You haven't been to Sweden then.
In Sweden they say "Everyone here speaks English anyway"
In Japan they say "All of my friends are expats anyway"
I think if people don't want to learn a language they will come up with any excuse.
Yeah, I really doubt that you can move to Japan with zero Japanese and in half year learn enough to hold normal conversation and be able to read/write Japanese, all that while working full time and not being immersed every day in Japanese language course.
If you're working full time in Japanese you could absolutely get conversational Japanese within half a year. Indeed I suspect that's the most practical way.
I fail to imagine scenario where Japanese company hire non-japanese speaker who will then be working full time in Japanese language to learn it.
In a world where it was actually true that you don't have to learn the language wouldn't it appear that they always have an excuse not to? So how does your experience give evidence we're not in that world?
edit: and you can be fluent in a/many languages without knowing how to read/write it/them.
(First point) https://www.thelocal.se/20180817/the-signs-youve-mastered-th...
English is so widely spoken in these countries that many foreigners manage entirely without learning the local language.
It’s got to the point that in central Helsinki, you often can’t get service in Finnish in bars or restaurants.
Prague, bratislava, budapest, vienna,... it's all the same.. buildings are slightly different, landmarks slightly different, but the general feeling inside the "old town" centers is the same... pretty much same restaurants selling same overpriced food, same stores selling same made-in-china souvenirs and some obscure "locally made" stuff that's useless and way too expensive, same boat tours, same bike/scooter guides, same weird hidden supermarkets for the last few locals still living there... same tourists, same loud spanish girls, same japanese people with huge cameras, same groups following the same guides holding up same flags and umbrellas not to be lost in the crowd, same tourist cards, same corruption with guides (recommending shitty restaurants that pay the guides to steer tourists there)... it's kinda sad to me personally... tourism has destroyed so much sadly.
I've only seen that at Fafa's, but that's part of their "international" branding.
That would really suck if you were a native Finn and don't speak english, and the service worker in your own country doesn't speak your local language.
On one hand it's just part of a continuum of language transitions in a city that never was monolingual or even Finnish-dominated for most of its history. 110 years ago many neighborhoods in Helsinki were majority Swedish-speaking and the official language mandated for the government was Russian. A lot of people spoke all three languages. (I'm 42, was born in Helsinki, and I remember from my childhood shops in fancier neighborhoods where the service was in Swedish.)
On the other hand it's a real shame that it risks sending Finnish into a vicious circle of decreasing usage: the elites start speaking English and working in English, and Finnish once again becomes the insignificant language of country bumpkins.
Between 1860 and 1940, the nation collectively worked very hard to "uplift" Finnish into a real written language that is actively used in literature, science, audiovisual culture, and so on. People translated their family names and started speaking Finnish to their children. I can see that work being undone over the next century. (My own two children probably would have lost the language if we hadn't returned to Finland now; we were living abroad for years and they'd already started talking English between themselves.)
There's not much pressure to learn Swedish because everyone here is fluent in English.
While doing my Swedish language course I met people that had lived here for 20 years and never learnt it
It takes a bit a passion to keep on learning. I experience well enough, even though I still struggle with it. But living here, I do have a sense of FOMO though if I don't know what is happening where I live and having to be stuck translating everything or asking for summaries is extremely tedious.
I did think in the past that if universities require students to sit through local language lessons, in part to be prepared for other classes, what is the other part? My sense is that students have a lot of potential for local economies. The same "welfare" grant is rarely given by companies, where maintaining a workforce of contributing and skilled professionals could be equally as important. Yet, I found exactly one company in my own job searches that offer a stipend for a basic language course for a job that otherwise requires just English abilities. That actually sounds like an excellent job perk. This is really why people could sit 20 years without knowing more than a few phrases and can read signs. Maybe the cost of courses is not within a budget for something that is mostly optional for work life. But it is a damn shame anyway. For myself, I never took a course. I wish I did, but my language knowledge played a significant role in getting a lead developer position at a very good company (I kept saying in interviews that this is exactly something I want to improve :) )
If your Norwegian isn't good enough (even if it is just that one day or you are having a moment), folks quickly switch to English.
Some Norwegians have trouble understanding other Norwegians as well and wind up using English. Dialects vary greatly from the written language and they just sound... different. Children start learning when they enter school (6 years old) and I think half of the graffiti is in English.
I'm German, living in Berlin, and have wonderful friends who fit that description. They live full lives, and I couldn't care less about their German levels. They do enough good things with their time they put their energy into instead.
People should learn languages if they feel a reason to or if they enjoy it. Motivation probably makes it easier. Guilting people by default doesn't sit right with me.
As others have replied, maybe that is less of an issue in a certain tech-related bubble, but...
I have seen foreigners working in customer service who dont speak the local language sufficiently. People like you maybe expect the customer to speak english such that these people can fullfill the job? I don't.
Maybe I'm old fashioned or something. I still think there's something to be said for learning the local language (and c'mon if you've been there for 10 years, I'm sure you can pick it up).
This even goes without saying it's Japan where the level of english is far worse than that in Germany (where honestly the standard of English isn't anything like that you find in Sweden / Norway)
Absolutely! I worked in South Korea myself for four years and did a year of Korean school in Berlin first to prepare, and then more tutoring and self-study in country. I wasn't particularly great at learning overall, but did get to survival levels of conversational and it definitely enhanced the experience and gave me a connection to last a lifetime.
It's still a lot of fun to watch a Korean show now and be able to pick up on it when the subtitles are bad and miss all the cultural nuances of word and grammar choices, etc.
I just think it's great when people discover that for themselves.
Surprised though that the BBC hasn't put that as a requirement before sending him to Japan for a 10-year stint. Afaik The Economist requires of their potential correspondents that they know Chinese before posting them to China, and this is why many of their Chaguan China-focused editorials are really interesting (for example in the latest one [1] the Economist journalist takes a train ride before the Chinese New Year and talks with Chinese people with whom he shares the ride)
My wife learned enough business French that she was able to survive, but never became fluent.
There are just some people who cannot learn the local language, no matter how hard you may want to force them to do so or how long they've been living in that country. And I think it's a huge mistake to try to force them, or to judge them poorly for being unable to warp their mind around something that is a fundamentally alien concept for them.
I will agree that I didn't go to a full immersion language school. But we did arrange for multiple tutors, some on our own dime and some paid for by her employer or mine. And we interacted with the people in our neighborhood on a daily basis.
I found that those who were Flemish speakers would actively prefer to practice their English with me, while Francophones would usually switch to English grudgingly, once they discovered how bad my French was. There were a few Francophones who couldn't speak English at all, or who refused to switch, and interactions with them were very limited and not very productive.
I honestly tried to learn French, but none of it stuck.
In contrast, during those same years, my wife and I took three different vacations to Italy. Twice to Rome and once to Ischia and the Amalfi coast. And I swear to $DEITY that I learned and used more Italian in those four total weeks, than all the French I ever spoke over nearly eight years in Belgium. Something about Italian and Spanish is just far easier for me to pick up.
