English Go Away! Destruction of Classic Japanese Literature!

[Wage Slave]

Novelist Minae Mizumura sees things differently. In “The Fall of Language in the Age of English,” she argues that Japanese people should spend less time worrying about their poor English skills and more time reading classic texts penned in their own language to arrest the fall of Japanese literature.

[snip]

Mizumura contends that more of the school curriculum should be devoted to reading and analyzing the Japanese literary canon, and less time spent learning English, which she considers a futile endeavor for the majority of students, who are simply not interested.

Whatever she's smoking - I want some.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2015/01/03/books/book-reviews/novelist-mizumura-fights-arrest-fall-japanese-literature/#.VKt6K9KUeit

[Coligny]

and less time spent learning English

The girl is not firing on all cylinders...

[Takechanpoo]

approximitely 90% of japanese prize winners of world wide famous science prizes are typical "stupid" japanese who hav or had not study abroad and dont speak enlgish altough have no problem to read and write it.
this means that you can spend more times to study more valuable things if you dont need to study fuking enlgish.
in my personal experience as well, i wasted alot of my time of high school and university days to study damn english.

[wagyl]

I wouldn't be so harsh Take, it opened up a world of English language bulletin boards to you!

At least the lady in the article is making the probably accurate claim that English instruction is useless because of student disinterest. I would find it harder to agree if she was claiming that it was useless study per se. Of course, the flaw in her argument is that she thinks that students disinterested in English will be interested in classic Japanese literature. I think that those interested in the poetry of creative expression will also be interested in English, and those not, not.

[kurogane]

Eeek. The snarkiness of her phrasing tripped my cultural chauvinist alarm, and curiosity so piqued, I decided to look her up. It turns out she's one of THEM

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

A pet peeve and personal bane: the Kikoku's that just didn't get it, and feel it's their personal duty to point out to those of us who do why we don't.

Still, Wagyl's reservations aside it's pretty hard to not get what she might be getting at. (87% of time and effort spent studying English in Japan is a waste; take that from the first generation of Canadian bilingual education students. Most people don't need a foreign language, and most of those aren't interested either).

BTW, ANY curriculum based study of this so-called Japanese classic literature (though she seems to mean modern classics) as an alternative to English study is always a gain for the alternative. This is a Japanese idea of education after all. Time spent studying it under instruction is education. Interest has nothing to do with it, though that only raises further contradictions in her argument. I wonder if she's not a bit potty dotty.

Also, FTR, the students are not disinterested; if anything I would say they are quite adamant that their interests lie elsewhere.

PS on second reading it almost works as a verb; the problem is it encourages those that think it's a synonym.

[Samurai_Jerk]

I kind of agree with her about time wasted inasmuch as English isn't being effectively taught in Japan. Japan doesn't need everyone to speak English. However, if they let the kids who wanted to learn it studying with other kids who were similarly motivated, they might produce more people with decent English ability which is something they do need.

[Grumpy Gramps]

When I see, how badly English seems to be tought in Japan (from the dire result of it), I wonder, whether Japanese teaching would be any better. No wonder, the students are not interested.

[matsuki]

Kinda hard to disagree that the Japanese language is falling to shit with the injection of fucked Engrish....pretty soon it's going to be Jingrish...like Singlish but even more fucked when everything is truncated shit that overlaps other words and mistaken meanings...still written in katakana without spaces. Even the more recent Chinese stuff gets fucked in katakana now. I've mentioned it here before but I give you the biggest headache I've had so far yet again....the carbon fiber barker bar cover.....which the Jap manufacturer called カーボンバーカバーカバー....limited sounds, limited understanding/vocabulary, misinterpreted/mispronounced foreign words...kurasutaafakkugo

Anyhow, millions of students study a foreign language for a couple of years in high school and whether they become fluent or not, it does exercise the brain if one actually tries. My French and Spanish suck donkey balls but like C+ and Java training, you see patterns, syntax, etc. and yeah, it's beneficial. Considering how limited Japanese is in so many aspects, learning (or at least attempting to) another language is probably one of the best things they can do. (doesn't have to be engrish)

[Wage Slave]

Learning a second language is arguably a benefit in and of itself - Just as learning some woodwork, music and art is. As it happens English is far more useful than the others unless you have a specialist interest.

