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Troubled friend needs URGENT help...
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womblingfree

Joined: 04 Mar 2006
Posts: 826

Posted: Mon Jul 17, 2006 2:58 am Post subject:

PAULH wrote:

womblingfree wrote:

Living in Japan and learning Japanese as a foreigner is very different from learning English in Japan as a native Japanese speaker though.

If I learn japanese in Japan its a JSL or Japanese as a Second Language

JSOL surely? That's the definition in Europe anyway.

PAULH wrote:

You are saying Japanese bastardise English on purpose becuase they happen to live in Japan, while its possible for many Japanese to learn proper English.

The idea that I consider local language variation to be a bastardisation is completely misinterpreting everything I've said.

Of course a few Japanese can learn 'proper' English (what is that?). There are plenty of Indians who speak like Prince Charles but the vast majority do not.

The majority will use the English they need to get along in the societal framework which in the case of Japan involves grammar study and passing exams. When the majority speak English they will do so with certain variations which are consistant and which will reflect their own language in its use and pronunciation.

This is not bastardisation at all it is local variety and it's got nothing to do with native English speakers as it occurs naturally.

Last edited by womblingfree on Mon Jul 17, 2006 3:10 am; edited 3 times in total

PAULH

Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Posts: 4672
Location: Western Japan

Posted: Mon Jul 17, 2006 3:01 am Post subject:

kdynamic wrote:

Well, the Japanese government has decided that it is worth it. And seeing JETs in my town positively impact people's lives and really open some eyes to ideas about diversity, I tend to agree. You're talking about people who would never interact with another foriegner for the rest of their entire lives if it weren't for the JET. It does have an impact.

Of course you are entitled to your opinions, but I can also tell you that if they want to teach about diversity and tolerance the governments and local boards of education should put their money where there mouth is.

Boards of Education being sued for non-renewal of contracts. being told ALTs are TOO Japanised or told not to use Japanese in class. Sexual and physical harassment of JETs. I heard of one JET who was sexually assaulted by the mayor of her town with the complicit agreement of her Japanese supervisor.

JETs can not renew their contracts after three years. If JETs were so valuable schools would find a way to keep them on. Not to mention foreigners can not teach full time in public high schools and elementary schools.

BOEs being disappointed because they get an Asian or a black JET, not a white person. so much for diversity and being open minded.

As a long term resident here I see a lot of double talk about internationalisation and diversity while at the same time being marginalised and having my rights and livelihood taken away. Im treated like a pet, rather than an integral part of the community.

At my school last year foreign teachers were actively discriminated against and now the school is being sued in court for unfair labor practices. This is from one the largest private universities in Kansai.

Governments talk about diversity etc but their policies are inherently racist and discriminatory, and they keep foreigners on a very short leash.

PAULH

Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Posts: 4672
Location: Western Japan

Posted: Mon Jul 17, 2006 3:14 am Post subject:

womblingfree wrote:

The majority will use the English they need to get along in the societal framework which in the case of Japan involves grammar study and passing exams. When the majority speak English they will do so with certain variations which are consistant and which will reflect their own language in its use and pronunciation.

This is not bastardisation at all it is local variety and it's got nothing to do with native English speakers as it occurs naturally.

Show me a Japanese person where they use English as pidgin etc. English is a FOREIGN language in Japan, like German or French in Australia, and Italian in Canada.

Show me a japanese population where a majority of the population is able to use english productively to communicate with each other and with foreigners. 99% of the population can not speak English so to say they have their own spoken version unique to Japan is a fallacy. There is no Japlish pidgin that Japanese use to speak with each other- they speak in Japanese.

I hear Japanese speak everyday in my classes. I know why they speak the way they do and the patterns they use, its because of the structure of Japanese syllabary seeping through in English. Go to hear Koreans speak English and they have different patterns because of Korean speech patterns. Same in Phillipines etc.

Yes you do have patterns when one language group speaks English. They can be 'corrected' or modified to make it sound more natural or comprehensible. very few reach native level though and can be perfectly understandable even with foreign accents. I think you are confusing broken English and interlanguage with a separate and distinct syntax and grammar.

