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Are Japanese natives generally exclusive? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages | ( Topic Closed) |  |
| cathrynm Senior Member United States junglevision.co Joined 5913 days ago 910 posts - 1232 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Finnish | Message 33 of 66 17 September 2009 at 1:20am | IP Logged | ||
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I don't think they're talking to you in 'let's talk to the white guy' language. Japanese expats and Nikkei of various sorts do talk to each other this way. I've seen it myself. That was my aunt. She came to the USA as a child after growing up in Japan, but she always spoke thickly accented English. The thing is, I talked to my cousin about their trip back to Japan, and my aunt was barely able to get around.
I presume she spoke jumbled English/Japanese with her other friends and children here in the USA, and she ended up not particularly fluent in either Japanese or English. This didn't happen suddenly, but rather slowly. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| hombre gordo Triglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5371 days ago 184 posts - 247 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Japanese Studies: Portuguese, Korean | Message 34 of 66 17 September 2009 at 8:40pm | IP Logged | ||
That certainly is a possibility with Nikkei people, but the people with whom I lived in Japan (my host families and their family friends) where Japanese born Japanese 100% kansaijin. In my particular situation the most logical guess as to why these people were like this that I can think of is the "we want to be more western" inferiority complex. Anyway not to dwell on that. That is past now. "she spoke jumbled English/Japanese with her other friends and children here in the USA, and she ended up not particularly fluent in either Japanese or English" More evidence supporting my opinion that code-switching in some situations can have a negative effect on the development of languages. This is parellel with the point I made on those under-educated bilingual hispanic kids in the US. Edited by hombre gordo on 17 September 2009 at 8:41pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| cathrynm Senior Member United States junglevision.co Joined 5913 days ago 910 posts - 1232 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Finnish | Message 35 of 66 17 September 2009 at 11:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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Oh I see. Yeah, I don't have any experience with that. I'm more at the 'talk to the confused slow person' phase with Japanese, so I never really get to any sustained conversation. When I was in Japan I got about half and half. Hesitant English or full speed Japanese, which I didn't understand.
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| Gon-no-suke Triglot Senior Member Japan Joined 6222 days ago 156 posts - 191 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Japanese, EnglishC2 Studies: Korean, Malay, Swahili | Message 36 of 66 18 September 2009 at 11:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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This thread started with Japanese that don't want to speak Japanese abroad, but since it has switched a little to the subject of Japanese interacting with foreigners in Japan I'd like to respond to some of your points, Hombre:
1. As you noted, most people speak Japanese to you from the beginning. 2. Some people, especially shop clerks that are used to foreigners, start out with English when they see a "western" face, but if you answer in Japanese they will switch back. 3. Using a lot of English lone words is perfectly normal Japanese (especially among the younger population) and people don't do it because you are a foreigner. 4. "ピックアップします" has eight million hits on Google. 5. You are bound to find some strange habits among people who host exchange students with in some cases limited knowledge of Japanese. These people are not especially representative. Of course, you will sometimes run in to the language "rapists" or be approached by school children who have been assigned a homework consiting of "speak to a foreigner" by their teacher. There are obnoxius people in every country and when you have a population density a par with Japan you are bound to bump into them. Once or twice a year I meet people who tick me of with their behaviour, and most of the time it is language related. But really, please do avoid marking everything up as 排他的 and enjoy yourself in Japan instead! Addendum: I would like to add that I had similar gripes about loan words during my first years i Japan and I can relate to your feelings. It might also be that living in the more rural parts of Japan was detrimental to your experience. I am sure that you can find rural areas of England where people are vary about foreigners, I know places like that in my native Sweden. P.S. Hombre, I find it a little amusing that you abhor code switching but still mix Japanese and English in your posts!
