I Wonder..

[OaklandZoo]

You know what's funny is that, when people ask me about the life in America, their assumption is that I had no access to rice and other foods that were common to the Japanese but somewhat alien to Americans. Such wasn't the case, as there are plenty of stores that offered Asian foods. And while living in America, people there thought the Japanese somehow doesn't use silverware and still eat nothing but fish, oh and don't forget about dog. And while cultural values are different, Japanese and Americans eat similar foods, drink the same alcohol, and spends our time doing a lot of similar things. I just wonder where all these assumptions are coming from.

p.s. I have a question for those who are living in Japan. regardless of how long you've lived here so far, do you feel that your English has deteoriated a bit? The reason why I ask this is becase, if natives are feeling their English is getting bit a rust, then my English, as a second language, must be getting far worse than I can imagine. And that is a scary feeling.

[King Kong]

I've read quite a few blogs by JET members who have noticed that their English has deterioriated and they practice their English everyday in the form of blogs, phonecalls and talking to strippers who have a good grasp of English. And then fucking them hard.

Ok, just forget about the last sentence.

[流液天を射し込む怪光なり]

then my English, as a second language, must be getting far worse than I can imagine. And that is a scary feeling.

Not really. You speak English wonderfully. There are very few foreigners who can speak English with the same level of skill with which you can. I'm impressed.

When did you begin learning English?

As for this:
I just wonder where all these assumptions are coming from.

I can't say exactly, but I'm guessing that it is more than peripherally related to stuidity. :D Plus, for a lot of people, television is the only window into the larger world. If you are a Japanese person who has never been to America and rely on television to learn about America and the information conveyed by television concerning America is inaccurate or flawed in some way, then your understanding of America is going to be flawed, too. Obviously the converse is true too - Americans clearly have a very poor understanding of Japanese culture, thinking the language to be extremely difficult and illogical, and believing that popular Japanese television is largely filled with non-sensical elements and non-sequiturs - which is only a partial truth. This is mostly due to popular media which doesn't seek to inform so much as it seeks to entertain however possible - this often means stretching the truth or fabricating it entirely. For example, The Simpsons, although a funny show (was a funny show), is one of the most flagrant abusers of understanding of Japanese culture. That show has misrepresented and made fun of it coutless times and is at least partly responsible for the ignorance of Americans concerning Japanese culture.

[TLab3000]

p.s. I have a question for those who are living in Japan. regardless of how long you've lived here so far, do you feel that your English has deteoriated a bit? The reason why I ask this is becase, if natives are feeling their English is getting bit a rust, then my English, as a second language, must be getting far worse than I can imagine. And that is a scary feeling.

:) Well, yeah, sorry to say so, but I guess, well...
Actually, I've never been to Japan. But I started studying Japanes about 1.5 years ago. And with every new Japanese word I learn, I forget an English one. My grammar and pronunciation is getting worse, too. I've studied or attempted to study several languages, but so far, learning a new language always improved my skills in another language. My second language was French, and my French got a lot better after picking up English as a third language. But Japanese affects my English in a very bad way. My ex (she's British) says so, too.

BTW, my ex knows a guy (British as well) who has spent months or years in Japan. She claims that living there has mucked up his English completely.
Hell, it even messes with my French. I say "demo" instead of "mais", nowadays.

And I've unlearned how to do the Italian "r". Or any kind of proper "r". When I speak, the "r" doesn't really matter to me, anymore. I can tell the difference between the German, Russian, Japanese, English and Spanish "r", but I've lost the ability to reproduce those sounds.

But, it's not that bad. We're not native speakers, so we can always go to the UK (okay, and maybe the USA, Canada, Australia, Ireland, NZ) and improve our English skills a lot. Native speakers might find themselves in a situation where they are actually not able to speak English as well as they did before going to Japan, even years after they've returned. We don't. At least I don't. My English isn't 100% perfect (hehe, not even close), so if I spend some time in Japan and then go to the UK for some months, I'm certain that my English will become better than it was before.

I admit, there are some exaggerations and generalisations in what I wrote...

[Destiny]

you definitely touched a nerve there... Im supposed to speak five languages more or less fluently, but that varies from day to day. Some days I switch between the five real smooth, others Im dumb, cant speak even my own... I cant speak Enlish without sayng "あれっ！" or the like. Whereas Ive a friend who doesnt speak any language fluently, even her native Mongolian, yet she is much more communicative than I am on any given day... Thats life :watson:

[OaklandZoo]

I moved to Pittsburgh when I was 13, came back last May after 10 years. I don't feel like it's gotten worse, but there is no way it's the same as it was before, because since I came back here, I do not speak English at all, none whatoever. The speaking part is what I miss the most; reading and writing I can keep up, but I can't talk to espn.com and law and order svu.