When they began speaking (Greek) it was like my brain shorted out. I was so excited for them but it took active mental effort to translate what they were saying. I began speaking to them in English and I nearly couldn't force myself to speak Greek.
This was not elitism or snobbery, it was like my brain decided the path of least resistance was English and I used it automatically. Very strange experience.
This reminded me of an article written by an American living in China recounting his early days there. In it he describes the tricks he developed to practice the local language despite the higher interest of the locals to practice their English with him.
https://www.sinosplice.com/life/archives/2010/05/18/language...
I never got a chance to try to learn Flemish. Every single one of those speakers that I met, were also master linguists (whether they acknowledged it or not), and spoke at least six languages fluently, and those were the only ones they admitted to. They also spoke at least two or three other languages with less fluency, and yet they claimed only the ones in which they were fluent.
During the time I worked at Snow, BV (a Dutch consulting company), part of my employment agreement with them was that they would pay for and arrange to have a Dutch tutor for me, in Brussels. By someone who really spoke Dutch, not Flemish. Unfortunately, that never happened.
To my ears, Flemish and Dutch seemed to be the same language. But not to the Flemish people in Belgium -- to them, these are two distinct languages. The Dutch would agree with me.
And to my ears, both of these languages sound like German but spoken with English word sounds. Every time tried to listen closely, it would nearly break my brain.
The GP talked about Berlin. Berlin is somewhat special as it attracts quite some foreigners. For me as a German-native it is sometimes weird if I go to a bar or something, outside tority, but "hip" areas and the bar staff only speaks limited to no German, so that the orders etc. have to be done in English.
There is quite a live you can life speaking only English. Of course once you leave the "hip" areas it becomes more limited.
What an odd mindset. Anecdotally, prior generations of Europeans (and expatriates) valued being multilingual. Having a working knowledge of German, Italian, French, English was fun, valuable, and normal especially when doing business in diverse countries and with diverse peoples.
That generation even taught us that "When in Rome, do as the Romans do." I guess that principle is no longer a thing.
That's nice with all these very similar languages using latin alphabet and now try it with Chinese characters and tones in China or at least kanji/hiragana without tones in Japan. Characters are huge barrier when learning the language, because you don't see words to memorize everywhere you look, you see just bunch of strokes. I really wish Chinese switched completely to pinyin as Vietnamese did (and Chinese intended, but didn't finish), it would remove huge barrier in communication (and also tehcnologically wise, after all most of the Chinese already write pinyin anyway on smartphones/computers, which just transcribe their pinyin back to characters) and people would realize Chinese is actually very simple language, where you don't have tenses, plural, etc.
As someone speaking English/German and my other two mother languages I can still understand some Italian, French or Dutch (which is basically English mixed with German by drunk sailor), because of how similar these languages are, so picking up some of them would be very easy compared to Chinese/Japanese (well at least Japanese has much more loaned words from English than Chinese).
The characters actually make it easier to learn the language imo, and anyone who claims otherwise hasn't actually tried to learn seriously
Korean was using kanji the same way Japanese are using them now, and Japan could totally switch to hiragana only like Korea went for hangul. I've had some Japanese friends who were advocated for hiragana only, and were writing (on Twitter or blog posts) in hiragana only.
Yes, once you know kanji it's easier to read that full hiragana, but there is a point to be made about how learning kanji is difficult. Not just for foreigners, but also for Japanese students from first grade to high school.
Abolishing kanjis might've worked for the Korean language, but Korean isn't Japanese. They're entirely different languages. Funnily though, that's something that the Unicode Consortium also needs a reminder on [1].
> Not just for foreigners, but also for Japanese students from first grade to high school.
This is an exaggeration. Native Japanese speakers in middle school would have no problem reading common kanjis in real life. A high schooler would be able to read as well as a grownup.
But that's true as much of modern Japanese as it was of Korean before they dropped Chinese characters, or of Chinese before the simplification of Hanzi.
Eventually, people would just get used to a new way of writing things and be able to absorb that quickly and efficiently.
On top of that, the language itself is phonetically very simple, so if you didn't have kanji there would be way too much ambiguity in written text, which is already very differen from spoken Japanese.
Now, if Japanese invented a new Korean style alphabet that combines sounds into a single character, and introduced spaces to the language then I could see it working, but I don't think most people would want that.
Also, as I said, what worked for Korea centuries ago won't work for modern day Japan. Hangul was developed in an entirely different era where most people was illiterate, and the means for scaling education was non-existent by today's standards. It therefore made sense to reduce the number of letters in the alphabet. However, in modern age Japan, you'll be hard pressed to find a healthy person who can't read or write. There's no reason nor desire to switch to hiraganas only, and every reason otherwise. Changing a language is probably a terrible idea if there's no documented instance of native speakers actually wanting the change.
Humans are good at disambiguating in context. Those ambiguities can arise in spoken language too (minus those that are differentiated by pitch accent, but that still leaves enough room for homonyms).
> Changing a language is probably a terrible idea if there's no documented instance of native speakers actually wanting the change.
I agree but that has something to do with sociological reasons. I wasn't advocating for changing Japanese.
As late as the Edo period, there were entire genres of literature that were written almost entirely in Kana: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanaz%C5%8Dshi
Clearly, people were able to read that.
Perhaps Americans would take the first step and switch from imperial to metric, then we can discuss and tell everyone what to do.
That's like wishing English would switch to IPA because English spelling is wildly inconsistent - which English would you choose? People who speak different dialects can still understand each other using written Chinese, whereas Pinyin is for Mandarin only.
Cantonese speakers don't use Pinyin.
If you go live in a country (long-term, which 10 years is), you should learn the language and not expect the locals to try to conform to your not-knowing the language... you're there, it's their country, their language, not vice-versa. How can you expect a country where people employed there don't know the local language to even work? Imagine a postman, a service worker, etc. not knowing german.. how is that going to work? When stuff like this happens, you get immiggrant ghettos and yes, in turn xenophobia, because people there cannot get normal jobs and expect the germans to adapt to them instead of vice-versa.
Do you guys know how every language came to be? It was through the interaction of people from different cultures, and it is an ongoing process. Germany was not even a country not so long ago. I reject the normative notion that learning a language is central to being a positive member of a community.
Imagine a brit going to france, driving his car on the "wrong" side of the road and saying "it doesn't matter, people just drive around me, it's not an issue".
Lol no. You’re not a sovereign individual. You’re part of a society, and every society is the product of people who have a culture that’s been cultivated over generations. Japan is a creation of the Japanese—the fruit of generations of Japanese people building a society according to their culture—not some foreigner who’s lived there for a fraction of a lifetime.
Let's just take one example. John von Neumann - a gasp immigrant - may have more to do with how America looks like today than anybody alive in the 1800s. Should America make some silly rule like you propose, and say that people like him are not welcome there, or that America does not "belong" to them? I suppose you support giving back the land to indigenous tribes then?
Not at all. Bangladesh, where I’m from, has computers too, but its government, institutions, infrastructure, constitution, etc., are still what Bangladeshis and the British created. Society is a product of culture, and culture runs deep and is extremely sticky.
