrastructure.
I remember having a discussion with a Japanese friend where he bemoaned Japan's failure to adapt to the new digital economy. I urged him to look on the brighter side. Despite the bubble crashing and (perceived) stagnation, Japan is still an economic powerhouse. I think Japan can only improve from here as younger generations takes over.
Also, as I get older, I seem to appreciate traditions and things not totally being driven by efficiency. Those "menial" jobs may not be strictly necessary but I love interacting with actual people.
So much cherry picking ("women workforce participation in Japan is bigger then in the US... surely it can't be that backwards of a country") and ad hominem ("this guy who says Japan is stagnated admits he doesn't even speak Japanese that well").
A lot of time spent on perceptions and very little on hard facts...
> But in reality, depreciating real estate is one of Japan’s biggest strengths. Because Japanese people don’t use their houses as their nest eggs, as they do in much of the West, there is not nearly as much NIMBYism in Japan — people don’t fight tooth and nail to prevent any local development that they worry might reduce their property values, because their property values are going to zero anyway.
It makes me wonder if other countries could adopt a tax policy like Japan, to encourage property values to depreciate. Would it finally kill NIMBYism once and for all, if people stopped treating houses as an investment and started to treat them as actual places to live?
The property values may go to zero, but the land values only appreciate.
As land values increase and dominate the equation the house value might as well be zero anyway as it approaches irrelevancy.
(As an aside I've heard mixed things on this, with some saying that this notion of houses depreciating severely is no longer the case...)
I'd really really love someone with real, real deep knowledge of the Japanese housing market (eg. a banker, real estate agent or mortgage broker) to weigh in and go through everything in detail because it feels like all we usually get are breezy generalizations with such low detail that I only have more questions after reading.
The real issue isn't the tax policy. The tolerance for depreciation of housing prices is grounded in the fact that housing is not bootleg social security. Both the Japanese state and companies take care of their people, so housing is not seen as an anti-poverty insurance.
If you want that kind of model you'll have to create the conditions for it first which means getting rid of the homesteading mentality.
> during Wingfield-Hayes’ decade in the country, Japan’s immigration policy changed substantially, and he ought to have noticed
While gov policies are changing, socially Japan is not very open to foreigners. I have friends who were born there, speak the language perfectly, and they're still _gaijin_, or _hafu_ if they're half-Japanese, and will be til the day they die even if they live in Japan their whole lives. This will take a lot longer to change than government policies.
> In recent years, the Abe administration has adopted major changes that will probably sustain the influx of immigrants.
Imagine seeing Japan, a still functioning high civilization, and thinking it needs to import all the west‘s problems. Imagine visiting Paris, and thinking it has improved instead of deteriorated compared to its 1900s version.
I've always wondered what would have happened to Japan if the US forced them to allow EU-style free movement between the two (or more?) countries while they were drafting their new constitution.
Please note I'm not suggesting the US should have done that, just noting it wouldn't have been that wildly different than the US and Puerto Rico just a few decades earlier.
I'm not a history buff and I'm sure it's way more nuanced than that, just surprised US imperialism didn't swing for the fences like it had done before. Considering the atrocities Japanese-Americans faced during those times I can see why neither party would've been keen on opening up like that, I know.
Probably just pure logistics. No one thought of it because getting to Japan in any kind of reasonable time frame was physically impossible.
Even today, a flight from the US west coast to Japan is ~11 hours one way and involves losing a day due to the international dateline. So you lose about 3 days just flying back and forth. And costs nearly a thousand dollars for economy class.
For most people, it’s not really an easy trip in the same way a hop to Lisbon from London might be. Now imagine that with prop planes.
Ironically both articles come from a very typically western patronizing perspective
A lot of expats come to asia and get frustrated with many small cultural details. It's especially prominent when the person doesn't speak the local language (as this BBC corespondent... shocking). The general reaction is "why can't you just be more like the us/europe/etc." It's really miopic. There is always a larger broader cultural context for why things are the way they are. Things that have developed organically over generations and aren't exactly planned
Just a couple of examples:
"Hiring 6 people to do the job of 2 is sadly common in Japan, and it’s a big reason why Japanese people earn such low and stagnant wages.“
Yes, this is very common in Asia. They also will work extremely long hours. However the productivity (as also pointed out in the article) is much lower. People are a lot less stressed at work. This ties into other aspect of work culture.. where East Asian cultures have a lot less of a fixation on professionalism and it's more of "friends hanging out" at work. You go out to drink with the boss, and you sit playing on your phone at work sometimes. Okay, you might not like that yourself and you'd like to just do an intense 8 hours and clock out - but that's how things operate and a lot of people enjoy it. If your KFC has twice as many workers as it technically needs - do you work less and get paid less? Yes. That's the tradeoff
"I think an equally or even more important problem is corporate gerontocracy .."