Edited by Gon-no-suke on 19 September 2009 at 1:17am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| hombre gordo Triglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5371 days ago 184 posts - 247 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Japanese Studies: Portuguese, Korean | Message 37 of 66 19 September 2009 at 9:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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Gon-no-suke
Thank you for your extrensive response. I have read some of your informative posts regarding loanwords in the past and they are pretty interesting for me since you have been in my position and have had similar feelings on the issue. I used to be more extreme in my views regarding loanwords in Japanese. In the past, using even 米国 instead of アメリカ and 欧州 instead of ヨーロッパ was preferable for me. What can I say!? I am a certified Kanji addict! Now after reading some of your past posts, I have decided that it is best to use a few loanwords only if it is for the sake of sounding natural. In other words, I have started to use the really (and I mean really)common loanwords instead of searching through my memory aiming to find some Chinese derived Kanji compound word which nobody uses anyway. But still I remain quite conservative. If a specific loanword is used just for the sake of it and at the same time there exists some proper Japanese word which wouldn't be unnatural to use, I will certainly use the real Japanese word. Regarding your point 3, I now notice that the only people who used foreign loanwords with me just because I am a foreigner were no more than 4 people. You are right, they are not representative. As for your points 1 and 2, come to think of it, at any type of service place whether it be a shop, a supermarket, a restaurant, a bar, a ticket booth or whatever, I only ever got an English response once in an entire 3 months. And I am sure the restaurant owner was mentally ill anyway! Myself and a friend of mine had decided to have a relaxed and intimate conversation over a nice traditional Japanese meal at a nearby restaurant. However upon ording we bumped into this crazy geezer who appeared to be the owner. After insisting that we make an order in English, instead of leaving us to eat our meal in peace, he sat by our table for a full 20 minutes and insisted that he speak English with us! This guy just wouldn't stop. I thought to myself that he should have been paying me not me paying him. The worst thing was that the friend who was eating with me wasn't even an English speaker and had been disregarded completely! Any attempts to speak Japanese (even expressions of gratitude for the food) with this mental dude were completely disregarded! I see what you mean. You meet a grade A douchebag like this maybe only once or twice a year. Point taken. I intend to take these only as unrepresentative extreme cases and go to Japan with a positive attitude. Thank you for your advice Mr. Gon. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Gon-no-suke Triglot Senior Member Japan Joined 6222 days ago 156 posts - 191 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Japanese, EnglishC2 Studies: Korean, Malay, Swahili | Message 38 of 66 20 September 2009 at 5:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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It's good to hear that I was able to influence your attitude a little! Things has gotten a lot better the last ten years, but the fact is that there are far fewer foreigners in Japan than in European countries which make you stand out a bit. However, an increasing amount of foreginers speaking decent Japanese can be seen around town and on the telly now so people aren't that suprised if you speak Japanese any more.
Your encounter with the resturant owner sounds like quite a bad experience. Living here for ten years, I still havn't met his equal. Most of the offenders seem to be people who have a medium level of interaction with foreigners. One example is budo teachers who deal with a lot of foreigners who speak only very limited Japanese. For me as a non-native English speaker, one very annoying thing is all the people who assume that I am a native speaker. Even telling them that I am Swedish, a lot of people believe that we speak English in Sweden... (These conversations are done in Japanese, so I'm not trying to imply that my English accent is perfect or something like that). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Clintaroo Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 6659 days ago 189 posts - 201 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Tagalog, Indonesian | Message 39 of 66 21 September 2009 at 3:00am | IP Logged | ||
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Fascinating discussion folks. I was an exchange student in Japan for a year and I generally had no problems communicating in Japanese with fellow students. Most didn't speak a lot of English, so we conducted our conversations in Japanese. My homestays were conducted exclusively in Japanese and even my friend who did a working holiday in Australia preferred speaking in Japanese with me. Somebody posted it, but there are a lot of non-Japanese who speak decent Japanese on television and in the media these days. You might still have to go through 日本語が上手ですね！type-introductions but I think there are more Japanese-speaking foreigners these days, at least in my experience. Some Japanese are pretty ambivalent about language abilities, some will speak to you in English, some will just be happy speaking Japanese. It depends on one's experience, I guess.
I personally was never accosted by high school students or even university students wanting to learn English.
I know how you feel. Japanese has perfectly good words for America and Europe so why use the loanwords? Even sports like basketball, association football and so on can be written in kanji - but how often do you see those? I used to insist on learning and using words such as 米国 in speech, but you end up sounding like an NHK newscaster and people snigger at you. Tagalog is a different story. If you don't like code switching you should perhaps avoid Tagalog! I try and avoid code switching as much as possible because if I code switch to English I find that my Australian accent is not very well understood by a lot of Filipinos and thus the meaning is lost. However, in some instances you simply have to code switch as the Filipino equivalents of a lot of English concepts and words can be a bit ambiguous, quite lengthy, or simply archaic. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| hombre gordo Triglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5371 days ago 184 posts - 247 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Japanese Studies: Portuguese, Korean | Message 40 of 66 21 September 2009 at 6:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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Clintaroo,
Thanks for your personal anecdotes about your experience with Japanese university students. As you may have read in my previous post in this thread, I have had very little experience with Japanese youngsters despite having spent an entire summer in Japan. If I am completely honest, I can possibly say that I kind of have a minor phobia of hanging around with Japanese youngsters. I just don't know how to get along with people my own age group. I am used to having more mature friends. When I was in Japan I had many Japanese friends my senior but absolutely no younger friends. The only youngsters I hung around with in Japan were non-Japanese Asian students who attented the same language school. Very soon I will be going back to Japan where I will have to interact with Japanese university students. I don't know how it is going to be. Any advice would be appreciated. I wonder if I will be able to make friends. For some reason I find conversation with older Japanese people more interesting. Older people are just wiser and talk about more interesting topics like war and history. I am pleased that someone else shares my views on the recent influx of western loanwords. I always insist on learning how to write the Kanji equivalents even if they are seldom used. I learn them for just in case. One thing that I hate about the loanwords is that they almost always seem to take them from English but not that much from other languages. It is as if everyone want to try to be more American or something! If only there were some kind of change which would result in the removal of many of these silly loanwords. I am pleased I am not learning Tagalog! I think that my next language will be Hungarian, a language with very few cognates with western european languages. Edited by hombre gordo on 21 September 2009 at 6:49pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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