My wife’s family fought in the American revolution and were among the first pioneers to settle the Oregon coast. That frontier culture reverberates through all of America to this day. By contrast my family came here in 1989 to a country that was fully formed in its modern incarnation. It strikes me as absurd when people assert out of misplaced political correctness that America is my country just as much as it is her country. It reduces culture and nationhood and citizenship to a shallow and impoverished concept.
Why is that alright? Were the anti-miscegenation laws wrong, but the newspapers not?
If you're from here or reside here and are committed to the future of the country, you are American. The country in its history has mostly not offered that assurance, and the law and culture behind it was badly racist.
That’s just a state of affairs that arises when people immigrate. Nobody gives up the culture of old country completely in a single generation, nor do they fully maintain that culture either. Desire for belonging can’t change who you are, which is a product of your parents and their parents and their parents.
> If you're from here or reside here and are committed to the future of the country, you are American.
That defines “American-ness” as an individual characteristic, but nationality is a group concept. When you go visit America and say Japan you can easily observe aggregate group differences in culture, customs, attitudes, etc. That’s what makes one place america and the other place Japan. And if your ancestors were the ones who cultivated that culture, customs, and attitudes, and you were born and socialized into them, you’re more American or Japanese than someone who wasn’t.
> The country in its history has mostly not offered that assurance, and the law and culture behind it was badly racist.
You’re conflating race with culture and national origin. For example, most Bangladeshis wouldn’t consider me Bangladeshi, because I was raised in the US. Obviously that’s not “racist”—I’m the same race as 95% of that country. It’s because I was raised in a foreign cultural environment that’s alien to Bangladesh. For the same reason, it’s not “racist” for Americans not to consider me American. Because I’m not. As a first generation immigrant there’s huge swaths of my socialization and world view that comes from old country, not from America.
And that’s true of my kids too, who are being socialized very differently than the cousins from my American wife’s side of the family. Maybe generations from now their grandkids will be American, both in the sense that they’ll be assimilated into the dominant culture, but also in the sense that continuing south Asian immigration to America will have changed American culture, the same way that Germans and Italians did. But in the meantime there is no better way to describe them than observing that they have one foot in each world.
... and don't get me wrong that is pretty rad. I have driven to and from St. Louis from the West coast a few times, and it is insane that anyone ever packed their family and shit from there to there in anything less than a huge truck/family minivan with cruise control air conditioning and radio all set to maximum.
It's a massive trend in Europe again and it will not end well for the expats.
And its fucking sad, because I used to see myself as part of "them". However, this inability to reflect about ones own failings has totally alienated me.
Modern generations are constantly on the move in a globalised world. It's not uncommon for that European to end up working in Asia nowadays, where their knowledge of other European languages is useless.
Your local businesses won't speak English, your baker, the cab drivers, the people working the public transport, at your local convenience store, the government officials, the deliverymen, your child's school-teacher, other parents at school, 90% of the people you will cross path with on the street, most written and recorded information about local events...
And why would I wanna speak with baker, cab driver, public transport workers, convenience store workers, deliverymen, etc.?
I don't speak to these people even back home, I just buy what I want in shop, put it on checkout and pay, only thing you need to learn is answer question about loyalty card or plastic bag and the way you wanna pay (by card), all you need to learn is two words "No" to plastic bag, show your loyalty card if you wanna use it and say "card" and show it so you can pay.
I can order taxi in the app, get in, say greeting and sit there until arrival.
Public transport workers are closed in their cabin and you should NOT speak to them.
Deliveryman will just call you he is on the way, if you are at home and to come downstairs and you just sign or pick up your package, sdo you just need to say "OK, I'm home" to phone.
Other parents in school not speaking English are honestly not worth speaking (similar with obese people since that shows a lot about them), because if you don't speak English it shows bigger ignorance than not being able to speak local obscure language as English speaking foreigner.
School teachers tend to be old, so yes, you could hit language barrier there and would have to deal with that with some English speaking parent.
90% people on the street won't speak English, but for sure majority of adults in productive age will at least in big cities where foreigners move (and in Scandinavia you could hit even that 90% probably).
Most written information online can be easily translated with built in translator.
Honestly only place where you need to speak local language is communication with gov officials since those often tend to be PITA/xenophobic projecting their own complexes since successful people won't work for gov, it's usually job for lazy people who don't mind lower pay and were most likely also lazy to learn English (but to be fair to them, many of them speak English as well).
The rest of the things you said only confirm you have no intention to integrate and to be a pleasant addition to the community you live in. Your comments about people who don't speak English, and your attitude towards local workers are pretty vile.
And who chose that percentage as some holy grail or something important? I'd say in big European cities at least 40-60% of people in productive age (18-60) will speak ay easy basic English, though not sure how is it relevant, even if only 1/3 of people in street spoke English it would be plenty.
> The rest of the things you said only confirm you have no intention to integrate and to be a pleasant addition to the community you live in.
The rest of the things have nothing really to do with integration since I behave same even in my home country, I don't see reason to wate my time with small talks and people doing their jobs, I have better things to do like spending time with my kids or rest. Not even sure what's pleasant addition and what's the community, those are foreign words for me, I am independent adult who doesn't feel urge to be part of some community as some young childless kid looking for their place in the word.
> Your comments about people who don't speak English, and your attitude towards local workers are pretty EFFICIENT/TIME SAVING.
FTFY
You are deliberately deciding to exclude yourself from it, which is likely to have bad consequences for you and your kids (since you won't be competent to help them).
But yes excluding myself from sheep in whatever community whatever language they speak whether my mother tongue, English or language I don't speak, is perfectly fine with me, I have no urge to belong somewhere to some category you can put me for your convenience and that's how I (will) raise my kids to be independend and have critical thinking instead just doing same as everyone else just because everyone (dumb) is doing it.
Not sure why would I be not competent to help my kids because I don't do same things like everyone else with need to belong to some community, they seem to be doing fine already in elementary school.
As an adult, you might (or might not) be able to mostly isolate yourself from your environment and its influence on you (probably not if you have to work). IMHO you are foolish to expect your kids to be able to do so (and it's not like it would be even a good idea to try !)
"Independent" doesn't mean "of the society", it means, on the contrary, adapted to it !
(No question that having critical thinking is good, but remember how it starts with trying to being critical of your own biases, a good portion of which stem from your own history : education, upbringing, culture...)
So stuff like tax forms or whatever will not be available in any other languages. You'll have to get a translator yourself.
That's what I wrote. But how often you deal with gov officials and various forms, on average once or twice a year? Is it worth learning whole new language to fill bunch of forms, which can be filled with help of friend within few minutes?
Btw. officials are not allowed LEGALLY communicate with you in other than official language (in letters, official forms). In spoken language it's their word against your word in case of argument, so there is no reason (other than being lazy) to not hold informal communication in English, if the official is nice/welcoming person (and it's actually required in some positions with foreigners, despite legal documents being only in local language).
Good luck with Spanish and French tax-related forms. In case of Spain, the documents are full of legalese jargon not even a native can grasp it at 100% without a gov website in an aside tab reading twice or trice the legal terms.
So you say one more reason not even bother trying to learn language for this reason, since you stand no chance if even native speaker can't understand it.
