Did that in any way contribute to the OP? Or would it be that you enjoy doing a drive-by and slamming the OP. Why don’t you take him to the pit, if you have a problem with his attitude?
Okay, let’s start by defining “speaking English,” priceguy.
The following quote is from the Cambridge Encyclopedia of English by David Crystal. I couldn’t find it on the net so I’ll type it in:
"The spread of English around the world has been visualised as three concentric circles, representing the different ways in which the language has been acquired and is currently used.
The inner circle refers to the traditional bases of English, where it is the primary language: It includes the USA, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
The outer or extended circle involves the earlier phases of the spread of English in non-native settings, wehre the language has become part of a country’s chief institutions, and plays an important ‘second language’ role in a multilingual setting: It includes Singapore, Idia, Malawi, and over 50 other territories.
The expanding circles involves those nations which recognise the importance of English as an international language, though they do not have a history of colonisation by members of the inner circle, nor have they given English any special status in their langauge policy. It includes China, Japan, Israel, Greece, Poland, and (as the name of this circle suggests) a steadily increasing number of other states. In these areas, English is taught as a foreign language."
This would put Sweden and Japan in the same category at least.
In answer to your question “can’t the Japanese speak English?” I’ve found a ranking of developed countries that would appear to give some substance at least to your assumption. It’s based on the mean average of TOEFL (test of english as a foreign language) scores achieved by learners of English from that country.
Interestingly, Sweden only comes 11th… One of the questions I would imediately raise here is just how widely used this exam is in the countries in question. In a country where this is the standard for EFL testing, the education system would be geared up to preparing students specifically for the type of questions it uses. In Hungary, for example (which is ranked 14th), the TOEFL is not the most popular EFL exam, and is generally only used when specifically required - in order to enrol at a foreign university, for example. The state exams are far more prevalent, although the Cambridge examinations are also gaining ground due to their recent accreditation by the Hungarian state examination centre.
One of the advantages of using it for comparison is that it works on a sliding scale - rather than having different exams for beginner, intermediate, advanced, etc., everybody takes the same test and your level of proficiency is calculated from the amount of questions you get right.
Just how relevant these scores actually are with regard to Japan is discussed in this very interesting article.
Enjoy… 
I think there are flaws in this categorization. For one thing, Sweden would be between the second and third circle. English isn’t the “second language” of Sweden, isn’t in heavy use in any institutions, but it does have a special status in that education in English speaking starts early and is intense throughout school.
That is interesting. I expected to see the Netherlands at the top of the pile, but I did not expect to see Sweden beaten by neither Belgium nor Germany.
The Netherlands are amazing, I have to say that. You can grab an octogenarian off the street, someone who hasn’t been to school in half a century, and just converse in English.
Thanks. I’ll read this as soon as I get the time.
Some do, some don’t. It depends on how much they’ve learned. Mumbleboy (his real name is Kinya Hanada), an aquaintance of mine, is a Japanese emigrant living in New York City and English is like second nature to him. Shigeru Miyamoto (the creator of Super Mario Bros., Donkey Kong, Pikmin, and Zelda) knows only a little English.
Being in Germany and working at McDonalds does not automatically make them German. There is a fair chance that Priceguy encountered some folks who were already speaking their second language (German.) It can be quite hard to tell an immigrant from the former East Block (Poland, Hungary, etc.) from a German by appearance alone. It is not uncommon for ALL of the people working the counter in a McDonalds to be “foreigners.” In truth, I am usually surprised when I find a German working there at all.
As to “point and grunt,” I usually find it more expedient to learn the word for “please” in the language of the country I’m traveling in and to “point and say please.” Considering the short notice (ten AM, and the boss says to go home and pack the plane leaves for Poland at 2PM was a not unusual thing) I’ve had for some of the business trips I’ve made to other countries, it is not possible to learn the language just for one visit. You can, however, pickup a dictionary at the airport and puzzle out at least the first five numbers and “please” and “thank you.” In most cases, one of the folks from the company I would be visiting would take me around and help with things, so the language wasn’t a problem - internationally active companies tend to hire multilingual people. It is, however, a good idea to learn at least those few words for the times when you get stuck on your own.
Sorry for the hi-jack. We now return you to your regularly scheduled GQ discussion.
Well if it is any help Priceguy my son is in his 3rd year at a Japanese public elementary school, previously at a private school, and my husband is an University professor of German, so I know a bit about the Japanese education system.
Currently English is a required from Junior High. Since last year, English has been slowly introduced at public elementary schools. My son’s school gives about 4 English lessons with a native speaker every trimester, which equals to about once a month. Other schools have different agendas. Private elementary schools are much more interested in English education and so in my area, most have English as a required course from Elementary. My friend’s daughter attends a private school and this year, (3rd) they are learning phonics and reading, plus general conversation. My son’s class is still trying how to say hello and are attempting to learn those strange wiggles called the alphabet. Straight from the horses mouth, check out the
Japanese Ministry of Education’s home page.