Given that Japan relies on trade and intellectual property for its living, including the fact that many Japanese owned and run factories are now located outside Japan, then learning English would seem to be pretty important for large numbers of people. Before the bubble collapsed it was different. Stuff was all made here. All the international stuff was handled by a couple of specialist departments in a few big manufacturers and trading houses. That went out the window with the collapse of the bubble over twenty years ago. And it isn't coming back. So the question is: Can Japan, uniquely, really afford to abandon English language learning for most people and replace it with an extended Japanese literature curriculum? I doubt it.

[matsuki]

Learning a second language is arguably a benefit in and of itself - Just as learning some woodwork, music and art is. As it happens English is far more useful than the others unless you have a specialist interest.

Given that Japan relies on trade and intellectual property for its living, including the fact that many Japanese owned and run factories are now located outside Japan, then learning English would seem to be pretty important for large numbers of people. Before the bubble collapsed it was different. Stuff was all made here. All the international stuff was handled by a couple of specialist departments in a few big manufacturers and trading houses. That went out the window with the collapse of the bubble over twenty years ago. And it isn't coming back.

Shhhh, the "Nippon monozukuri umai!" living in the past mentality is still very strong....even if the actual production is nothing close to what it used to be.

I just saw the local (LA) news laughing at Sony's offering at the CES show. They brought out an old walkman and then brought out the ipod wannabe and mentioned something like $1170USD as the price tag...everyone was just "WTF?!"

[Coligny]

Come on, 117 usd is not to bad for an ipod competitor...

... Wait...

1170 usd...

image.jpg

And I suppose the drm will randomly kill your dog, the firmware have a bug preventing to use the play button to start listening to music, instead forcing the user to start it from the desktop app who only run on the tagalog version of windows XP sp1 and it can connect to any car head unit as long as it is a 1987 Lada Samara with the optional Ukranian tape desk and the clock set to the Falklands time zone.
And it also play the full length japanese nationnal anthem everytime you wake it from sleep mode...

[yanpa]

And it also play the full length japanese nationnal anthem everytime you wake it from sleep mode...

Not so bad, Kimigayo is only about a minute.

[Coligny]

Soooo you are one of those Sony chills...

[yanpa]

Nothing can stop our evil plan to cover the world in a layer of abandoned consumer electronics which have failed slightly past the guarantee expiry date.

[Wage Slave]

and dont speak enlgish altough have no problem to read and write it.

Ha ha ha - Always the joker eh Tacky. Although I am grateful because it means there is lots of work for us trying to get most academic writing to a state where it can be published. There's a reason they almost always use English as L1 users to translate these days.

As for reading - better - but far far from no problems. Just ask a few questions that test anything other than surface comprehension and you will see.

[kurogane]

I translated for ages but I don't think I ever used this here "English as L1". Is that a new program or technique?

That is a dreadful phrase, btw.

It's been nice over the past 10 years or so, though, that they finally came around to the need for native speakers of the target language, and finally figured out the dynamic is the opposite of what they so stubbornly insisted it was before that. I used to have corporate trader types tell me straight faced that it was more important to be able to write Japanese at a native level in order to translate it into English than it was to be able to read it well and write English properly. The logic was so Oshiri backwards I couldn't even fathom what they meant until my ex explained it too me. I used to have a devilish time with translations until about the late 90s because they couldn't read my finished product; given their levels of English comprehension that was always a point of pride. In their own way, they actually have a rather delightfully troglodytic understanding of human language. It's not quite as loopdeedoo as an Earnestly plebby American or Australian, but it can get pretty close. That's especially true of any non-Japanese language with which they have some familiarity. It reminds me of my Not Quite First World Eikaiwa teaching friends that thought if they didn't know a word in Japanese than Japanese didn't have it, even though I was always only too happy to point out that few known languages have ever restricted their vocabulary to 15 words and 3 set phrases usually used by not very bright 23 year old women.