PAULH

Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Posts: 4672
Location: Western Japan

Posted: Mon Jul 17, 2006 3:23 am Post subject:

womblingfree wrote:

Its times like this that I wish you would speak in plain simple English than some kind of sociolinguistic pyschobabble that makes little or no sense.

The above paragraph makes no sense to anyone except perhaps yourself and is the kind of thing that turns up in PhD dissertations to make one appear sound more educated than they actually are.

If you want to get technical about it for a moment, there is in fact an order of acquisition where some things are acquired before others, easier ones before difficult ones

That is why you learn present tense first, then past tense, then future tenses. passive tenses come later. If you havent mastered these then you will make mistakes. I has students write 'writed' and I goes' because they havent mastered the patterns. Its not because they are Japanese. its like saying that Japanese have shorter arms or longer intestines so they write and speak English in a certain way. thats almost ethnocentric racist claptrap.

Study about how people learn languages, how they acquire second and third languages and then you will understand where people are coming frim when they struggle to acquire language and make mistakes.

by saying they are japanese you are ascribing unnatural qualities to them, that are found in other language groups. They are more obvious here as all second learners here tend to come from one language group. the errors they make are not unique to only Japanese though, and that is all they are, productive errors in learning a foriegn language.

kdynamic

Joined: 05 Nov 2005
Posts: 562
Location: Japan

Posted: Mon Jul 17, 2006 4:00 am Post subject:

PAULH wrote:

Boards of Education being sued for non-renewal of contracts.

This can't be in reference to a case involving JET. It is made very clear to all JETs that renewal of contracts is by no means guaranteed, and needs to be something both parties want. No one is making false promises. JET isn't meant as long term employment. It's a cultural exchange program.

Quote:

being told ALTs are TOO Japanised or told not to use Japanese in class. Sexual and physical harassment of JETs. I heard of one JET who was sexually assaulted by the mayor of her town with the complicit agreement of her Japanese supervisor.

All the more evidence why Japan is in serious need of more diversity and tolerance education, the point of the program in the first place.

Quote:

JETs can not renew their contracts after three years. If JETs were so valuable schools would find a way to keep them on.

JET can renew for 4th and 5th years (usually they are transfered to elementary schools). And there are many cases of JETs who are asked to stay on privately if they are especially well liked.

Quote:

BOEs being disappointed because they get an Asian or a black JET, not a white person. so much for diversity and being open minded.

Again, all the more reason why importing diversity is so critical. But I want to point out that there are LOTS of contracting organizations that request every imaginable type of person, including asian and black, etc etc, and are very happy to have even more diverse people to expose thier students and citizens to. People who have never met a black person and are scared of them or whatever such onsense are exactly the ones who should be exposed to them to see that they are normal people! Even if the adjustment isn't always perfectly smooth, in the end it's really good for the community to grapple with.

Quote:

As a long term resident here I see a lot of double talk about internationalisation and diversity while at the same time being marginalised and having my rights and livelihood taken away. Im treated like a pet, rather than an integral part of the community.

Well I won't argue with you there. The Japanese government definitely doesn't do enough to address the problems of minority residents. But tat doesn't mean attempting to open the minds of Japanese people by exposing them to various people from around the world is useless. Sure, it's a long term slow way of going about it, but eventually kinds who have a good experience with foriegners in school grow up to become landlords, employers, and lawmakers.

Quote:

At my school last year foreign teachers were actively discriminated against and now the school is being sued in court for unfair labor practices. This is from one the largest private universities in Kansai.

I'm sorry to hear that, but I don't see what it has to do with the JET program. JET has strictly enforced policies and many levels of recourse should anyone be unfairly treated.

Quote:

Governments talk about diversity etc but their policies are inherently racist and discriminatory, and they keep foreigners on a very short leash.

Of course they could be doing more. Of course they SHOULD be doing more. Of course there are lots of real problems that the JET program can't help at all. But it's not really meant to. It's meant to be a cultural exchange program to expose Japanese to people for various countries, and, in turn, encourage those people to share their experience in Japan in their home countries. It is what it is, nothing more. And placing on the program expectations to be more than it was concieved to be, and then using its failure by those criteria to judge it is really not fair.

