English use in Japan -- Why?

[occ]

I was reading a New York Times article today on the Mitsubishi Motors attempt to rebuild its tarnished reputation. In the photo, taken of the MM corp's Tokyo headquarters, they had a display of the Mitsubishi flagship, the Evo. The strange part was that all the signs and whatnot around the car were in English. This got me thinking: often times, when you see a Japanese product, at least a portion of the text on it will be in English. The obvious thought might be that this is for products designed for export, but this is often not the case; even Japanese-only products will often have a name written in English. Why is this? Has English become so universal in some places (such as Japan) that it has become acceptable to merge it with existing Japanese text? Anyone with any experience in Japan care to weigh in?

[hazel-rah]

Much like a lot of Americans like the way Japanese writing looks, regardless of what it means, Japanese people like the way Roman characters look.

-fh

[Chas.E]

Well, there is an obvious reason and a not-so-obvious reason.


The obvious reason is that the Japanese like to use English in their language to spice it up a bit, and the use of foreign words makes something sound exotic.

The non-obvious reason, advanced by some Japanese linguists, is that the use of English serves to enhance the perception that Japanese is a unique language and culture. By using foreign words, it makes the Japanese text stand out as all-the-more unique. It enhances the self-perception of Japanese people as unique and superior.

[Morrison's Lament]

I'd like to add that places like Japan have large expatriate communities.

I live in China and luckily many things here are written in both Chinese and English, mostly for the benefit of expatriates and tourists. If you have the money in your pocket, people are always prepared to speak your language to some degree ;)

--- G. Raven

[yabob]

The Japanese are also already used to dealing with text using multiple writing systems on a day-to-day basis. If you look at Japanese ad copy, for instance, even someone who doesn't read the language (I don't) can clearly see the difference between katakana or hiragana and kanji characters, and note that they are heavily intermixed. In addition to it being liberally sprinkled with English trade names and buzzwords in the Roman alphabet.

[Derleth]

This is too easy:

Japanese Engrish (http://www.engrish.com)

They don't always do the best job of translation from Japanese to English, as this humorous site attests.

[wolfman]

Just a WAG, but in many ways English has become the language of technology. So most new technologial inventions are named under English conventions, It maybe that it English may be used to make it seem more advanced.

[Johanna]

Derleth, that Engrish site is a hoot! I had noticed for years that the Japanese put English gibberish on T-shirts, but now they're really over the top. That site has a picture of a girl cheerfully wearing a T-shirt that proclaims:

SPREAD BEAVER
SHOWING THE VAGINAL AREAand she probably has no idea what it really says.

[dr hermes]

As I understand it, more than ninety per cent of the traffic on the Internet is in English. I recall that most international airports use English to avoid confusion.

More people are likely to speak English as a second language than any other. If a Tokyo businessman is chatting with colleagues in Hong Kong and Rome, the odds that all three know enough English to communicate are better than that the guy in Hong Kong speaks Italian.


Also, first Great Britain and then the United States have been the dominant forces in world culture for the past century. That may be winding down now, but certainly more people are exposed to English-language TV, movies, books and magazines worldwide than any other. Little kids in Delhi, Rio and Athens recognize Superman.

[Chas.E]

Originally posted by wolfman
Just a WAG, but in many ways English has become the language of technology. So most new technologial inventions are named under English conventions, It maybe that it English may be used to make it seem more advanced.

This obviously explains why most Medical terminology in Japanese is from German. Or not.

Some quick facts:

1. There is no large community of expatriates in Japan. The last statistics I heard said there were only 150,000 non-Japanese in the whole country, and that figure is allegedly about 90% composed of ethnic Koreans who were born in Japan but denied are Japanese citizenship.
2. The Japanese don't "like" different script systems. That would be like saying "I like having 5 fingers on each hand." It is just a fact of life. Do you "like" having both upper and lower case letters in English?
3. Every Japanese must take English (7 years IIRC) as part of their standard education. Every Japanese person educated after WWII is familiar with the English alphabet.
4. There was a movement around the 1860s amongst Japanese intellectuals to abandon Japanese and make English the official language. It obviously failed, but is the reason for #3 on this list.
5. The Japanese have a love-hate relationship with English, and America specifically. Everyone studies English, but the Japanese people on average, consistently score the lowest of any nationality on TOEFL.

[Chas.E]

Originally posted by dr hermes
More people are likely to speak English as a second language than any other.

Not in Japan. It is most likely to be Korean or Chinese.