Mind you, I still meet a disturbing number of English as L1-ers that insist that reading is the active cognitive act while writing is the passive one; not all of them should know better, but these aren't usually ditch diggers

I do love the way Take-chin can trot out every single pat Snack/Izakaya pat Broken English response; 1 more piece of evidence to show he's one of Us.

[Russell]

Kuro, what you say kind of resonates with me.

I usually get good comments from reviewers about my English writing in scientific papers, but occasionally I get a Japanese reviewer who says that my English is horrible and grammatically incorrect.

Nowadays, when I write a paper for an English-language Japanese journal, I usually dumb down the grammar to basic constructions to avoid those shenanigans.

LOL

[Coligny]

I usually get good comments from reviewers about my English writing in scientific papers, but occasionally I get a Japanese reviewer who says that my English is horrible and grammatically incorrect.

Standard "it's my ball/field so we play soccer with my rules"...

Variation of the "we japanese..."

Subcategory of the "if the local women can have the maturity of a preteen with men, why would you expect any better of management for corporate matters"

Part of the "Need reality check at national level" bug report...

[Russell]

Eeek. The snarkiness of her phrasing tripped my cultural chauvinist alarm, and curiosity so piqued, I decided to look her up. It turns out she's one of THEM

Really?!?

[matsuki]

Kuro, what you say kind of resonates with me.

I usually get good comments from reviewers about my English writing in scientific papers, but occasionally I get a Japanese reviewer who says that my English is horrible and grammatically incorrect.

Bwaaahahahahahaha! In person is even better....they often whip out some (made by Japanese who moonlighted in kaigi for a few weeks) grammar book, cite it as THE AUTHORITY on English, and point out how bad your English is.

[Yokohammer]

Kuro, what you say kind of resonates with me.

I usually get good comments from reviewers about my English writing in scientific papers, but occasionally I get a Japanese reviewer who says that my English is horrible and grammatically incorrect.

Bwaaahahahahahaha! In person is even better....they often whip out some (made by Japanese who moonlighted in kaigi for a few weeks) grammar book, cite it as THE AUTHORITY on English, and point out how bad your English is.

Don't get that much anymore simply because I've been working my little niche for so long and a lot of people in the business know me, but once in a while ...

One guy told me, to my face, that never in all his years of learning English in high school had he seen a phrase written in the way I had written it, so therefore it must be wrong. I told him that if he wanted Jack and Betty textbook level English, written badly at that, he could write it himself. Arrogance and stupidity abound, I'm afraid.

Even now, occasionally some smartass safely hidden in some department somewhere will anonymously attempt to diss my work without being even marginally qualified to do so, in which case I simply go through the necessary channels and drag the ass out into the open and demand that he or she explain himself/herself. They are invariable mistaken and I then proceed to give them a dose of embarrassment, unemotionally and with irrefutable logic, after which they crawl back into their little hole where they feel protected from the harshness of reality and I never hear from them again. Haven't made any friends that way, but I haven't lost any work that way either.

[matsuki]

SJ describes me as walking around with a chip on my shoulder but...

Arrogance and stupidity abound, I'm afraid.

...is just what irks me with many of the locals. Everyone from everywhere is ethnocentric/ignorant to a certain extent...and I'll gladly eat my humble pie and feel educated when you, SJ, Wags, or anyone serves it up fresh...but I swear I'm a magnet for these air of superiority types here who seemed to be educated by nothing more than stereotypes, wives tales, and arrogantly "defend" their beliefs with nothing but emotion and more stereotypes/wife tales. As Kuro would put it, third world level critical thinking.