Speaking of a staying in one place for 10 years, I just saw this news about a girl being kidnapped for 10 years in Pennsylvania? And seeing that the neighbors who were interviewed had Steelers sweatshirts, it must be somewhat close to Pittsburgh? WTF mate?

More Editing: I feel like I need a place where I can converse with native English speakers, but I may be wasting my money going to eikaiwa schools. Maybe I need to get a new job.

[Suneru]

I've been here for three years. My English hasn't gotten any worse(maybe a little more proper), but it has changed. I've forgotten almost all slang, and when I do use it, it sounds unnatural. The vocabulary I use when I speak has gone down a lot too. Most of the things I say are in phrases less than 10 words, or if I use a conjunction I pause for a few seconds (just making sure my listener is following me). I don't use the shortened form of words when speaking
i.e. I will go to the store /not/ I'll go to the store.

英会話schools are hell. Not sure who is teaching who...

[Frankey-eh]

that's the downside to immersion. it doesn't take any effort to absorb it, but it takes so much effort to maintain it when you're no longer immersed.

I've noticed this in myself when I was five. So up till age three, I was living in China, and my Cantonese was perfect. Then I went to Japan, and my Japanese gradually became perfect, but my Cantonese was gradually deteriorating. By age five, when I went back to China, I couldn't speak a single word. I was mute for two weeks, and then I got my Chinese back... at the expense of Japanese. After half a year in China, I forgot all the Japanese and had to start over again.

right now, my Japanese is deteriorating again. I've managed to regain some of it by translating songs and anime and anything I could find, and now I can read novels and write like I used to (fourth grade level ;_; )

[kitsunepixie]

Those misconceptions are a result of people emphasizing differences between cultures, rather than similarities. Also, the more outrageous bits of a culture that may be hardly considered standard by natives are taken as truth. Which do people rather want to hear? "Japanese like spaghetti, and so do Americans," or "Every single one of those wacky Japanese eat bee larva, while Americans eat frog legs"?

[羽之助]

When I first started learning Japanese, after putting in French words in place of Japanese for a while, what little French I had disappeared. I can definitely tell that my English is suffering now. I noticed that my speaking ability had become a little bit strange, and now I find that it's getting harder and harder to compose sentences that are above grade school level. Plus the enforced English of the schools here doesn't help. Can't say grade school or primary school, must only say elementary school ...

[six-eight-ten]

My English has definately deteriorated.

And another misconception about the US: Everybody walks around carrying a sidearm, and there are gunfights at least three times a week.

And yet, I've seen more kids running around with toy guns in Japan than I did in the US. And Japanese arcades have more gun games (in the style of House of the Dead) than US arcades. Yet the Japanese generally don't like first person shooter games as much.

[nameplease]

And while living in America, people there thought the Japanese somehow doesn't use silverware and still eat nothing but fish, oh and don't forget about dog. And while cultural values are different, Japanese and Americans eat similar foods, drink the same alcohol, and spends our time doing a lot of similar things. I just wonder where all these assumptions are coming from.
I found out today that my little brother (10 years old) apparently believes that people in Japan eat cereal with chopsticks, and that spoons just don't exist in Japan.:eyepop:

[Druid]

Well, at least he knows it exists. Most 10 years old are dumber than a sack of rocks.

[grace_enyi]

I think my awareness of English has been greatly heightened since starting to learn several other languages. Yes, you could say that in some ways it has deterioriated a bit, since now I'll pause before saying or spelling something and think, "Wait, why? What?" because I don't understand the reasoning behind the English grammar, spelling, etc. I used to write without thinking more often before. However, I think it's quite interesting, and you shouldn't worry about any one of your languages getting bad as long as you try use all of them a bit during your daily life.

Lately, I've noticed that Japanese has infiltrated my Chinese, and I'll want to phrase things in a Japanese sort of way. :whoops: Tangential - however, despite being really embarrassed about speaking Chinese over the past year or so, for the past week, I've been doing it frequently, and it feels a lot easier already. With Chinese, I've been able to say "Screw it" and simply do my very best to communicate whatever the heck I want to say even if it might not always work, so that helps.

Anyhow, yeah...sometimes I feel like my brain is deterioriating because I don't feel competent enough in any one of my languages, but tough luck...