There are many private conversational English schools here in Japan, but to advance beyond an intermediate level of conversation seems unusual (in my opinion). A chance to actually speak to an English speaker is very rare, and so the ability to speak English may be considered “cool” but not needed. Foreign movies are dubbed or subtitled, books are translated, english correspondence with foreign businesses are dealt with by the few that are capable of stringing a few coherrent English words together. The rest of us minions are quite happy to live out our lives ignorant of the English language.
Well, according to Jemimah cricket, English is taught from an early age in Japan also, and I don’t remember hearing anything about Sweden being colonised by the British.
While the categories are broad, Sweden certainly fits the description of a country where English is spoken as a foreign language as opposed to a second or first language, so I beg to differ on that point. 
As an aside, and not meaning to undermine whatsoever Priceguy’s obviously well-supported claim about Japanese people and their general lack of knowledge of English, has anybody else noticed how Japanese pop culture seems to nevertheless have a love affair with English? They may not speak it, if PriceGuy can be believed (and again, I don’t mean to cast aspersions as to the veracity of his claims), but they sure do love using it.
I’m talking about Japanese pop songs that include English lyrics, apparently just for the heck of it (since nobody in Japan apparently speaks English, I’m assuming there’s no valid reason for it).
Or Japanese animation (“anime”) where characters spout entire lines in English and the theme songs have English sprinkled throughout, again for apparently no valid reason since nobody there speaks or understands English.
My favorite are the recent Godzilla movies that have come out in the last few years, and that have never been released in the U.S. (i.e., they weren’t made for the English-speaking market). Official Japanese government agencies in these films inexplicably have English names (which are printed on their vehicles – I’m not talking about dubbing here), military hardware has English writing on it, etc.
All that English, and nobody around to understand it. Crazy, crazy world…
Barry
Now now, godzillatemple. Sarcasm just isn’t nice. Especially when I have
made it totally freaking clear that I haven’t made a claim!
Sorry. I’m all right now.
FWIW, here is my experience. First, the non-native-English speakers who speak English the best are, generally speaking, native speakers of another Germanic country. I guess if I searched Holland, I would find someone who didn’t speak English, but in my somewhat limited experience there I never did. Germans are somewhat less likely to speak English, but most do and most speak it well, some extremely well. Much the same in the Scandinavian countries. Surely, there is something to be said about language relatedness and ease of learning.
Many French speak English (and many don’t, of course), but no matter how well they speak it, their accent is execrable. I know a man who has lived in the US since he was 10 and he speaks perfect English of course, but sounds like he just got off the boat. He is an extreme case. In Quebec, there are many people who speak nearly unaccented English who not all that fluent. They have just been hearing it all their lives.
Now Japanese could hardly be more different from English and still be a human tongue. It is highly inflected and all, but the most important difference for this discussion is that it lacks consonant clusters and this makes it hard for native speakers to pronounce English anything like it ought to be. From all of two months spent in Japan (not speaking a word of the language), I have concluded that they all learn written English often quite well, but very few learn it as a spoken language. My host when I was there spoke English well, but he also spoke French and German and was obviously linguistically gifted. His wife, who was a physician, and who had lived with him in Edinburgh for a year, still hardly spoke English. The students to whom I lectured, were clearly not following what I said and I had to write almost everything on the board, which they did understand.
I did run into one English teacher who was taking his class to one of the shrines in Kyoto. He came up to me and asked in pretty good English if the students could talk to me and my wife. I agreed but most of them were too inhibited or shy, so nothing much came of it. But I don’t think many of them spoke English. A woman came up to me in a hotel lobby and asked if I minded speaking with her for a few minutes. She also spoke pretty well, but was out of practice with a limited vocabulary. Then there was a girl who looked about 15 and was a clerk in a take-out sushi establishment that I frequented. She astonished me when, after I had pointed to the box I wanted, she began speaking perfect, unaccented, American English. I inquired and she claimed that she had learned it in school and had never been out of Japan. I guess some people are unusually talented, but even so she didn’t learn to speak that way from a book.
FWIW, here is my experience. First, the non-native-English speakers who speak English the best are, generally speaking, native speakers of another Germanic country. I guess if I searched Holland, I would find someone who didn’t speak English, but in my somewhat limited experience there I never did. Germans are somewhat less likely to speak English, but most do and most speak it well, some extremely well. Much the same in the Scandinavian countries. Surely, there is something to be said about language relatedness and ease of learning.
