Job Discussion Forums

[Rooster_2006]

Hey, this is kind of a niche question, so I don't know if anyone will know the answer, but I have to try.

How much Japanese is actually spoken by the Japanese-Brazilians in Brazil? Like, do they just speak it weakly as a second language, or are there a lot of people in that community who speak it really well? Are there universities in Brazil catering to those folks that offer degree programs taught in Japanese?

I ask this because I've been studying Korean in Korea for over a year, and would like to try Japanese. I recently discovered an area of China (Yanbian) in which there are Korean universities and fluent native speakers, and retrospectively, I should have just gone there to study Korean in the first place, because it's the same language but about five times cheaper. When I was there, I seldom had problems communicating with the ethnic Koreans in Korean, and it was obvious that a lot of them were true native speakers.

I'm wondering if there's a place on earth that's similar to Yanbian, but for Japanese. I heard about the Japanese-Brazilian community, and thought I'd ask if anyone knows anything about whether they still use Japanese as a primary language or not.

[Yawarakaijin]

By no means should you take what I am about to say as an academic truth but I will share what I have seen.

I worked in an area of Kanagawa and now Nagano that has quite a few Japanese-Brazilians. I do not actually work with any but they are dispersed throughout the area I live. On every occasion I have witnessed they have always been speaking portuguese. Do they speak Japanese at work? I dont know its hard to tell.

Most of the Japanese-Brazilians I have met were factory workers and worked in units or teams with other Japanese-Brazilians so I really cant tell you one way or another which language they speak at work. I imagine maybe their foreman speaks Japanese and Portuguese while the majority of the labourers speak Portuguese.

I dated a Japanese-Brazilian for a while, and while her mother was only first generation Brazilian, my girlfriend spoke only Portuguese. When I spoke with her mother we had to use Japanese, my gf and her father had no idea what we were talking about. Teaching English in Canada for 5 years I had numerous Japanese-Brazilian students and none of them spoke Japanese whatsoever.

That's just my two yen, and it is hardly definitive on how much Japanese is spoken within the Japanese-Brazilian community but it might be an indication.

[Rooster_2006]

Thank you, that was a helpful response! Based on your description, it seems like Brazil's ethnic Japanese community isn't as Japanese as Yanbian's Korean community is Korean. I guess this means Japan is the only place you can go on earth to be truly immersed in Japanese everywhere you go!

What I read seems to line up with what you said. It sounded kind of like a self-sustaining pocket of native Japanese speakers up until the 30s and the 40s when the Brazilian government banned all kinds of things like Japanese education, Japanese newspapers, etc. and made Portuguese the official language in schools. I guess this kind of killed the Japanese language in that minority.

On the other hand, Yanbian has two different universities offering classes taught in Korean (that aren't Korean language classes), the signs have to be bilingual by law, Korean has official language status, etc. Therefore, Korean continues to flourish there and isn't showing any signs of slowing down.

Oh well, it was a nice try...

[johanne]

I took Japanese classes with a Japanese-Brazilian for a year and a half. She was 3rd generation Brazilian, but her family moved back to Japan 15 years ago. This was an intermediate level class. She had great pronounciation, perhaps picked up from hearing some Japanese as a child, but wasn't all that fluent despite having lived here since she was 16. She worked for a Brazilian bank in Tokyo so she spoke Portuguese all day with her co-workers, who she said didn't speak much Japanese either. The higher ups in the bank tended to be bilingual. She was very motivated in the class to get her 2-kyu level and then move on to 1-kyu in order to get a promotion. Otherwise she said she wouldn't have bothered as it was easy for her to get by with the Japanese she did have and there were a lot of services in Portuguese and lots of people to socialize with.

[rai]

Japanese-Brazilians or Brazilian-Japanese both mean H-O-T! I was working out at my gym here in Osaka a coupla years back, surrounded by the usual assortment of attractive yet flat-butted Japanese women, when a Brazilian chick in a leotard came in. Yowza! Bootylicious!

I actually walked into a lat pull-down bar 'cuz I was staring at her so much

Now, what was the question?

[Tiger Beer]

I don't know about on the Japanese end. But I did live in SAO PAULO, BRAZIL (the home of over one million Japanese)!

Occassionally I went to LIBERDADE (the Japan-town of Sao Paulo). Interesting area. But strangely even with over a million Japanese in the Sao Paulo Estados (State), I didn't really feel their presense very strongly. Even in Liberdade, which was the main Japanese neighborhood, I didn't really get this overwhelming sense of a bunch of Japanese people all over the place. It just happened to be a place where I would see some Japanese people among the many Brazilians.

In other words, I always felt like they must have somewhat simulated enough and probably just spoke Portuguese. They also immigrated there around 100 years ago, so most of the young Japanese-Brazilian are something like 3rd or 4th generation now.

I'm no expert, but that was impression from living in Sao Paulo Brazil for six months.

[alexcase]

I'm not 100% sure about the Brazilian Japanese, but I sometimes read a Spanish language newspaper in Japan aimed at the mainly Peruvian Nikei Japanese and the articles there seem to suggest that most of them arrive in Japan with absolutely no Japanese language at all. The newspaper is also published in Portuguese for Brazilians in Japan:

http://www.ipcdigital.com/default1.asp?descrIdioma=br

To be honest, I'm not sure how practical your scheme is anyway- surely you go to the country where it is a first language for everyone because the fact that the language is everywhere and is tied to an interesting culture is more stimulating and motivating to learn.

[Tiger Beer]

[Rooster_2006]

I agree with you all now (after reading what you've written) that Brazil would be a crappy place to go to learn Japanese. However, Japan is not an option for me at this time (and won't be for the next couple of years) because I have no degree. No degree means no job, and no income.

Therefore, I wanted to check out the possibility. However, based on what you all are telling me, the situation for learning Japanese there is not just second rate -- it's horrible, possibly beyond remaining in Asia and just taking Japanese at a language school or something.

Well, it was a good thing to check out. I wish I'd known the Yanbian secret earlier before coming to Korea -- that is definitely a good way to learn Korean, as I found when I went there over the summer. The people don't have the same annoying habit of reverting to English after every misunderstood word. Prices there are super low, unlike Seoul's. Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be an area comparable to Yanbian for the Japanese language.

So I guess if I want to study Japanese in Japan, I either have to enter Japan as a volunteer (maybe WWOOF or something) or wait two years until I finish my bachelor's degree...

[Tiger Beer]

[Rooster_2006]