[Wakaranai]

Well I don't live in Japan so I'm not immersed like some people. My English hasn't detteriorated, it has become more proper. I have become more aware of grammatical rules since I have had to explain many of them to my Japanese conversation partners. I also don't use slang as much.

One funny habit I had when I first started learning Japanese was putting random Spanish words into my sentences. It's weird because I don't even really know Spanish.

[nameplease]

One funny habit I had when I first started learning Japanese was putting random Spanish words into my sentences. It's weird because I don't even really know Spanish.
Ughhh... my worst/most annoying habit relating to languages is always thinking in Japanese in Spanish class! If I try to write a writing assignment and can't think of the word in Spanish, I'll finish the sentence in my head with a Japanese word. Almost wrote Japanese on a test once...:duh:

[Frankey-eh]

Ughhh... my worst/most annoying habit relating to languages is always thinking in Japanese in Spanish class! If I try to write a writing assignment and can't think of the word in Spanish, I'll finish the sentence in my head with a Japanese word. Almost wrote Japanese on a test once...:duh:

O.O good thing I didn't take Spanish...?
Now I tend to think French in Chinese class though...
Like I'd think "dance", and dance is one of the first verbs we learned in French, and it should be the same in Chinese, but I skipped to Chinese 3, so the French basics comes to me before Chinese.

[Chinpokomon]

I once couldn't remember the word "develop" (with regard to pictures) in English once.
"Yeah, so I'm gonna go to the photo shop and ...um, genzou...genzou... make pictures"

[Akagaminosteven]

I'm half-Cuban (which made the WBC final very interesting in my house), so I can understand Spanish pretty much fluently based off of having it spoken to me by my mother on a daily basis. I've never been able to speak the damn thing that well, but I have good comprehension of it. But ever since I've gotten really into learning Japanese, I've found that my trying to think of Spanish words is quickly replaced with Japanese vocabulary. It's an infectuous language.

[Chinpokomon]

I'm half-Cuban (which made the WBC final very interesting in my house), so I can understand Spanish pretty much fluently based off of having it spoken to me by my mother on a daily basis. I've never been able to speak the damn thing that well, but I have good comprehension of it. But ever since I've gotten really into learning Japanese, I've found that my trying to think of Spanish words is quickly replaced with Japanese vocabulary. It's an infectuous language.

ha estudiado espanol por seis anos. Demo, hotondo wasureta.

[MNJetter]

I have to say my English has definately deteriorated since I got here. And it's not all because of being in Japan, either - many of my friends here are from Australia and New Zealand, so I get confused looks from people whose native language is supposedly the same as my own (for instance, "college," which means undergraduate tertiary education in America, means upper secondary school in Australia...which Americans would call "high school.").

It was actually kind of scary this morning, I had a conversation with some friends from college over skype. And I noticed myself speaking in shorter sentences, struggling for words, even stuttering a little. I never, ever used to stutter. I was trying to think of the phrase "put in an appearance" in English, which I used to use all the time, and I could not think of it. The best I could come up with was "make a presence" for a good ten minutes.

It also scares me a little that I could even think up "I'm gonna make a presence at work" in order to communicate the equivalent of "I'm gonna show up at work for a little bit." And it made sense to me when I said it. I'm starting to speak in Engrish!

[羽之助]

And in Canada college is where you go to learn a trade/something that will help your career, whereas university is where you get your degree in academia.

[Akagaminosteven]

ha estudiado espanol por seis anos. Demo, hotondo wasureta.


That's usually how it works. :knockout:

[4letterwords]

When I first started to learn some Croatian, even though I knew a lot of the sentence structure and I could make some sentences, I always mixed it with Japanese somehow...

I'd always put wa after the subject and stuff... so I just gave up...

Japan has stolen any ability for me to learn another language...

[MNJetter]

And in Canada college is where you go to learn a trade/something that will help your career, whereas university is where you get your degree in academia.

Really? I didn't know that.

In America, or at least the part of it I'm from, a college is any institution of post-secondary education that doesn't offer a master's or PhD program. A university is an academic institution that offers either or both. So my state's public school, which offers a variety of degrees up through PhD, is called the University of Minnesota, but the school I got my bachelor's degree at which didn't have anything beyond the bachelor's, was Concordia College.
A school in my area, Bethel College, even changed its name recently to Bethel University because it now offers a master's program.

To go to college is to do any sort of undergraduate school, whether it's a bachelor's degree, a trade school, or anything similar. After that, you might go to graduate school at a university.

Yay for dialects.