Also in many countries, teachers and hospital workers, amongst other professions, are government workers. You calling them usually lazy people is insulting and ignorant.
> you need to understand that you had the time, resources and intelligence to learn it to a very proficient degree.
English is taught on this level for decades already, so it would be odd if you were in productive age and didn't experience it.
> The parents you're calling obese and ignorant, they might be a bit like you in that they don't want to use their time to learn something they don't really have to and rather spend time with their children.
Nothing wrong with that, same as I find nothing wrong with me for not intending talk to them, while commenter I'm responding to thinks we should talk to each other.
> Also in many countries, teachers and hospital workers, amongst other professions, are government workers. You calling them usually lazy people is insulting and ignorant.
Gov official is someone working directly for gov, meaning (gov) bureaucrat. Teachers, hospital workers I would call state workers, certainly not gov "officials", but maybe my understanding in English is wrong.
Yeah, why would you ever want to speak to people who aren't important. Fucking serfs, they should stay in their place and silently serve you.
I agree, that kind of person's opinion on the country around them can safely be ignored, because it's based on ignorance.
> Yeah, why would you ever want to speak to people who aren't important. Fucking serfs, they should stay in their place and silently serve you
Seems like you are projecting some of your own issues into what I wrote, because I didn't write anything about "fucking serfs" or these people not being important.
I don't see reason why would I wanna speak with them while they are doing their job, same as I don't expect anyone speaking to me, when I am doing my job (unless your job is speaking to people in call centre). We can all speak happily together after work in our spare time (in which case they cease to be bakers, cab drivers, etc. and they are just people), during work time you should work instead wasting time on small talk, so I see nothing wrong with expecting people providing services for money to provide me service I am paying for without annoying small talk wasting everyone's time including them.
That people grossly underestimate how hard it is to learn languages, is why Duolingo is in business. And Berlitz, Pimsleur, and Rosetta Stone before them.
The guy didn't say he spoke _no_ Japanese. He said he spoke _little_ Japanese. And for an adult native English speaker, who probably could not get very good social immersion even if he wanted, that is not surprising. No, not even after 10 years.
Two of my friends were into Japanese culture in a big way when I was young in the 90s. Both watched a lot of anime, obviously. Both had excellent second language (English) grades and at least decent third language (French) grades, so it's safe to say both had above average talent for language acquisition. Both went to study Japanese at university. Both moved to Japan. Both struggled with the language.
There is a guy working for the BBC in Budapest, Hungary, who learned to speak Hungarian quite well in the past ~3 decades. That shows dedication and enthusiasm, because Hungarian is one of the most useless languages to learn (in terms of the number of people you can speak with). Compared to that, learning Japanese even on a basic level is a no brainer... if you happen to live there for a decade!
By comparison, they estimate Romanian, Swedish and Spanish take 24-30 weeks, or 600-750 class hours.
Ten years is not much to just "pick up" Japanese, unless you're an exceptional linguistic talent.
In summary: AchBerlin.jpg
Berlin has plenty of issues. But I don't think the points you raised here are meaningfully connected with people's language skills.
That willful ignorance to anything around you is typically not limited to learning the language, and I agree that it seems to be at the core of Berlin's identity. Berliners love it. I loathe it, and I'd prefer not to send money to Berlin each year so they can continue in their ways.
Blaming expats for the fact that Berlin's politicians are incompetent (which they are) makes no sense to me.
It will vary a lot by countries, because in some of them (i.e. northern european countries) everyone will be able to speak English so not only you have less incentive to learn the local language but it will be very difficult to practice because the local won't make the effort of speaking to you in their language until you're good enough (which you're not because you lack practice).
Speaking of Japan, as someone who lived there for a few years and reached a decent Japanese level, the English proficency of locals is not great so if you don't speak it you'll be stuck in your bubble of foreigners + Japanese people used to hang out with foreigners. I've seen a lot of foreigners not speaking Japanese after living several years in Japan, and most of them were wonderful people but they were like permanent visitors in the country they live which I thought was really too bad.
And that absolutely should be shamed, especially when you’re talking about a society like Japan that places high value on individuals acting in ways that make things easier for people around them and society at large.
I personally love learning languages and am that person that tries to learn a little bit and communicate wherever I go. I does seem to be a hot button issue here in the US. I think people have different expectations. You hear stories of immigrants from the early 20th century that would force their kids to only speak English so that they would get on well in society. It seems like a difficult topic here around heritage vs managing in a society, especially for kids.
When I go to Spain, I will always try to speak Spanish and if they reply in English (which they often do because I make mistakes and/or have an accent), I just keep replying in Spanish. That may be seen as "rude" or inefficient by some (although others probably appreciate the effort), but it's really the only way you can keep making progress. (Of course, if it really gets too complicated you can still switch - but usually people switch way before they've reached the end of their skills.)
Edit: Also, you can get by perfectly without knowing the local language in some cities on the continent, such as Berlin (Stockholm, Copenhagen, Oslo would be others). That is not true of Tokyo unless you're staying in an expat bubble. I spent 6 years in Beijing, and you had the expats who didn't know Chinese and all lived in one section of the city where you could get by on English alone, but that section most definitely did not represent the rest of China or provide a deep understanding of the country and its people.
I know many people like that too (also in Berlin), and they usually get stressed out whenever they have to deal with their landlord, or any government agency, etc. In addition, there are still areas even in Berlin where the baker or shopkeeper will not speak English well enough. Finding doctors could also prove more difficult, and so on. And what if you have children at some point and they go to school? Unless you can afford some fancy private school, everything will be in German.
Sure, you can get by without German for a while - especially if you have friends who can deal with certain things for you. But you'll just really be very dependent on others and their goodwill instead of being in charge of your own life.
I agree it is outrageous that the BBC correspondent could not speak Japanese
I don't think you must've lived more than one place abroad, or somewhere with good English. For example I speak 4 languages, understand another 2, but don't speak the language of the country I've lived in for the last 3.5 years, and I'm not even learning. At some point it's just absolutely not worth it and I'm just gonna occupy memory that will be more useful for work or life.
This is the most common take you hear from people that never lived abroad, only speak one language, or lived abroad in a single place where they learn their first ever new language. Then judge someone who'd be learning their 4th or 5th. It's absolutely not the same thing for a native english speaker to learn one single foreign language when they move once and compare it under the same light.
Well, first I would argue that you're a massive outlier to the norm. I don't think living in multiple countries for decades at a time each that don't share a language is at all common.
>This is the most common take you hear from people that never lived abroad, only speak one language, or lived abroad in a single place where they learn their first ever new language. Then judge someone who'd be learning their 4th or 5th. It's absolutely not the same thing for a native english speaker to learn one single foreign language when they move once and compare it under the same light.
I don't really see the need for the presumption. If you move around that much and speak that many languages, all the more power to you. I was just saying generally if you live somewhere for a decade you should (probably) be reasonably competent in the language, especially if you're a journalist attempting to write insightful articles aimed at broadening a foreign understanding of the place.
Well said, though presumably if your work was _BBC Tokyo correspondent_, that would be a weird argument.