Many French speak English (and many don’t, of course), but no matter how well they speak it, their accent is execrable. I know a man who has lived in the US since he was 10 and he speaks perfect English of course, but sounds like he just got off the boat. He is an extreme case. In Quebec, there are many people who speak nearly unaccented English who not all that fluent. They have just been hearing it all their lives.
Now Japanese could hardly be more different from English and still be a human tongue. It is highly inflected and all, but the most important difference for this discussion is that it lacks consonant clusters and this makes it hard for native speakers to pronounce English anything like it ought to be. From all of two months spent in Japan (not speaking a word of the language), I have concluded that they all learn written English often quite well, but very few learn it as a spoken language. My host when I was there spoke English well, but he also spoke French and German and was obviously linguistically gifted. His wife, who was a physician, and who had lived with him in Edinburgh for a year, still hardly spoke English. The students to whom I lectured, were clearly not following what I said and I had to write almost everything on the board, which they did understand.
I did run into one English teacher who was taking his class to one of the shrines in Kyoto. He came up to me and asked in pretty good English if the students could talk to me and my wife. I agreed but most of them were too inhibited or shy, so nothing much came of it. But I don’t think many of them spoke English. A woman came up to me in a hotel lobby and asked if I minded speaking with her for a few minutes. She also spoke pretty well, but was out of practice with a limited vocabulary. Then there was a girl who looked about 15 and was a clerk in a take-out sushi establishment that I frequented. She astonished me when, after I had pointed to the box I wanted, she began speaking perfect, unaccented, American English. I inquired and she claimed that she had learned it in school and had never been out of Japan. I guess some people are unusually talented, but even so she didn’t learn to speak that way from a book.
I could jump in with my own opinions and experience, but you know what this thread needs? Hard facts.
Question 1: Are the Japanese really generally bad at English? If so, how bad?
Answer: Yes, they are. Really bad.
You need to take these results in context, though. Japanese typically study English for 6 years or more in an educational system that, though not without faults, is generally excellent.
There is no doubt: Japanese students suck at English really, really badly while excelling in other fields.
Priceguy’s anecdotal observation being correct, his question remains: why?
It’s very hard to answer factually as this is a topic that’s hotly debated here, from the halls of the Education Ministry, to the local drinking holes.
At first, people believed it was because of lack of contact with actual native speakers. The JET programme was created to address this issue. About 5000 foreigners are sent accross the country to teach “real” English and “internationalize” Japan. As the statistics I quoted above show, the results have been less than stellar, especially compared to the cost.
People then had to find another culprit, and hence come in the bad teachers. Well, the supposedly bad teachers. The problem isn’t so much that there are many bad teachers, but that there are very few teachers who are actually fluent. This is directly linked to the next problem.
The curriculum.
As was already mentioned, it’s heavily oriented towards grammar and obscure structures. Sure, there is some will to change this but you run into two problems: teachers formed through the old method (it’s very hard to teach something you’ve never been taught properly before), and everyone’s favourite culprit, the entrance exams.
Note, I personally don’t have an opinion on the subject anymore. The “why” is very much a debate question and I don’t think a GQ answer is possible.
Wow – I had no idea it was even possible to have letters that big.
As for your comment, I’ll admit that I haven’t read every post in this thread and may very well missed the part where you explained in excruciating detail that you were not, in fact, making any sort of claim. I just read your original post which said, in part:
To me, saying “they don’t speak English” is, well, a claim that they don’t in fact, speak English.
Again, I apologize for not reading the whole thread before commenting. I still think my point is valid, however.
Oh – and what’s wrong with a little sacrcasm? I like sarcasm!
Barry
Nor me. Now, thanks to you, we know. That’s fighting ignorance.
You should read every post before making one of your own, and you did miss it. Well, one of them, to be exact. You see, you’re not the first guy to say something like that, and having to explain the same thing several times to people too lazy to read the thread makes me quite weary and makes my letters grow uncontrollably.
One piece of advice: when you quote, read the quote yourself. A hint: Who’s making the claim?
Oh, and the two hard non-anecdotal cites we’ve seen so far support that claim, so it appears to be correct.
Reading, writing, speaking, and aurally comprehending a language are completely distinct skill sets. In fact, the areas of the brain that control these skills are completely distinct from one another.
It is not at unusual for a native Japanese (or any language) speaker to be able to read and write in English, and yet be unable to converse in English. In fact, I would say that it is the norm for people learning a second language (in most formal education settings) to have reading and writing skills far in advance of their conversational skills. Most traditional classroom language-teaching methods strongly emphasize reading and writing over conversational proficiency. On top of that, the traditional conversational exercises that are employed tend to be brief, unnatural, and repetitive; and therefore promoting rote memorization instead of improvisation.