This ties into some very fundamental cultural priorities about caring and respecting elders. Yeah you get a bunch of morons promoted b/c they're older and "more experienced" - but the flip side of the coin is that people generally really take care of the elderly. I took my grandmother to visit China once and she was blown away at how respectful and kind everyone was to her. Could you somehow have people care and respect elders and yet have CEOs that was 22yrs old? Maybe - but the two things are a bit at odds.
Living in Taiwan now, I can see the effect of westernization and it's a mixed bag (You have waves of US-educated Taiwanese reshaping the cultural landscape). It's very interesting to contrast with how things develop in China - which has gone for a more Japanese-style modernization and has been more selective about importing western ideas. I don't necessarily think the changes the writers want are bad (and I haven't really lived in Japan, so I wouldn't dare to have an opinion), but the way they're presented shows a very shallow understanding of what's really going on. At the end of the day you can't tweak one cultural irritant without affecting the whole cultural edifice.
Are we talking about the same Japan here? Karoshi (death from overwork), black companies etc is not just a Western news trope, and all the Japanese salarymen I know hate the work culture.
The biggest grip I had with the BBC article is the fact that he bemoans that the ldp party still holds a firm grip on the country.
While it us tryr as he says that yes that the LDP party is still a dominating force to be reckon with, the truth is that the opposition had the best election result yet (CDP) and even a progressive party was voted in into the diet.
I've dealt with two large Japanese tech corporations that people here have probably heard about. One thing that I found extremely unusual (on both companies) is that many (most?) people in high level roles got rotated every two years or so to completely different parts of the company. Building good relationships and then having to restart from scratch was complicated.
The rest of the world treats Japan as something "special". All the media/manga/anime/pr0n/temples/culture and people.
What I've learned traveling to various countries in the region?
There's nothing really special about Japan, it's people, or it's media.
The country and its denizens have been blown out of proportion with a kind of reputation that's out of this world... for the past 50 years. Yeah I look forward to going back and meeting more people next time -- but it's just a super-ordinary place.
I've lived here for over ten years and generally agree with you. I love it here, but I also feel that some westerners treat Japan with a "specialness" or "exoticness" that it doesn't quite deserve.
Yes. I've been here almost that long. Mostly in the rural areas. It's just a nice normal place.. I think there are a few problems with perceptions of Japan. not being part of the anglo-sphere, most of the everyday stuff doesn't make it in front of western eyes. What does is filtered through journalists, like the BBC guy, who have to fit their stories into certain safe tropes. Another big place of interflow of culture is with manga/anime subcultures, which are produced and consumed by a very specific part of Japanese society in the first place, then exoticised a great deal by the types of internet communities where it is popular.
> Another big place of interflow of culture is with manga/anime subcultures, which are produced and consumed by a very specific part of Japanese society in the first place, then exoticised a great deal by the types of internet communities where it is popular.
More niche but in a similar vein I was a bit disappointed to find not everyone was an extreme metalhead in Norway and that most people were normal too.
> Basing wealth on productive assets instead of unproductive land
Land that is used for housing or industry is the opposite of "unproductive". In fact, next to intellectual property, I would argue that land is the most valuable asset. I feel if it true that land and house values in Japan always depreciate, we must investigate why. It might tell us the root cause behind the country's decline.
I might say that if you tried learning it then you'd realise that it's very difficult, but the real reason is that in most cases it's just not worth it. Virtually useless to know outside of the country, and if you're inside you either know it well enough or you have a job that doesn't require it (like all the English teachers and programmers) and enough support to get by without it.
I say this as a resident who is grinding his way through the language daily because I want to, but I am aware it's really a bit of waste of time like any other hobby.
Due to cultural taboo, it's possible for foreigners to cheaply acquire (if not for free) houses of deceased residents in Japan. They won't be necessarily in major cities and there's a cultural resistance to accepting foreigners as equals.
What's so great about immigration and growing population? Japan is a small country without any resources, why would they want to share what they have with immigrants? What good did immigration do to western Europe? All I hear about are problems and all the good things happened even before immigration, otherwise immigrants wouldn't have come there in the first place.