[OxyMoron]

When I lived in Japan, the people I spoke with all assumed that the use of English started as a way to get attention. This was especially true in the auto industry. Prior to WWII, Japan's auto industry was minuscule: "In 1938 Toyota produced 458 cars, Honda 1,242 and Datsun 2,908." (Richard Overy, Why the Allies Won, p. 221, cites omitted.) After the war, cars were seen as a technological marvel, and since all technological marvels ultimately came from America (Japan was still in deep inferiority territory) it was logical to associate with high-technology by using English. One of the earliest mass-produced models was the Nissan "Bluebird," a word that's not only English but almost completely unpronouncable for Japanese. (It's rendered "buruubaahdo" in katakana.) The car was later known in America as the Datsun 510.

As an English teacher I experienced firsthand the fascination many Japanese have with the West and America in particular. By no means is it simple emulation or idolizing; it's really sense of enormous difference, and that alone is a source of great interest for a country that is remarkably unified in language and culture. (There's an ugly stereotype of Japanese as robotically monolithic - that really isn't true, either. But there isn't a country in the world where 124 million people are so mutually intelligible, not only in speech but in customs.)

[Sublight]

Chas.E, we may have different definitions of what qualifies as a second language, but I think English is the most commonly used and spoken foreign language in Japan, even if it's not used very well. Almost everyone I encounter in Japan can speak at least a few words of English, but not many can speak any other languages. I would also probably guess (that is, I can't back this claim up with anything more than personal anecdotes) that the #2 second language is either French or German (if you're not counting people of Korean or Chinese descent who are still classified as 'foreigners' by the Japanese government) just from observing how many people around me have studied them in college or are currently taking lessons to prepare for a European vacation. Oh yeah, and most of the German medical words came into Japanese during the late 1800's, when they viewed Germany as the epitome of Western medical technology. Most modern medical terminology ('AIDS', 'gene therapy', etc.) is borrowed from English.

Back to the OP. Traditionally, Japanese was written mainly in kanji, which are pictograms that express a meaning as well as a sound. This could be somewhat limiting as the ideas that need to be expressed advance beyond the concepts that existed when the kanji were first created. There could be two ways of dealing with this problem: either string together longer and longer sequences of basic kanji to build words for modern technology (is this what Chinese does?). Or, just use the foreign word and incorporate it into your own language. Japanese tends to do the latter.

Other than that, there's the fashion issue as well. Using English gives products a more international image, and makes them look more modern. In contrast, companies wishing to project a traditional image use Japanese names, drawn as if they written with a calligraphy brush.

Just talking through my hat here,

--sublight.

[handy]

There are alot of americans in Japan. Thus, they need to read it too.

Anyone want to guess what country in the world has the most people that can speak english???

[Kyberneticist]

Originally posted by Sublight

Back to the OP. Traditionally, Japanese was written mainly in kanji, which are pictograms that express a meaning as well as a sound. This could be somewhat limiting as the ideas that need to be expressed advance beyond the concepts that existed when the kanji were first created. There could be two ways of dealing with this problem: either string together longer and longer sequences of basic kanji to build words for modern technology (is this what Chinese does?). Or, just use the foreign word and incorporate it into your own language. Japanese tends to do the latter.

Well, our Japanese teacher says that the younger generation likes to use english because it is "cool", and the corporations are quite willing to capitalize on this.
She also mentions that when it comes to incorporating foreign words, normally they aren't spelled out in romaji as the subject notes, they are transliterated into katakana.
So, it seems likely the english words are mostly for effect.
Also, I don't think any adding to the kanji has been done for quite some time. New words created in the Japanese language are spelled out.

BTW, a couple of off-topic japanese language questions.
Why do we refer to their unit of money as the "yen"? She insists it just "en" with no "y"

Also, why is it that it seems all these freakin kanji take three times as many brush strokes to write out as to simply spell in hirigana?? I pity the poor Chinese who have to write in this all the time.
Or is this simply chance? Anyone have some counter examples?
I'd ask about why each kanji seems to have half a dozen different meanings, based on context, but just read the history on that in one of my books.

[Lamia]

Originally posted by handy

There are alot of americans in Japan. Thus, they need to read it too.

Anyone want to guess what country in the world has the most people that can speak english???

I have heard that there are more students of English in China than there are native English speakers. Of course, few of these Chinese students are fluent speakers of English(although there are many more of them than there are American students who are fluent speakers of Chinese).

[Sublight]

Originally posted by Kyberneticist
She also mentions that when it comes to incorporating foreign words, normally they aren't spelled out in romaji as the subject notes, they are transliterated into katakana.


That's true. Actually, I was thinking more of katakana than romaji words when I wrote that, so I guess I wasn't really addressing the OP.


BTW, a couple of off-topic japanese language questions.
Why do we refer to their unit of money as the "yen"? She insists it just "en" with no "y"


That's true. I don't know why. The closest it comes to being pronouced "yen" is when the preceeding word ends with an 'n'. Sen (1,000) or man (10,000), for example.