If those 4 countries have 4 different languages then yes…
I’ve spent most of my adult life in foreign countries, and I’ve never spent time in a country without starting to pick up the language. I speak 3 languages fluently, another 2 I can have a conversation in, and there’s a few more that I have a decent foundation of the basics with. I don’t even know how it’s possible to live in a country where everybody speaks another language without starting to pick it up rather quickly.
Unless… you’re intentionally refusing to or simply do not spend any time with the locals, which is something people should rightfully be judgemental about.
Yes.
If you live there for 10 years, you should definitely be able to learn the language enough to do daily tasks in the native language there.
Yes, unless you go out of your way to avoid learning the language and sticking to English as much as possible.
It's one thing to see everywhere words you can memorize when seeing it every single day in shops and online and very different thing when you see just bunch of strokes.
I lived in China for 5+ years and didn't learn the language because the characters are huge barrier, in few weeks with Duolingo I learned more Spanish without ever visiting Spain than Chinese in few years living there . Of course I learned some basic characters so I can read at least menu in restaurants and bunch phrases (how much does it cost, where is VAR, etc.), but I couldn't have any conversation at all with anyone not speaking English (or my mother tongues). It probably helps I found girlfriend (later wife) who can be my translator if needed.
But if author is journalist then I agree there should be stricter limits for them, so they are able to research independently. It's one thing to be journalist covering the country and other thing just living your life without writing stories for thousands of people.
They become much, much easier to grasp once you notice they're nearly all composed of the same hundred or so radicals and you can break them down and memorise them that way.
> and honestly I was not really interested in people who don't learn at least English
That may be the real issue here. Mandarin has nearly as many speakers as English. Why should anyone be interested in people who don't "learn at least" Mandarin?
Completely different league, English has by magnitude more speakers than Chinese.
> Why should anyone be interested in people who don't "learn at least" Mandarin?
Because not learning any foreign language is quite sign of ignorant character, while English is foreign language in most of the world and most of the world English speakers are non natives including me who learned 2-3 foreign languages besides my mother tongue. But you are right Chinese not speaking any other language besides Chinese is less ignorant than me...
That's an incredible claim. Got a reference for it? Wikipedia reckons 1.5bn English vs 1.1 bn Chinese.
Where I lived, Shanghai, there was a western community that essentially interacted with each other in their enclaves and never developed any meaningful relationships outside maybe dating someone who was Chinese. In Shanghai at least you can get along just fine without learning the language, but you will miss out on so much because most people around you can't hold conversations in English.
I went to China with intention to stay there one year to save some money and continue travelling. Then after less than a year I met my future wife.
> Where I lived, Shanghai, there was a western community that essentially interacted with each other in their enclaves and never developed any meaningful relationships outside maybe dating someone who was Chinese. In Shanghai at least you can get along just fine without learning the language, but you will miss out on so much because most people around you can't hold conversations in English.
I lived in Beijing and avoided foreigners outside work enviroment (well we had drinking lunch breaks and ocassionally drank even during dinner after work), didn't frequent bars/clubs for foreigners and first few years even avoided western food. In my first three apartments I had Chinese flatmates (no foreigners, always only me) and we had no problem to communicate in English. The problem in general are different hobbies and culture, not really the language, most of the westerners will have more to talk with other westerner even in broken English than with Chinese who is perfectly fluent in English, it's just fact and speaking Chinese won't change a thing about it.
I moved into a foreign students dorm and most of my classmates were Korean and Japanese, but I spoke to them in Chinese. The friend I hung out with the most was Korean and I didn't feel like there was a gap in hobbies. We had a group that would go out and play pool, drink soju, and sing KTV. I never had good opportunities to meet and hangout with other Chinese students. When people go to bars, they really don't go and socialize with others. Socializing is usually contained to the group you are in.
I think I'd say though there is still a big advantage in just being able to converse with taxi drivers, retail workers, etc. People are pretty chatty because westerners speaking Chinese is kind of novel. It is a great way to better understand what I consider a fairly misunderstood country.
But I agree western MSM is heavily biased against China and their "journalists" living in their foreign bubble are joke, especially if it's older unmarried men, where you can clearly see what they are doing with their spare time.
That being said I know a person that spend 3 years in Denmark and they do not even attempt to learn Danish. Their argument was that the language is very niche, and they are not sure for how long they will stay there. If I was in their place I would probably at least learn Danish to B2 level, just in case e.g. an accident to be able to call a police or an ambulance.
I think the real problem here is that learning a language is a lot of work and requires a lot of efford. If you live comfortably with English they why to put extra effort for something that will provide little or not benefit at all.
I've always found it frustrating whenever I meet people who don't try to integrate with the country they're living in - both when I've lived at home and in foreign countries...
I think a journalist writing about a country is a special case though, that doesn’t get affordancee.
Countries where people are multilingual from a young age clearly have some major differences to those where they are not, and even in those countries many people are not multilingual.
The countries where everybody is multi-lingual this almost assuredly happens in middle to early childhood.
The fact is any adult can learn any language, they just either don’t have to or don’t want to. I’m not saying it’s easy or it’s the best decision for every situation, but it’s definitely possible. This is true even more so if it’s a popular language with a lot of resources to learn it, and you live in the country where practice is virtually free.
I don't want to be too presumptuous here but my understanding is there are a lot of desperate broke African immigrants finding their way into Italy.
In such a situation you would be forced to rapidly acquire the language to survive, move on somewhere else, or possibly resort to crime because you are unable to communicate to secure a job (which <should> rapidly leads to expulsion from the country).
Probably, but I don't think it challenges the legitimacy of the original point at all.
> Comparatively if white American hacker guy shows up flush with tech cash [...] not much chance I'm going to find myself on police radar or starve not learning the language
True, but you might not have a very good time.
However, I believe many people overestimate the advantage children have in learning a language. For example, a four-year-old can have a basic conversation and communicate their needs, but they are not yet able to have a complex conversation. Their vocabulary and pronunciation may not be fully developed yet.
It's important to note that this child has spent a significant portion of their life learning the language and is exposed to it daily, and likely has parents or others to practice their language skills with. Despite this, their language level is not yet perfect.
The point I am trying to make is that it takes a significant amount of time and effort to learn a language, and there is no shortcut or "hack." Most adults would likely do comparably well if they dedicated the same time and effort to learning a language as children do.
Children don't have any special ability to pick up languages, but they do have certain advantages: they aren't afraid to make mistakes, they are fully immersed in the language from the moment they wake up, they have no responsibilities like jobs and other adult stuff and they have people (parents, school, teachers, family) constantly talking to them at a level they can comprehend while gently pointing out their mistakes. If you put that barber in the same environment he will be fluent in no time.
They do. One example I recall from a neurology class is that the auditory cortex of a young child is able to differentiate more sounds than that of an adult. As a child ages, they lose the ability to distinguish sounds not common in their native language. The inability to distinguish the sounds also applies to the inability to tell the sounds apart when speaking it which decreases their ability to produce the correct sound. There is some research showing it is possible to relearn the ability to differentiate, but this requires training specifically in identifying sounds, not training in learning a language.