Mark

Joined: 23 Jan 2003
Posts: 500
Location: Tokyo, Japan

Posted: Mon Jul 17, 2006 4:03 am Post subject:

womblingfree wrote:

Mark wrote:

In the end, Japanese have not developed a version of English comparable with Swedish or Indian English. They just speak Japanese using English words, expressions and syntax rules. As such, it's generally not easily understandable by people who are unfamiliar with Japanese.

Well Swedish English is pretty much at native speaker level so I wouldn't call it a new variety. India has many varieties some of which would be almost incomprehensible to anyone outside of India.

If the variety of English that some Japanese are speaking is useful to them then so what if a native speaker can't understand it?

Here's an example of a pidgin English variety as published. A gold star if you can guess what it is:

"Pren, man bilong Rom, Wantok, harim nau."

It's a variety of English that makes little sense to us but perfect sense to those that speak it. Japan hasn't developed a pidgin or creole, but common 'errors' could just as easily be described as variation if they occur consistently within a group.

Well, if only Japanese people can understand Japanese English, then it doesn't seem particularly useful. The purpose of learning English is to communicate with people that don't speak your native language (or read books, or watch movies, etc.).

No, I can't understand the sentence that you wrote. Perhaps if I could hear it spoken.

And yes, one person's error is another person's standard way of speaking. "I ain't got no pencils" is perfectly understandable Englsh and is the standard form for many people.

There's no definite boundary where a language stops. Spanish and Portuguese are different languages, but Spanish-speakers can generally understand Portuguese although it doesn't work as easily in the reverse direction. Speakers of Dutch and speakers of German who live near the Dutch border can often understand each other. And so on.

And part of it is personal opinion. If you hear something, do you recognize it as being your language?

And, also, bear in mind that there's a big difference between speaking a difficult-to-understand creole as your first language and learning a local form of a second language that can't be understood by others.

Mark

Joined: 23 Jan 2003
Posts: 500
Location: Tokyo, Japan

Posted: Mon Jul 17, 2006 4:16 am Post subject:

And, about your comments about India, Indians use English to communicate with EACH OTHER, because they don't have a common language. Even Hindi is spoken by less than half the population. So, yes, a form of Indian English that is incomprehensible to outsiders would still be useful in India. This is not at all similar to Japan.

PAULH

Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Posts: 4672
Location: Western Japan

Posted: Mon Jul 17, 2006 4:42 am Post subject:

Mark wrote:

And, about your comments about India, Indians use English to communicate with EACH OTHER, because they don't have a common language. Even Hindi is spoken by less than half the population.

So, yes, a form of Indian English that is incomprehensible to outsiders would still be useful in India.

This is not at all similar to Japan.

People who live in Okinawa and Kyushu and those who live in Tohoku or hokkaido speaking their own dialects simply dont comprehend each other PERIOD, even though both speak Japanese.

its not like they use English as a common language, like Esperanto.

India has something like 800 or 900 different dialects among its Hindi-speaking population.

kdynamic

Joined: 05 Nov 2005
Posts: 562
Location: Japan

Posted: Mon Jul 17, 2006 5:23 am Post subject:

PAULH wrote:

Japanese people use hyojungo (standard Japanese), which everyone can speak if they try, to talk to people if their local dialects are that incomprehensible. But Hokkaido has some of the cleanest Japanese and many speak something quite close to hyojungo there, since it was colonized by japanese from all over the country and settled on some kind of dialect in the middle. So I don't know why you brought up Hokkaido. No way would someone from Kagoshima use English to speak to someone from Aomori. Would never happen.

PAULH

Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Posts: 4672
Location: Western Japan

Posted: Mon Jul 17, 2006 5:33 am Post subject:

kdynamic wrote:

[Japanese people use hyojungo (standard Japanese), which everyone can speak if they try, to talk to people if their local dialects are that incomprehensible. But Hokkaido has some of the cleanest Japanese and many speak something quite close to hyojungo there, since it was colonized by japanese from all over the country and settled on some kind of dialect in the middle. So I don't know why you brought up Hokkaido. No way would someone from Kagoshima use English to speak to someone from Aomori. Would never happen.