Also, why is it that it seems all these freakin kanji take three times as many brush strokes to write out as to simply spell in hirigana?? I pity the poor Chinese who have to write in this all the time.
Or is this simply chance? Anyone have some counter examples?
I'd ask about why each kanji seems to have half a dozen different meanings, based on context, but just read the history on that in one of my books.

With Chinese, each kanji has one meaning and one reading. The Japanese borrowed Kanji from China and applied it to their own language, but it wasn't really suitable. This is why kanji in Japanese can have anywhere from 1 to 15 possible readings, with just as many different meanings, and still you need hiragana to clarify the grammar.

Why keep kanji? Well, one argument in favor of kanji is that Japanese is loaded with homophones, and without some written means of indicating a word's meaning, the language would become unreadable. One of the best examples I've seen in support of this is the following sentence, from Jeffrey's J-E Dictionary:

Niwano niwaniwa niwa niwatoriwa niwakani wanio tabeta.

Which means "Two chickens in Mr. Niwa's garden suddenly ate an alligator." With kanji to show what each "niwa" is supposed to mean, it becomes much easier to read.

--sublight.

Jeffrey's dictionary
http://enterprise.dsi.crc.ca/cgi-bin/j-e/glossary.html?SASE=/cgi-bin/j-e/kanji#kanji

[Johanna]

Why do we refer to their unit of money as the "yen"? She insists it just "en" with no "y"
In earlier stages of Japanese, the kana syllables ye and yi existed. In modern Japanese, they are no more, having been replaced with plain e and i. The initial y- has become zero. Once I heard a Japanese scholar speaking on yin and yang, but she pronounced it "in" and yang. If you see an ordered table of kana in a Japanese textbook, you will notice that where "we" and "wi" should go, there are gaps. But in the old iro-ha nioedo (http://www.algonet.se/~palund/glossary/iroha.htm) poem that used each of the kana once, there are still those obsolete kana.

[Sublight]

Yep, forgot about that. Of course, the best place to find one of those obsolete kana is on the side of a bottle of Yebisu beer. :)

--sublight.

[PublicBlast]

Why do we refer to their unit of money as the "yen"? She insists it just "en" with no "y"

My theory is that it's an English mispronunciation. Say "the en" quickly and to someone else it'll sound be indisguishable from "the yen." There ya go...

P.S. Was "en" *ever* pronounced "yen" in Japan?

[OxyMoron]

Originally posted by Kyberneticist

BTW, a couple of off-topic japanese language questions.
Why do we refer to their unit of money as the "yen"? She insists it just "en" with no "y"

Also, why is it that it seems all these freakin kanji take three times as many brush strokes to write out as to simply spell in hirigana?? I pity the poor Chinese who have to write in this all the time.
Or is this simply chance? Anyone have some counter examples?
[/B]

The same issue is a partial answer to both of your questions. Phonetically, Japanese is the simplest language in the world after Polynesian - in other words, Japanese has relatively few sounds. Plus, because its basis is in syllables rather than phonemes, those sounds can only be arranged in a limited number of combinations. Every sound of my name (Christian Johnson) exists in Japanese. However, becuase of the syllable foundation Japanese isn't capable of simply reproducing my name - instead, my name becomes kurisuch'yan j'yonson. (The apostrophe represents certain characters that are sort of swallowed. Don't ask. :)). With one exception ("n"), to form a syllable every consonant must be followed by a vowel. Sometimes those vowels become silent, or nearly so, but they're still there.

Ok, are we set on the concept of syllables?

Perversely, Japanese has actually been losing certain syllables. Most consonants can be followed by one of five consonants, so in hiragana and katakana there are symbols for ka, ki ("kee"), ku, ke ("keh") and ko. Two consonants have lost vowels: W, which now only goes with "a" for "wa," and Y, which only goes for "ya," "yu" and "yo." There are archaic characters for wi, wu, we and wo, but except for the latter, they aren't used (and wo is pronounced without the "w" and is reserved for certain purely grammatical uses). Yi and ye borrowed the characters for i and e, but were pronounced differently. That pronunciation has now disappeared, but still appears in archaic forms. One of them is "yen," which modern Japanese pronounce "en" but which internationally retains its old name of "yen." The other is in the old name for Tokyo - although the majority of historians use "Edo," a minority use the true, old pronunciation of "Yedo."

Now then, on to Kanji. There have been various movements to abandon Kanji, either in favor of kana or for romanization. The major argument against either is the enormous number of homophones in a phonetically simple language. My japanese text (which I no longer own) suggested that the number of these homophones is, perversely, increasing. Sometimes the homophones are for similar concepts: this text used the examples of "creativity" and "inventiveness" (I don't remember the words themselves, sorry), which were identically pronounced but used completely different kanji. Occasionally, wou will see people actually write kanji in the air to one another to deal with homophones like these.