Consider that your perspective on this issue is skewed because of the emphasis placed on innovative English language education in your native Sweden. You may feel that this emphasis is totally natural and perhaps that it is widely emulated elsewhere. I can assure you that this is not at all the case with the exception of some other northern European nations.
Your experiences learning a second language are very much the exception the world over – even in countries that foster plenty of trade and cultural exchange with English-speaking countries.
As measured by average TOEFL and TOEIC scores, many Japanese speak English poorly. However I know many who s[eak English quite fluently. One reason for the poor test scores is the large number of tests administered to people who in other countries would not be taking the tests. Also, to elaborate on the education system, the grammer-translation method is still widely used, leading to the large numbers of those who can read and write English on a minimal level, but have no practical conversational experience. As mentioned, the vast majority of teachers are Japanese, and have poor English skills. The JET program, IMHO, is a spectacular failure, because the native speakers have little training and are used primarily as entrtainment (I know many anecdotal examples of native teachers - called assistant language taechers, or ALTs - being asked to play simple games instead of actually teach). The commercial English education sector exists largely as an entertainment.
They were lucky. I was asked to sit in the teacher’s room and read the textbook once a day. For the exams, the teacher prefered to use a CD. I couldn’t help thinking, “wow! that CD is doing a better job than I am!”
One day, all I did was fetch a key. I tried to do so in an “international” fashion, though, to justify my salary.
I realize we’re getting close to GD territory here, but I felt the need to address this post. I also want to point out that some of what’s left in the quote above is not statements made by trabi, but quotes within his post.
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I think more countries should be added in the primary circle: South Africa, Belize, Malta and the Philipines come to mind. It can be argued, of course, but all countries on the list except GB can be argued.
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The modell takes 19th century imperialism into account, but not relative closeness in the language group, such as it is with the Germanic languages. Therefore, I say the modell is flawed.
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There is no possible way that Germans scored higher than Swedes. Or rather, it’s possible that they scored higher, but in general, Germans don’t speak English as well as Swedes do. If this scoring was obtained from people studying English, then I suppose it might be true. Most Swedes don’t study English at a higher level, not feeling the need, since we speak it well enough, if not fluently. The Dutch are the most gifted people for language in the world, closely followed by Morrocans (anecdotal) who float ashore in Europe and speak five languages apart from their own, from day one. The Swiss, Scandinavians and Belgians are good to. Most people without a higher degree of education, from the rest of Europe, suck.
Interestingly, the Fins, which are living close enough to this zone, and share a common history and culture, are not as good with English. And I think this is because Finnish is not a Germanic language. -
Literacy plays a big part in this. And movies.
Before 1927, during the silent era, movies were edited for the local market and that big black screen with a few lines of dialogue was simply written in the native language. In countries with lower literacy, this gave an excellent opportunity for actors to work. They would stand to the side of the screen and read out the line for the audience, thus helping those that couldn’t read.
When the talkies came along, countries like Holland, Sweden and Denmakr opted for subtitling, while the rest went with dubbing. Back in those days, lip syncing wasn’t such a big deal, and literacy was still low. Also, this provided even more work for actors (and do to this day, and they have strong unions). Dubbing became a standard and in large parts of Europe generations grew up without hearing English. We did. And so did the Dutch ASF.
Another reason for dubbing was that it wasn’t very economical for smaller languages, as Swedish or Dutch. In German, with around 124 million native speakers, it makes much more sense. -
Smaller countries are more dependant on the outside world. There are around 10 million people who speak Swedish in the whole world. Dutch clocks in with about 21 million. We need to learn languages, not only to gain grades in school, but to actually communicate.
Short answer to the OP: Japanese don’t need to learn english because we do great with Japanese.
I’m a first gen Canadian so I no longer speak fluent japanese. But I can understand it and the last time I was in japan at the end of 6 months, I was confortable enough to try speaking whenever possible. My parents have been in Canada for over 25 years and still cannot speak very good english (I would rate them fair). Several sounds found in english don’t exist in japanese (like “th” as in Thursday) so it makes it difficult for a native japanese speaker to pick up english.
I spent 5 years in Japanese language school and didn’t pick anything up (actually I was a stubborn brat when I was young and didn’t want to spend the summer in school) so I guess learning Japanese might run both ways. Why don’t english people learn japanese? You all drive our cars and watch our anime 
I think the question has been answered about as well as it can be in this forum. As jovan indicates above, further discussion of the whys would likely be more debate than fact-finding. I invite anyone interested to start a new thread in GD if they desire to continue to debate.
Priceguy, your defensive and confrontational tone discourages those who might give you the facts and encourages those who wish to debate with you. If your purpose in future GQ threads is to get the facts, you would be best served by toning it down a notch.
bibliophage
moderator GQ