Korea was a colony of Japan. Hokkaido has always been part of the Japanese 'nation' (though it was a group of feudal states during the Edo period, not a unified country)

I was trying to make the point that they may use Hyojungo but its my guess it would sound very odd to a 70 year old farmer from Aomori to suddenly have to change his speech pattern to be understood by someone from Kagoshima by using 'Hyojungo which neither of them speak in daily life.

Does someone with a thick Liverpudlian accent modify his speech so he can be understood by an American from Kentucky?

I have students in my classes from Niigata and Aichi etc who have trouble with Kansai-ben though they are Japanese. Dialects are just a fact of life, and I sometimes see on these travel shows on TV, subtitles of what the local bumpkin people say in Japanese.

kdynamic

Joined: 05 Nov 2005
Posts: 562
Location: Japan

Posted: Mon Jul 17, 2006 5:38 am Post subject:

PAULH wrote:

Does someone with a thick Liverpudlian accent modify his speech so he can be understood by an American from Kentucky?

Definitely. I have a friend from Liverpool here, and at first I couldn't understand a damn word he was saying. He has had to moderate his speech a lot so the Americans around here can understand him. Same with a guy I know from inaka Australia whose English has changed a lot since being in Japan and having to speak English intelligable to an international crowd. And I have had to modify my speech too, to sound a little more standard and less Californian. But just like how all Japanese hear a lot of hyojungo in school, on NHK, in movies, etc etc, I have noticed that Aussies, Brits, etc, are more used to American accents from media exposure than vice versa. Kind of interesting.

PAULH

Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Posts: 4672
Location: Western Japan

Posted: Mon Jul 17, 2006 6:06 am Post subject:

kdynamic wrote:

[ But just like how all Japanese hear a lot of hyojungo in school, on NHK, in movies, etc etc, I have noticed that Aussies, Brits, etc, are more used to American accents from media exposure than vice versa. Kind of interesting.

As a Kiwi Im more inclined now to take 'vacations' instead of 'holidays' because of the influence of Americanised text books and other teachers around me tend to be Canadians and Americans.

I think Americans are used to my accent and probably think its kind of quaint more than anything else- an offshoot of a mild Australian accent. I guess most Americans dont see so many New Zealanders as there are so few of us, and mix us up with Australians anyway. Same with South Africans.

shuize

Joined: 04 Sep 2004
Posts: 1270

Posted: Mon Jul 17, 2006 7:11 am Post subject:

PAULH wrote:

Korea was a colony of Japan. Hokkaido has always been part of the Japanese 'nation' (though it was a group of feudal states during the Edo period, not a unified country)

Derail:

Except for the southern peninsula which was ruled exclusively by the Matsumae Han, Hokkaido was not colonized by the Japanese until Meiji after they began to worry about Russian influence in the region. Until then the interior held little more than a few Japanese trading posts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hokkaido

japan_01

Joined: 04 Mar 2006
Posts: 89
Location: Gifu Ken

Posted: Mon Jul 17, 2006 7:15 am Post subject: back to the topic...

I have recommended ohayousensei and gaijinpot as good sources for jobs. Can anyone else recoommend any other good job websites? He has trouble reading Japanese so English sites would be appreciated Thanks

Mark

Joined: 23 Jan 2003
Posts: 500
Location: Tokyo, Japan

Posted: Mon Jul 17, 2006 8:11 am Post subject:

PAULH wrote:

Mark wrote:

I agree with you, which is why Japan and India are completely different situations. There's no language in India that a majority of the population speaks. They obviously need a lingua franca. Japan's lingua franca is just standard japanese.

Japanese need English for 2 reasons:

#1: to interact with that crazy, mysterious place called gaikoku and the gaikokujin who live there and sometimes come to Japan

#2: to pass university entrance exams (and other similar exams) that have nothing to do with people's ability to do reason #1.

And, of course, if people aren't interested in reason #1, they still have to study English because of reason #2. Basically, reason #2 wastes loads of people's time, yields few if any benefits, makes it more difficult to accomplish reason #1 in the future, and makes a lot of students hate English.

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