Yes, kanji are difficult - suck it up and deal, just the same way your forbears have :D. They do get easier as you go along - you'll start learning the roots. To get yourself in the habit, make sure you buy yourself a copy of Nelson's kanji dictionary, which is cumbersome at first but once you've got the system down it makes your life infinitely easier.

Also, Japanese people usually write their kanji in a sort of cursive, which I never did learn.

[Osakadave]

There are alot of americans in Japan. Thus, they need to read it too.

1. There is no large community of expatriates in Japan. The last statistics I heard said there were only 150,000 non-Japanese in the whole country, and that figure is allegedly about 90% composed of ethnic Koreans who were born in Japan but denied are Japanese citizenship.

The first is incorrect, the second is off on the numbers. The foreign population of Japan exceeded the 1% mark several years ago. The population of Japan as of 1999 was 126 million. The total foreign population was 1,556,113. Of those, 42,802 were from the US. The Korean population was the largest at 636,548, followed by Chinese, Brazilian , and Philippine. (Data: http://jin.jcic.or.jp/stat/stats/21MIG22.html ).

On to the OP: I'd say it's primarily the 'coolness' factor, reinforced by the fact that English is a required school subject.

[matt_mcl]

The reason so many English words are used in animé theme songs is definitely the coolness factor. [/geek]

[SpyderA48]

This is interesting because I read somewhere, once, that English is one of the hardest languages on Earth, especially because of things like 'two, to, and too' or 'which and witch.' It was an article discussing the possibility of a universal language, right around the time someone started promoting a blend of Spanish and English for such a use.

Our spelling doesn't help either because many words aren't spelled as they sound. (Thank goodness for Spellcheckers!!)

I've been reading up on Japan a bit and I was surprised to find many of the people taking English in their schools. Here many students take Spanish either because they have to or because it's easy but in the whole Southern quarter of the country, the influx of Spanish speaking immigrants makes this necessary. Like the bilingual TV programs, classes, notices and so on. Especially in Florida, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. It seems English is elective in Japan, but widely selected in the schools.

I've noticed English being used often in advertisements in other nations, especially those friendly with the US and UK. Its usage seems to drop dramatically in areas where the Jewish and Islamic religions are predominate, if I'm correct.

I might be wrong, but documentaries of these nations rarely show English written signs or advertisements.

[OxyMoron]

Originally posted by SpyderA48
This is interesting because I read somewhere, once, that English is one of the hardest languages on Earth, especially because of things like 'two, to, and too' or 'which and witch.'

Indeed, it is. It's particularly difficult for Japanese people. In addition to the well-known phonetic problems, Japanese also lacks distinctions between singular and plural (one table, two table, three table.....) and between present and future (by next year I have enough money to buy a new car...). It also completely lacks articles, so trying to convey the difference between definite and indefinite is mind boggling (I remember a several-hundred page book titled something like "A, The, and An.").


I've been reading up on Japan a bit and I was surprised to find many of the people taking English in their schools [...] It seems English is elective in Japan, but widely selected in the schools.

Actually, it's mandatory beginning in 7th grade and continuing through high school. (I wouldn't have had a job teaching there if it weren't! I taught junior high (grades 7-9, ages 12-14), and usually grades 7 and 8.)

Moreover, because English is so difficult for Japanese people, and because the mandatory classes start so late (the conventional wisdom is that learning a foreign language becomes significantly more difficult after about age 10), very few Japanese people ever become really good at it. English therefore becomes the make-or-break subject for the high school and college entrance exams, since most students can do the history, science, math and literature sections. The neuroses start late in 8th grade. I found my job much easier, because I got the kids before they started to go nutty worrying about exams. The most difficult teaching positions were often those in elite high schools, where the kids were under enormous pressure and would ask the most absurd, hypertechnical grammatical questions, because those were what appeared on the college exams. (In fact, the Ministry of Education was notorious for making distinctions that in fact don't exist for native English speakers :rolleyes:.)

[SpyderA48]

I got an e-mail from a Japanese person once and it surprised me because it read something like this:

It respectfully requests response to its questions with true meaning. One is pleased to be communicating with you.

It brought a smile to my face. I assume 'it' was meant to be 'I.'

[Luckie]

matt_mcl said "ato ha futari ga SIMULATION sureba HIGH LEVEL na nisei no tanjou "

I used to work in a Lab where i was one of the very VERY few americans. They were all chinese and would usually speak chinese to each other ( and ocassionally to me out of habit). I always thought it was funny to listen to them as they talked about fixing a car or some such.
" huong che catcht eh CARBORATOR in kangyo CHEVROLET. ni'ga kwanto un MUFFLER ..."
-luckie