From: markd@csl.sj.nec.com (Mark Dyer)
Subject: Re: There's-only-one-Truth-ism?
Organization: NEC America.
	<2180@aegis.or.jp> <1992Jul28.122517.15954@rkna50.riken.go.jp>
	<2189@aegis.or.jp>
Distribution: fj
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 16:20:12 GMT

In article <2189@aegis.or.jp> davidg@aegis.or.jp (Dave McLane) writes:

   mtachiba@rkna50.riken.go.jp (Masahiko Tachibana) writes:

	[stuff deleted]

   >    Mr Ishikawa complained that Japanese authorities should try
   >to expand Japanese language eduction course in many countries in
   >order that foreigners would not meet with too much difficulties 
   >when they visit Japan.  (source: fj.news.group)

   IMHO, this isn't a language education problem but just part of the
   social conventions in Japan. Japan already has a huge amount of
   language education courses (maybe too much!). Actually people
   understand and speak English reasonably well. But if they don't want
   to speak with foreigners that's another story :-)

I think Mr Tachibana's point was not to teach Japanese more English, but
sponsor the teaching of Japanese in other countries. This seems like a
perfectly reasonable thing to me.

I attended a conference NEC employees from around the world in Tokyo
last October. Since one of the things everyone had in common was trying
to communicate with the Japanese mother company, this topic came up in a
number of the presentations. Most of the people who touched on the
subject in their presentations said things like, "to improve
communication with our counter parts in Japan, we are sponsoring
Japanese Conversation Classes in our company." It was embarassing for me
when the only person from the United States who even touched on the
subject said something along the lines of, "to improve communication
with our counter parts in Japan, we are finding out which Japanese
Engineers speak good English."

 <back to Dave...>

   At the end of the first two years things were moving along quite
   well and I came to the conclusion that Japanese may not in fact be
   the best tool for communcation. That may sound strange, but to get
   the idea of what I'm talking about, ask those you know who speak
   Japanese as a second language how many people they have interesting
   and frutiful conversations with those who are not 1) members of the
   same office/company, or 2) spouse/{girl|boy}friend. When I took this
   informal kind of survey, the answer was none!  And in fact many
   people I met here in the kansai complained that they never could
   have anything more than a polite, on-the-surface tatemae conversation. 

Maybe I'm being silly, but if you put these limitations (1 & 2) on
don't you basically end up with group 3, "people you don't know very
well?" If you expand 1 to people you used to work with AND you count
going to school as work, all that's left are people you don't really
know. Maybe this is only true for me and my situation, but it seems a
little silly to say Japanese isn't a good language for communcation
because nobody ever has involved conversations with strangers in
Japanese.

Did I miss the point? Of course none of this has anything to do with
what Dave was really talking about, so I guess I'll stop babbling for
now! :-)

BTW I don't intend this as a flame in any way, shape or form, and I sure
hope Dave doesn't take it that way.

Mark Dyer		English: markd@tdd.sj.nec.com
NEC America, Inc.	 $BF|K\8l(B: markd@csl.sj.nec.com
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