I like all the rebuttals but the top still strikes me as mostly unsubstantiated claims
> That (gerontocracy) in turn has caused Japanese companies to fall behind foreign rivals as they miss technological revolution after revolution — microprocessors, smartphones, semiconductor foundries, battery-powered cars, etc.
smartphones: Japan led the world until iPhone then everyone was catching up. Nokia, Ericsson, Microsoft. Japan didn't lose here because of anything unique to Japan.
Battery-powered cars: Same as above. Tesla won (for a while) and everyone else Ford, Chevy, BMW, Mercedes, etc all lost. Japan arguably led for years with the Prius. But again, looking at the all car companies there's nothing special about Japan here
Microprocessors: Is this even market? There's 3, Intel, AMD, Arm (I know ARM is a standard) but I don't get what makes Japan's "failure" here special.
semiconductor foundries: Why should Japan have excelled here vs any other country? Is it just because they're in Asia and Taiwan, Malaysia, and China have been the winners?
There's also this idea that there's a lack of startups. I have no idea about the numbers but living in Tokyo before the pandemic there was no shortage of startup meetup and incubators. Yahoo Japan has an open cafe with lots of people "starting up"
Of course it's my anecdotes vs someone else's, I have no numbers but I went to tons of startup meetings, trade show like events, etc.... I watched several large bitcoin startups um, startup. I saw what must have been 11 different payment system appear (PayPay, D-Pay, ...), as just 2 categories.
> Microprocessors: Is this even market? There's 3, Intel, AMD, Arm (I know ARM is a standard) but I don't get what makes Japan's "failure" here special.
Japan used to be on the leading edge of microprocessor design. They aren't anymore.
> semiconductor foundries: Why should Japan have excelled here vs any other country?
Because they used to be a contender.
> smartphones: Japan led the world until iPhone then everyone was catching up. Nokia, Ericsson, Microsoft. Japan didn't lose here because of anything unique to Japan.
Yeah and it's easy to forget. Every big Japanese company used to make their own silicon. It was easy for them to make knock-off 6502s and the entire Texas Instruments product line at half the price (See: Nintendo). Japan had almost the whole global DRAM market by the end of the 1980s. Americans, in a panic, formed a quasi-governmental bailout scheme called SEMATECH to re-establish the competitiveness of the moribund domestic computer industry. People seriously feared Japan was going to eclipse the American economy. Their kids, after all, were good at math tests.
> People seriously feared Japan was going to eclipse the American economy.
California is the only thing that keeps America competitive.
Without doing any research to back it up, I'll gladly claim that Silicon Valley (along with Microsoft[1] throughout the 90s/early 2000s) has driven the majority of the world's GDP growth in the last 30 years. The VC funding model for companies, the willingness to take risks, and the insane (over)work ethic, is why technology has exploded and impacted every aspect of life.
[1] Love it or hate it, a single unified target for business and consumer computer applications was a huge boon to the world. Just look at all the massive efficiency losses having to support 2 smartphone platforms, and that is with each having addressable markets in the billions. Now imagine if there had been 5 different PC platforms in the 90s to write for, with only hundreds of thousands of users on each one worldwide.
Japan peddled its own tech like PDC, i-Mode etc pretty hard overseas, and at one point Sony, Panasonic etc were serious contenders in the mobile phone business. It's kind of striking how they completely managed to fail.
> Why should Japan have excelled here vs any other country?
30 years ago Japan was world-beating, today it isn't. You could say that to not be excelling is the norm, and the causes of success 30 years ago are the things to be investigated; nevertheless, this feels like a decline.
> I watched several large bitcoin startups um, startup. I saw what must have been 11 different payment system appear (PayPay, D-Pay, ...), just as 2 categories.
Japan has dozens of payment systems but how many of them are competing outside Japan? How many are even trying? NFC-F is still technologically better than Visa/Mastercard contactless, but I bet the latter is going to win out, because it's the international standard; even in Japan new cards come with that.
Japan was world-beating in what categories 30 years ago (1993)? It wasn't computers. Cars? Toyota is still #1 in the world. What else? Phones (no).
> Japan has dozens of payment systems but how many of them are competing outside Japan?
Why would they? Japanese companies speak Japanese and make things for Japanese. The exceptions are just that, exceptions.