This doesn't mean fluency as an adult is impossible, and there are many actions that an adult could take to better align their learning environment to that of a child's which would improve their learning, but we should recognize there are some difference that cannot be replicated in adults.
I don’t think Denmark is the best example here. English competency is _extremely_ high and Danish is quite a difficult language to grasp (as far as I know as an A2/B1 Swedish learner).
Pronunciation is a very difficult ballgame as Danish has sounds not in any of those languages. E.g. stød: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stød
But then how much insight has that person into how other people think (they can’t hold a conversation with the vast majority of non english speaking people), or access to local news and studies...
I think many Spanish speaking countries are in the same boat: not speaking the local language means you end up in a foreign friendly bubble with limited access to anything that didn’t get picked up by that english speaking sphere, which will often include the really interesting stuff.
that might be true in Europe (not everywhere though) or in the US, it is certainly not true in Japan.
There is also a fatigue associated to speaking English for non native speakers that often leads to being identified as the "foreigner" and in practice you end up hanging out only with other English speaking "foreigners".
You also miss a lot about the local culture, because the language barrier forces you to only visit places where people speak English.
It is like living in Poland and never eat pierogi.
> When I look at my country (Poland), I can see that a person can live in Warsaw (capital city) or any of the biggest 5 cities without knowing any Polish
Poland is good (but not great) in that sense, a lot of people speak English, many of them don't speak it well enough to actually hold a meaningful conversation with a native speaker. I understand them as a non native speaker, but I also recognize many of the mistakes in the construction of the sentences they make (and that I make as well).
But that's not true in general, not even in rich and well educated Europe
See
https://cache.eupedia.com/images/content/English_speakers_Eu...
Now the real advantage of speaking some local language is knowing a lingua franca.
It's not uncommon here in Italy to witness a conversation between immigrants coming from wildly different backgrounds (say, for example, North Africa and Eastern Europe) happening in Italian. Their version of Italian, of course, but it's good enough to communicate and they also can practice the language they actually need to interact with Italians.
Of course it takes a lot of time to learn a new language, especially if the language doesn't even have the same alphabet you already know, but after 10 years I would expect to actually have learned at least the basics of it.
I've managed to travel to 30+ countries and never felt out of place because most places will somehow accommodate English speakers.
The only place I felt a little bit of language hostility was in Russia. Moscow was probably the least English-friendly major city I've ever been to - but that makes sense from a historical perspective.
I don't understand how you could love a country enough to live and work there for a decade but not try to learn its language.
My kid is citizen of country A, was born in country B and lives in country C speaking languages B, C and D without actually speaking language of his citizenship country, because it's just language, you are not defined by your passport or mother language. I'm from country A, his mother from C and I speak to kid in B and D. The world is not black and white.
I disagree with this, I'm same person whether I communicate in English or my mother tongue, you could ask what people speaking English think of me, people speaking my mother tongue think of me and you would get pretty consistent decription.
> if they don't learn A they'll never be able to fully culturally connect with country A either.
I'm fine with that since A) they are not living there anyway, B) language of country B is actually very similar to country A, so much that people from these countries can talk to each other in their own local languages, C) I don't have really high opinion about culture of any of these countries or some "country culture" per se.
I am beyond some stupid lines on map or languages, although it may be difficult to comprehend for children when their school books are intended for kids born here, so they read there nonsense such as "Our mother country is A" and I have to correct it at home, that this is not our mother country, this is country where we live.
As mixed race/country kids living in country of neither of their parents it will be a bit confusing, but not necessarily bad, at least they won't be tied by concept of single home and some single country, which I find limiting when I look at others being proud about country they were born in as if it were some of their accomplishments. I have same attitude about people being happy about some athlete from same country winning some medal as if country had anything to do with that, great for the athlete, but it has nothing to do with you.
I don't think is necessarily true. There is empirical evidence for linguistic relativity, but my intuition is this is often culture getting encoded in the language and then passed on. However, the way the language is used can change.
Most of the world's languages are spoken by a limited number of cultural groups, so if you analyze language L only spoken by group G, then you will find the way people of G use L is quite similar.
But if you look at languages with native speakers of diverse culture backgrounds, you will find the way they use the same language is quite different and often a reflection of their culture, not the other way. Like the way native English speakers from Wyoming speak versus native English speakers from Dehli, or a native Spanish speaker from Bolivia versus one from Northern Spain.
> Ask any multilingual person and they'll tell you their personality changes from language to language
I experience this too to a mild degree. My intuition is that it is the context in which the languages are used.
> if they don't learn A they'll never be able to fully culturally connect with country A either.
That's true, but at the end of the day a parent has to make a decision. It is tough to juggle lots of languages with kids and have time to do other things. Many kids will reject home languages if they don't get to use it outside of a single parent.
This is a wild idea because it's false. It's hard to be a part of any culture if you don't speak the language. All you've said is that knowing a language doesn't make you part of a culture, which nobody would disagree with in the first place
If you say "any culture" then sure you can be always part of some (sub)culture if you narrow it down, it just matter how much you are going to narrow it, in the end you can be part of culture of foreigners living in specific country.
Have you ever lived in Switzerland? Because I grew up there and if there's ever a group of people who don't accept you if you don't speak their dialect it's the Swiss Germans.
Swiss languages are regionally segregated, meaning that if you want to settle in to Zurich, you'll need to speak German (and at least understand Swiss German), if you want to live in Geneva you'll have to know French and you won't get anywhere in Lugano without knowing Italian.
How many languages do you know?
I live in a country with 11 official languages; please come stay for half a decade.
TBH, there's only one you need to know in order to feel like a native - english.
> But I'm sure on average most people know more than ONE.
Guilty, unfortunately. The non-english one I know is pointless, useless and has too much emotional baggage attached to it to make me happy about speaking it.
> which country anyways, India?
South Africa.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_with_official_status...
Imagine me attending a meetup in London as the only German and requesting to have the talk held in German. It would be ridiculous.
Also, those expats living an English life in Berlin etc. are doing themselves a huge disservice — you learn a language if and only if you are forced to hear and speak it. By attending meetups and softly forcing your language onto the group, you are never going to break out of your bubble.
It’s a lose-lose situation for everyone involved, really. The German speaker is limited in what she or he can express, the German audience is limited in what they can understand, the English audience doesn’t progress in learning the language of their new home country.
Maybe, but by not learning German they expats miss out on access to about 40 million Germans/Austrians/Swiss who don't also speak English (and they are likely not the smartest ones either). By not learning English, the locals block themselves out of a vast amount of knowledge and resources contributed by over 1 billion people.
I am not in Germany, but the point applies to other countries. I missed out on extremely good opportunities a few years ago because I didn't speak the local language well (like opps that would have gotten me an easy 20-30% raises. I was constantly having to say no to recruiters because of that one detail, that I was not good enough at the time. I did get good and I did get a good opportunity and I hope in the future that I don't see it any other way that the investment of putting my head into something like that will have a great return in the future.
I do engage in English-speaking communities, and I do so using English.
