14 Japanese learn English faster than Americans learn Japanese.
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This article is from the Japanese FAQ, by TANAKA Tomoyuki tanaka@cs.indiana.edu and Olaf Meeuwissen olaf@IMSL.shinshu-u.ac.jp with numerous contributions by others.
14 Japanese learn English faster than Americans learn Japanese.
> Hi there. I have a thought for you regarding one reason
> why Japanese seem to have so much difficulty with English.
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> After, say, 2 years of classroom instruction,
> Japanese know (speak/write) much more English than
> Americans know (speak/write) Japanese.
>
> Why is this?
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i know that much fewer Americans study Japanese than Japanese
study English.
my question is,
but even when Americans *DO* study Japanese, they don't
learn it as well as Japanese learn English. why is that?
i talked to a Japanese guy about this.
we think that the reasons this happens are ...
1. the difference in enthusiasm and interest.
2. studying KANJI is a big burden for Americans.
3. for Japanese students of English, abundance of loanwords from
English makes vocabulary-building easier:
car, computer, printer baseball, red, brown, blue,
camera, center, book, magazine, typewriter, ... .
(elaborated as L1 and L2 below.)
4. Japanese start studying earlier than Americans.
--- Japanese students: 12 or 13 years old. in junior high school
--- American students: 18+ years old. in college
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loanwords from English help the Japanese students much more than
they do American students, because ...
L1. Japanese students know the word RED already. there is no need to
learn a new word for the color red.
American students may learn that RED can be used in Japanese,
but, in addition, they learn the word AKA.
(the same for car/jidousha, brown/chairo, book/hon ...)
L2. apparently, for Americans with a few years of Japanese study,
transliteration of English --> katakana (katakana-ization)
e.g., McDonald --> makudonarudo,
is not trivial.
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