And to be clear, my point is why is Japan called out for this? Where's the article that Germany is a failure because they don't have a global payments competitor? How about France? India? China? Why is only Japan that gets this special "you're a failing country because you don't have a global payment offering"
> Japan was world-beating in what categories 30 years ago (1993)? It wasn't computers.... Phones (no).
Japan was top or near-top in most of the portable electronics markets that mattered at the time, the ancestors of today's phones. Digital cameras, portable music players, PDAs/personal organizers, video game consoles, heck even the pedometer. So why are they barely competitive on the portable electronics of today (phones, but also smartwatches and the like)?
> Cars? Toyota is still #1 in the world. What else?
One of the big worries about the Japanese economy is a sense that Toyota has massively missed the bus on electric cars. Especially after building the first really successful hybrid, how have they fallen so far behind the likes of GM or Mercedes/BMW/Audi? Why are they still pushing hydrogen decades after everyone else has realised it's a failure?
> Why would they? Japanese companies speak Japanese and make things for Japanese. The exceptions are just that, exceptions.
It didn't feel like it 30 years ago. And for internet businesses, it's not going to be good enough.
> And to be clear, my point is why is Japan called out for this? Where's the article that Germany is a failure because they don't have a global payments competitor? How about France? India? China? Why is only Japan that gets this special "you're a failing country because you don't have a global payment offering"
I think insular startup cultures in those countries absolutely do get called out. German and French companies tend to try to at least serve the whole EU if not more. India and China are bigger markets than Japan. Even so, companies from those regions that lack global ambition absolutely do get called out for it; there's no shortage of articles in the European press worrying about how few European companies are playing on the global stage.
>One of the big worries about the Japanese economy is a sense that Toyota has massively missed the bus on electric cars. Especially after building the first really successful hybrid, how have they fallen so far behind the likes of GM or Mercedes/BMW/Audi? Why are they still pushing hydrogen decades after everyone else has realised it's a failure?
But are lithium-ion skateboard cars a success? People are rightly fretting about the lithium supply chain and the sheer weight of these cars raise eyebrows for many observers. We’re not completely in established territory yet — it’s still a frontier out here.
Consumer electronics from Sony, Canon, Nikon, Sharp, etc. immediately come to mind. They were dominant in the 1990s, but have since faced heavy competition.
There might be no reason Japan should have led / captured the current iteration of those markets… but it doesn’t paint a great picture that they got NONE of them after building up into a very competitive position by the 90s, when they were global leaders of quite a few categories / product areas.
By your own account, they led gen1 smartphones, but have ended up with 0% of gen2.
They led EVs but dont have a top 5 maker now (all us, germany and china).
They have innovated some product designs more recently (eg- in social and messaging), but gave up or never tried much to fight for global share.
Startups… sure there are many but have any succeeded globally in the last 10-15 years? Is there a Spotify (Sweden), Shopify (Canada) or TikTok (China)? Off the top, the most successful global consumer launch recently from Japan was Nintendo Switch… but no startup comes to mind.
The point isn’t to beat up on Japan here, but it’s global absence is noticeable after a looming presence for decades.
Startups being accepted in Japan is a very recent US-influenced phenomenon. In an earlier wave they were called "venture companies" and were completely distrusted - you were not considered proper members of society.
Similarly they have "indie games" in Japan now, even though they always had that (doujin games), but now they're more respectable.
(Of course, if you're doing a bitcoin startup you shouldn't be considered a proper member of society, more like a phone scammer.)
And it’s not like the iPhone is made without Japanese parts. Sharp has featured heavily in a number of iterations of the phones.
Also Teslas were made with Panasonic batteries before the gigafactory was created, thank you very much, and I’m not so sure the thin film they are using isn’t still sourced from Japan and they’re just doing assembly.
Every battery that has ever come out of "the gigafactory" if you mean Gigafactory Nevada is a Panasonic battery. All the equipment in the factory belongs to Panasonic. All the money to build the factory was invested by Panasonic.
> semiconductor foundries: Why should Japan have excelled here vs any other country?
Japan did have a thriving semiconductor industry early on but key Japanese companies made wrong choices wrt technologies and obviously TSMC ran away with the market. Nikon was a competitor to ASML until the EUV revolution, etc.
Any other person who lived in a country for a decade and can't converse in the language would be (rightfully imo) shamed for it.
Idk, say what you like about how journalists operate but living somewhere for a decade and not speaking the language doesn't sit right with me.