[Samurai_Jerk]

SJ describes me as walking around with a chip on my shoulder but...

Arrogance and stupidity abound, I'm afraid.

...is just what irks me with many of the locals. Everyone from everywhere is ethnocentric/ignorant to a certain extent...and I'll gladly eat my humble pie and feel educated when you, SJ, Wags, or anyone serves it up fresh...but I swear I'm a magnet for these air of superiority types here who seemed to be educated by nothing more than stereotypes, wives tales, and arrogantly "defend" their beliefs with nothing but emotion and more stereotypes/wife tales. As Kuro would put it, third world level critical thinking.

My guess is you receive what you put out.

[Mike Oxlong]

Kuro, what you say kind of resonates with me.

I usually get good comments from reviewers about my English writing in scientific papers, but occasionally I get a Japanese reviewer who says that my English is horrible and grammatically incorrect.

Bwaaahahahahahaha! In person is even better....they often whip out some (made by Japanese who moonlighted in kaigi for a few weeks) grammar book, cite it as THE AUTHORITY on English, and point out how bad your English is.

Don't get that much anymore simply because I've been working my little niche for so long and a lot of people in the business know me, but once in a while ...

One guy told me, to my face, that never in all his years of learning English in high school had he seen a phrase written in the way I had written it, so therefore it must be wrong. I told him that if he wanted Jack and Betty textbook level English, written badly at that, he could write it himself. Arrogance and stupidity abound, I'm afraid.

It seems to be many people here don't question what they we taught in school, nor what they see on tv, for that matter...

[matsuki]

My guess is you receive what you put out.

I wish that were the case because then I'd have some control over it...but often it's convos I've been pulled into simply because gaijin. The other kicker is the "Oi Choko, kaigaidewa &#%& deshou?"

It seems to be many people here don't question what they we taught in school, nor what they see on tv, for that matter...

...or superiors, physicians, licenses, certifications, etc. etc.

[J.A.F.O]

It seems to be many people here don't question what they we taught in school, nor what they see on tv, for that matter...

What trips me out is when they insist on "With a hammer he hit the nail" while grammatically correct comes across as robotic and mechanical versus the more socially acceptable "He hit the nail with a hammer" I'm not sure if it's because the former rings closer to nihongo sentence structure or if they are just clinging to high school English drills.

I swear I'm a magnet for these air of superiority types here who seemed to be educated by nothing more than stereotypes, wives tales, and arrogantly "defend" their beliefs with nothing but emotion and more stereotypes/wife tales.

So you either really are a magnet for these types OR they are so plentiful that you can't throw a rock without hitting one ... Not trying to subliminally insert any violent thinking with that phrase or anything.

[Grumpy Gramps]

Maybe it's just a Japanese thing of the derukugi who begs to be utareru'd How often have wifey and I got lectured on how our slightly westernised life style and all we do is so horribly wrong and how we have to change things to maybe save our life and marriage (the Japanese way, of course)...

Looking at where this type of criticism comes from, it's invariably people who themselves are divorced, had teenage kids on drugs, just about to be fired, about to be going bankrupt or all of the above and more From those people who quietly and successfully lead their lives and from whom I'd be happy to get some good advice, I never hear a peep of criticism.

So despite me wearing my shoes inside the house, I've been quite happily married for 30 years and have no plans of changing either

Maybe one case of not squeak the greasy wheel but hit with a hammer the nail

[Yokohammer]

Or, as a German speaking friend of mine once explained, they have wonderful grammatical constructs like:

"I threw my grandmother out the window a kiss."

I need to learn more languages just for the fun of it.

[kurogane]

That sounds like a post Weimar Republic grammar form to me。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。

[wagyl]

So despite me wearing my shoes inside the house, I've been quite happily married for 30 years and have no plans of changing either

I am impressed! I would have needed to go to the cobbler for a resole. Even if you do not change either shoe, I hope you have changed your socks in that 30 years.









My apologies for exploiting an irresistible ambiguity.