- Home
- Member
- Kosuke
- Kosuke's entries
- English in Europe
English in Europe
- 54
- 8
- 1
I have stayed in Finland for 4 months, and met a lot of European people, for example Finnish, Greek, Portuguese, Czech, Slovakian, Italian, French, German, and Russian(not in Europe?). Needless to say, most of them can speak English very well. I cannot understand why they can speak such fluently. Besides most of them can speak 3 more languages. This is incredible for me. We, Japanese, had received English education for long time, at least 6 years. However we can not speak English. (Here I want to ask to European people, how long have you learn English?) So people who can speak English are highly respected in Japan. They are considered as an intellectual people, even though they are not intellectual actually. They can promote easily in their company, even though they are not competent. So teaching English in Japan is a big industry. There are a lot of English schools. Japanese spend a lot of money to learn English. You can probably find job easily.
I have thought about the reason for long time. Of course, the difference in education systems is one of the reason, but I think that this is not only one reason. Some of their language are similar to English, for example German and French. This is understandable reason, but Finnish is completely different from English. So the similarity between language is not the reason. And then I thought the reason is from characters, in other word European people are familiar with alphabets. If a language consisted of Japanese characters exists, it would be easy for Japanese to learn the language. What do you think? Do you have any other ideas? Anyway I have no choice but to study everyday.
Thank you.
I have thought about the reason for long time. Of course, the difference in education systems is one of the reason, but I think that this is not only one reason. Some of their language are similar to English, for example German and French. This is understandable reason, but Finnish is completely different from English. So the similarity between language is not the reason. And then I thought the reason is from characters, in other word European people are familiar with alphabets. If a language consisted of Japanese characters exists, it would be easy for Japanese to learn the language. What do you think? Do you have any other ideas? Anyway I have no choice but to study everyday.
Thank you.
Latest entries
| cold call (1) |
| quite a bit (1) |
| What do you call this? How to use "next" (1) |
| "would want to" or "would like to"? (5) |
| A tips for survey (1) |
Latest comments
| Apr 29 AlexanderP |
| Apr 27 Sushi Smile |
| Apr 27 Victoria |
| Apr 11 Ghost |
| Mar 6 Jonathan |
Entries by Month
| 2012 |
|---|
| April (4) |
| March (1) |
| February (7) |
| January (3) |
| 2011 |
| December (12) |
| November (6) |
| September (3) |
| August (2) |
| July (10) |
| June (21) |
| May (27) |
| April (29) |
| March (15) |
I cannot understand why they can speak with such fluency.
Besides most of them can speak 3 or more languages.
We, Japanese, have received English education for a long time; at least 6 years.
(Here I want to ask to European people, how long have you learned English?) So people who can speak English are highly respected in Japan.
They are considered as an intellectual people, even though they are not really / necessarily intellectual actually.
They can promote easily in their company, even though they are not competent. [Sorry, I'm not sure how to correct this sentence, as I'm not sure what you meant to say]
I have thought about the reason for this for a long time.
Of course, the difference in education systems is one of the reason, but I think that this is not the only one reason.
Some of their languages are similar to English, for example German and French.
This is an understandable reason, but Finnish is completely different to English.
If a language consisting of Japanese characters existed, it would be easy for Japanese people to learn the language.
Anyway I have no choice but to study every day.
I think there are a number of factors.
I think in Europe they have a lot of exposure to English, and a lot of tourists; their alphabet is the same; they learn English often to communicate with other countries in Europe; grammar rules are similar, and as children they can get to hear lots of different languages.
I think it's amazing too, that in Europe many people speak 2 or more languages. However, I love learning Japanese, and I think it's a fantastic language.
Personally, I'd prefer if fewer people had to use English...
にんき-san (below) has a good point I think. Imagine if you're trying to learn Welsh or Icelandic, and you don't live anywhere near there; it's hard to get exposure to the language, as the best way is to absorb it as much as possible. I've tried things like setting my Playstation 3 to Japanese, but I panic when I get an error message, or nervous when doing anything involving payment details. Perhaps I should try that again, now my Japanese is slightly better though...
I think the reason is (like what the previous person said here) based on necessity. They have to communicate with the other Europeans and the universal language is English. The second one could either be French or Spanish. Not sure, depends on the person but from my previous company, we had 2 European counterparts come in to train us and they Speak 4 languages, they are not native speakers of English but they work in Ireland so they have to speak English.
If you think English is that hard, Imagine foreigners like me learning Japanese, since I'm not in Japan I have to surround myself with anything Japanese just to get the hang of it (Music, TV, Movie, etc.)
In the case of languages with small number of speakers, not everything gets translated for them. So not knowing much English would restrict them more than it would restrict a native speaker of a language with more native speakers - say Japanese. For example in Finland video games usually aren't translated to Finnish. That's one reason why I learned English rather early (besides learning in school which doesn't seem to be sufficient in language learning).
English is a germanic language like German, so learning English isn't very difficult for German people. English and German are basically very similar.
Austrians learn at least 4 years English