Five Reasons Why Many Japanese Struggle to Speak English
Here are a few tips to help us effectively communicate with you
Some English native speakers have asked me, not in derision, but genuinely confused:
‘Many Japanese are hard-working. Yet so many of them have poor English skills. Why?’
Indeed, it may seem odd. As a former English teacher in Japan, I have some answers to that question. By reading this, you will understand that it is not simply due to a lack of ability or effort.
Linguistic distance: Japanese and English have so little in common
Linguistic distance is a term that has yet to be clearly defined, but in essence, it refers to how different one language is from another.
English is one of the Germanic languages, including German, Dutch, Danish, Swedish and Norwegian. As you may know, many people in these countries can speak English almost as fluently as their mother tongue, mainly because they are similar.
On the other hand, Japanese is often said to be an isolated language, meaning there is no similar language in the world. Some scholars categorise it as a Transeurasian language, claiming it has some connections with Korean, Mongolian and Turkish. Even if that is true, we have no common letters, which creates a significant language barrier.
This is one of the main reasons why it is so difficult for the Japanese to learn other languages, including English. Japanese grammar, pronunciation and characters are entirely different from English ones, forcing us to learn everything from scratch. The word order also differs significantly: When English speakers say, ‘I saw Mary at the supermarket on the corner yesterday’, we Japanese say, ‘Yesterday corner on supermarket at Mary saw’ (we very often omit the subject when it is clear). Thus, completing a sentence without taking time to resequence the words is hard.
Japanese students are overwhelmed at language schools or universities abroad, because their European classmates speak English so well and fast. I always assure them that it is completely normal: You may think we are climbing the same mountain, but we are not.
Being a high-context language, Japanese needs less verbalisation