For instance I live in bubble where in general I avoid having conversation with obese people, since these people have complete lack of self control. It would be also quite odd to me to have (deep) conversation with person not speaking English (even if we both talk to each other in different language), since that shows ignorance to learn basic necessity to exist in present world and lack of education and world views (I mean how the heck can you learn anything about the world not speaking English just from limited local sources). I'd probably for various reasons avoid talking to people with dreadlocks and/or large amount of tattoos. You may think I am doing disservice to myself by living in bubble without talking to all these people, but I am fine with that and have my reasons for that.
How do you know it's disservice, if they are happy with their choice, you know better than them what's good for them?
Only thing I agree with you it's forcing 90% of local language speaking group to speak English because of just few people who don't wanna learn language, this will get tiresome pretty quickly, so they better find group with larger percentage of local language non-speakers or just make smaller groups or talk one on one (personally I prefer this option than some big group conversations even in my mother tongue, because there you end up fighting for word).
My parents' generation learned Latin and French instead of English, and there's an argument to be made that you also can't really understand a lot of the world without at least some passing familiarity with both of these languages. In the GDR, people used to learn Russian, for obvious reasons, and that's not so long ago - many of these people are still in the workforce.
Meanwhile my ignorant low educated mother learned just very basic German needed in shop to be able to communicate with German speaking customers.
I can cut you some slack if you are above 50 and know at least some other languages, but honestly you should still know at least very basic English even without formal education. I also learned at least very basic Spanish without any formal education. There is no excuse for anyone below 50 to not speak English even if they speak Latin or German.
The scope of human knowledge and abilities is so vast, it's really strange that you'd fault anybody for not having the exact same interests as you.
Also, knowing "some basic English" is not nearly enough to enjoy series, movies etc. or to read news in English.
Also, the way you speak about your own mother... man, you seem to have some anger issues.
As a non-native speaker in my country, if I seek to participate in meetups, etc. with the expectation that the language used will be the local one, I would prefer not to switch to English. I deliberately go to tech meetups partly for that purpose. It's fine to switch to English if the presentation is specifically in English, but I do not want the audience to accommodate to my lacking; I'd rather be clueless than be accommodated.
(To be perfectly frank, even if you're speaking in English the conversation is going to be skewed towards Kraftwerk, Nue! and careers of Eric Zabel, Jens Voigt and Andre Greipel. Sorry about that.)
Joking aside, I don't think I've ever met a local that didn't appreciate my attempts to start a conversation in their language even if we eventually switch to English.
Migrants failing to assimilate, 200-year-study finds
Migrants to Australia have displayed an inability to assimilate with local values and refuse to speak anything but their native tongue, a study covering the last 200 years has found.
The study confirms a popularly-held belief in parts of the country that migrants simply refuse to fit in.
Boat people from as far back as 1788 didn’t bother applying for passports or visas, were set on introducing their own laws, and, in many cases concealed criminal records, according to the damning report.
To their credit a rare few migrants picked up a couple - but today fewer than 30 original languages are still used.
[1] https://mgnsw.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/map_col_high...
Joke: An Englishman gets off the plane, and immigration asks him if he has any criminal convictions. He replies “I didn’t know you still needed one”.
"There's nothing I would rather be
Than to be an Aborigine
And watch you take my precious land away.
For nothing gives me greater joy
Than to watch you fill each girl and boy
With superficial, existential shit.
Now you may think I'm cheeky
But I'd be satisfied
To rebuild your convict ships
And sail them on the tide.
I love the way you give me God
And of course the mining board,
For this of course I thank the Lord each day.
I'm glad you say that land rights wrong.
Then you should go where you belong
And leave me to just keep on keeping on."
"Chinese is hard" -> 1.5B people figured it out.
More recently, on observing my niece and nephew, something we take for granted is how exhausting it is being a child. You are learning 247 non stop for best part of 2 decades. Can't understate how hardcore it is. No wonder why we adults have less stomach to learn a new language. The kind of immersive learning required for language acquisition is all encompassing, and really kind of needs to take over your life - especially one distant from your mother tongue.
I say all this while figuring out how I personally muster the motivation, routine and immersion to gain fluency in Mandarin by the end of this decade (a personal goal).
Yeah and at least 90% of them were immersed in it since birth at home. Learning mother language while growing is very different from learning foreign language as adult.
> Can't understate how hardcore it is.
No, it isn't for kids, my kids are trilingual without any issues and much effort, kids are like sponges absorbing new information/languages easily, if you start early.
Btw. you won't be fluent in Chinese without living in China.
My point isn't that it's hardcore for children to be trilingual. My point is that the way of life of a child is exhausting - learning 247. If you try it later in life, eg doing a masters/bootcamp/intensive hobbies you realise how hard work it is trying to learn.
Having met people who have replicated learning like a child in adulthood, I posit that some of it is that children don't have responsibilities and also don't have a choice in the matter. The upside is also considerably greater - learning to walk + communicate.
> Btw. you won't be fluent in Chinese without living in China
I have lived in China before so this is very apparent to me. When I was there, my brain was always processing the language in the background. Remembering new vocab, trying to recognise new characters. Thinking about how to express specific ideas. That is worth so much more than any class or course can teach - and time spend learning like that really compounds. A week in a country like china can be worth months of study for me. And that style of learning is also how I imagine children are - constantly processing consciously and unconsciously...
And the guy from the article has been immersed in it since ten years ago. Thats long enough to learn enough to be able to do day-to-day tasks and not expect every local there to adapt to your lazyness of not learning the language.
Bullshit... Maybe at best half of Chinese have Mandarin as a home language - of which half again speak Xinan Mandarin at home which is barely intelligible to a Standard Mandarin (Beifanghua) speaker. So the majority of Chinese learned Mandarin as a second language.
And obviously the writing and ideograms is something that every one of them had to painstakingly memorise over 15 years of schooling...
> Btw. you won't be fluent in Chinese without living in China
I know plenty of people in Singapore and Taiwan who wouldn't even bother to make fun of your ignorance...
And you know very well I meant that 90% of those Chinese language speakers are ethnic Chinese and not foreigners. So congrats you won Nitpicker of the month prize!
> I know plenty of people in Singapore and Taiwan who wouldn't even bother to make fun of your ignorance...
1. Maybe you should check on official name of "Taiwan". 2. I am talking to non-native Chinese speaker (not you), not sure how does that apply to ethnical Chinese wherever they live, whether it's Singapore, Taiwan or US. Even the person I addressed my message to agrees with me, so congrats once again on completely pointless nitpicking.
Yeah I've always wondered what the implications of growing up learning an ideogram based language has on your development.
I applaud to every parent who rather spends time with their kids rather than studying language because 'you should'. Ideal is both of course, but that's not how reality usually looks like.
That's what the article writer did.
Maybe America is just weird but you can come here and not learn English and if someone refuses your right to comment on our society they'll probably just be called a straight up racist.
"私は日本語がかなり下手です" [0]
Not being good at something is not the same thing as having refused to learn it. From the authors response I honestly can't assess their level of Japanese well. I routinely have had people tell me they don't speak English well but then have a full conversation with them.
https://twitter.com/wingcommander1/status/161706014073333760...
You can certainly write opinions, that's what they are, internet is still mostly free for speech. Not sure why you feel as an authority on who can write what. Something about high horse again? Living somewhere you can get tons of positives and negatives of state, society etc. even if not understanding a word. Maybe not 100% picture, but enough to form an opinion and write about it
As an example, here in Norway, I have read of expats, specifically British expats, being denied various earned benefits because their residency permits have expired and/or they decided to return back to where they came from. The collected pensions were not afforded to them. IANAL definitely, so if this is ok or not in terms of EEA rulings is maybe another story, but this, even being pre-Brexit, was still worrisome to me. At the time, years ago, I was not a citizen here nor a citizen of the EU/EEA, so tying my wife and my benefits' fates to whatever employment we were able to attain is a bit concerning. Not being explicitly tied to employment and maintaining the full rights of every other citizen by being one myself is a relief. Of course, one of the requirements was reaching a certain language level (it was A2 when I got it, which I aimed for specifically, but the government has since decided to push it up to B1.)
Also, I don't have children, but I have had co-workers who do, who sought to learn enough to be involved their children's education and also really can't afford expensive international schools. I mean, we all make salaries that are average to our profession, citizens and non-citizens alike; I mean, if you want your children to only speak English, work in a English-speaking country.
Do you need to learn them all, as a foreigner? What about as a naturalized citizen? What about as a born citizen?
What if a country has adopted English as another official language (Hong Kong, Malaysia). Do you still need to learn the other languages?
In any case, particularly in Canada and Switzerland the official languages tend to be far more geographically divided than the unofficial languages in those countries, or the many languages in South Africa or much of India, or even Chinese in Singapore, Spanish in the US, etc. It's usually clear which subset of languages, official or otherwise, are useful for the city/region in which you live.
Although, some parts of cities nowadays you don't need to as other languages like arabic is more common.
Everyone here keeps anectoding about their trip to other places when the issue is not daily living but writing an opinion piece about a society they don't understand enough to live in.
Not a hypothetical question for me. I've lived in Germany for fourteen years. And while I can mumble my way through some basic conversations, I'm far from fluent in German. I'm sorry but I'm not interested in sacrificing an enormous portion of my time to such a project either. Seems to be quite common here with foreigners. It's very rare that I get angry/annoyed reactions from Germans on this. The opposite actually, there are quite a few Germans here that are attracted to the notion of living in Berlin partially because it is more international focused.
In the time that I've lived here, automated translations have gotten much better. Which helps with the inevitable bureaucratic stuff or interacting with people who only speak German. There is very little practical need for me to speak German beyond that. And otherwise, the business language in the companies I deal with is mostly English. I of course live in a bit of a bubble with lots of foreigners that have invaded Berlin. I've also lived in places like Finland. Finnish is much harder than most other languages to pick up. So, I never even pretended that learning was going to be a thing. This might not even be my last country.
Most countries smaller than Germany or the US tend to be a lot more pragmatic about people speaking their language. People appreciate it if you do and generally don't really feel threatened by non native speakers.
With some exceptions of course. This is a popular topic with populists/xenophobes worried about people stealing their jobs, women, and real estate, becoming marginalized in their own country. You get that in a lot of places. I tend to not have a lot of sympathy for such people though. The opposite actually. Those aren't their jobs. You need the right skills and typically for skilled labor there isn't a whole lot of unemployment. We foreigners show up because we are wanted and needed to do a job. Women aren't property and are perfectly capable of deciding for themselves whom they form relationships with. Fun fact in Finland, a dis-proportionally large part of the local women end up marrying foreigners. And the real estate value indeed goes up if smart people move in and start creating economical value. Economic growth is generally a good thing but indeed annoying for the locals.
I think there's going to be more migration due to technical progress with translations between languages and the removal of language barriers. And I think that is a good thing. While I like English (the only language other than Dutch that I mastered well enough to use it professionally), there are large parts of the worlds where people just don't speak English very well. We literally refer to some parts of the world as third world countries, which is very condescending. It means that they are poor. But the implication of course is also that they are somehow inferior and a bit retarded. And that there are second world countries as well that are slightly less inferior. Language has created this elite bubble that keeps it like that for some of these countries. Being able to go to such places and live there without first having to learn a language is very liberating and is probably also going to be great for e.g. trade relationships. I think that should be welcomed. English optional. Also in the US, which of course has plenty of migrant groups that don't speak that very well.
People vastly underestimate how hard it is to learn languages. A few people seem to have the knack for it, but the large majority of us don't. Especially not when we get older. Japanese is also famously hard for native English speakers.
It's definitely not ok, however, to act as if you're an expert about the local culture. There is so much you can't grasp unless you speak the native language. Talking to people is important, but equally important is consuming native media and the news.
Unlike many southeastern Asiatic languages, Japanese doesn't have any sounds that the average English speaker doesn't already know how to make (possible exception in the 'l' sound, but, if you can roll your 'r's, it's the same tongue position). There are no articles, only two tenses, relatively normal conjugations (though adjective conjugation is odd relative to English), no declension, and sentence structure has strong hints of Latin. The simple-polite forms of verbs are sufficient for daily use. Pitch accent and ga vs. wa are hard to pick up without immersion, but neither are necessary to be understood.
The written language is a different story. Lots of memorization. The hiragana and katakana come quickly, but there are a lot of kanji. Probably not needed for tourists (particularly in the day of image translation on phones), but still a factor. Arguably still easier than Mandarin in that regard, though.
Additionally, there are an overabundance of resources for Japanese learners. The economic potential of American occupation under MacArthur and the subsequent boom years, the enduring popularity of Zen Buddhism, and the rise of anime's popularity in the West have likely all contributed to Japanese being one of the best-supported Asiatic languages in academia and self-study courses. Its support in the USA is exceeded (in my estimation) only by Mandarin due to the large immigrant population and ongoing trends in trade.
In short, I'm sure the number of native English speakers who can "get by" in Tokyo eclipses the total number of native English speakers with basic Lao, Thai, Khmer, Vietnamese, and probably even Mandarin skills.
Just one datum.
In a company you will miss all the important things that are usually conveyed in casual French (this includes subtleties that change the meaning of a sentence).
Yes, people will speak English with you, usually fluently (and with plenty of errors), but this is not the language of choice for the off the record conversations.
Outside of work you will get by in supermarkets, but for more complicated shops your will have problems.
For the administration it is clear: without being fluent in French there is no way to do anything. Even if you are a native speaker you understand just half of it and hope for the best.
People in the street speak English [citation needed] but they will get tired after some time and then the English becomes unbearable.
Source: native French married to a foreigner who struggles to understand everything (not to mention the subtleties) after 15 years of active use of the language.
hogepiyo was saying someone who lived for a decade and cannot speak native language does not have enough credit for us to believe his/her comment on the entire country's changes. The fact that people do can live this way does not change this point.
Any other person who lived in a country for a decade and can't converse in the language would be (rightfully imo) shamed for it.
Idk, say what you like about how journalists operate but living somewhere for a decade and not speaking the language doesn't sit right with me.