Very painful to hear

[ricohflex]

TV news (foreign cable TV channel) telecast - getting an incoming news report from a Japanese correspondent (seems to be Terence Terashima) based in Japan.

"....[few words in English].....ah...ah...[few words in English].....ah...ah...ah..ah...[few words in English].....ah...ah...[few words in English].....ah...ah...ah....[few words in English].....ah...ah...[few words in English].....ah...ah...ah...ah......[few words in English].....ah...ah...[few words in English].....ah...ah...[few words in English].....ah...ah...ah...ah....[few words in English].....ah...ah...[few words in English].....ah...ah...[few words in English].....ah...ah...ah.....[few words in English].....ah...ah...[few words in English].....ah...ah...[few words in English].....ah...ah...ah....ah....[few words in English].....ah...ah...[few words in English].....ah...ah...ah..ah...[few words in English].....ah...ah...[few words in English].....ah...ah...ah....[few words in English].....ah...ah...[few words in English].....ah...ah...ah...ah......[few words in English].....ah...ah...[few words in English].....ah...ah...[few words in English].....ah...ah...ah...ah....[few words in English].....ah...ah...[few words in English].....ah...ah...[few words in English].....ah...ah...ah.....[few words in English].....ah...ah...[few words in English].....ah...ah...[few words in English].....ah...ah...ah....ah......."

It went on for many minutes.

This is the horrifying product of a closed-inward-looking-Japan from the 1980s onward, refusing to open up and encourage its citizens to learn English.

The correspondent had to pause often (he repeatedly said "ah" to vocally fill in the empty seconds in between) and there is a mental block for a few seconds before he can speak the next few words that he wished to convey in English. This is repeated for every next few words until the end of the report. Maybe his brain was translating from Japanese to English in small packets of data.

 

[ninelives]

uhh uhh uhhh uhhh

you sure you were not watching beavis and buttthead ????

 

[sfoto100]

hi ricohflex, pls do not take it as an attack on you..

ok now i will speak my mind:

hmm..

i support what the japanese are doing leh... why must they learn English? English big deal meh? at least japan manage to protect their culture etc... look at sg, so westernised.. our politicians who are chinese can't speak mandarin, can't speak dialects..

 

[Sion]

[video=youtube;8st8MErVO10]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8st8MErVO10[/video]

 

[Sion]

[video=youtube;RIM4jGkRWag]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIM4jGkRWag&feature=related[/video]

 

[SilentSeth]

[video=youtube;8st8MErVO10]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8st8MErVO10[/video]

Hahaha this is from the Batsu game show isn't it?

I remember on one of the school episodes there was a black student with full Japanese name LOL. Then all couldn't tahan, laughed and kena smack.

 

[Sgdevilzz]

classic japanese. So funny!

 

[Sion]

Some people have said Audrey Yu 余若薇, a lawyer and politician in Hong Kong is arguably one of the best English speakers in Hong Kong. I think I can probably give half a dozen examples English speakers of such calibre in Hong Kong.

The interesting thing was she only went to UK for her master degree in law and received almost all of her education in Hong Kong.

[video=youtube;kH_wTG_jFXE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kH_wTG_jFXE[/video]

 

[ricohflex]

Good English speakers - Singapore: S Jayakumar, David Wong C F, Lee Tzu Yang, Tommy Koh, Vivian Balakrishnan

US: Ronald Reagan (the great communicator), Obama

UK: Any Law Lord or Queen's Counsel.

When (not if) China (population 1.3 billion), South Korea, Thailand, Taiwan can produce lots of people who can speak and write good English, Japan will feel left out. India and Myanmar already have some English speakers because they were former British colonies.

Glad to hear that a nearby country has decided to teach Maths and Science in another language instead of English. Please carry on. Less competition in future.

 

[9V-Orion Images]

Sometimes when people spew their twisted logic all over the forum board, it can be very painful to read also.

 

[kei1309]

Good English speakers - Singapore: S Jayakumar, David Wong C F, Lee Tzu Yang, Tommy Koh, Vivian Balakrishnan

US: Ronald Reagan (the great communicator), Obama

UK: Any Law Lord or Queen's Counsel.

When (not if) China (population 1.3 billion), South Korea, Thailand, Taiwan can produce lots of people who can speak and write good English, Japan will feel left out. India and Myanmar already have some English speakers because they were former British colonies.

Glad to hear that a nearby country has decided to teach Maths and Science in another language instead of English. Please carry on. Less competition in future.

actually... you only listed a few out of the millions in all those countries.

i worked in an American organization previously and... you'd be appalled at their standard of the English Language.

also, in Korea, Thailand, Taiwan and many other Asian Countries, all they can manage is mangled English, poor sentence structure and poor grammar among others. are you sure the "standard of English" that you're talking about is extremely flawless or extremely passable English

 

[Sion]

Sometimes when people spew their twisted logic all over the forum board, it can be very painful to read also.

I refuse to read anything that smells like logic.

:bsmilie:

 

[Sion]

are you sure the "standard of English" that you're talking about is extremely flawless or extremely passable English

We are talking about flawless power Singlish spiced with 30% Hokkien swear words.

:bsmilie:

 

[JohnJon82]

We are talking about flawless power Singlish spiced with 30% Hokkien swear words.

:bsmilie:

Somewhere in "Coffee Shop" section of US or UK camera forum, people criticising our awful English, painful to hear :bsmilie:

 

[ninelives]

there is a hokkian saying "gu mai chio bi"

 

[Sion]

there is a hokkian saying "gu mai chio bi"

Be careful that Ang Moh will ask us:

"Simi Si Gu Mai Chio Bi?"

 

[chillicutter]

Be careful that Ang Moh will ask us:

"Simi Si Gu Mai Chio Bi?"

Then we shall reply:" si erh (pot) mai chio teh gorh (kettle) orh loh..."

 

[xtemujin]

The Japanese no need english as they are self sufficient.

 

[Sion]

The Japanese no need english as they are self sufficient.

My boss told me when he walked into a restaurant in Japan they just refused to serve him.

They had enough local clients to worry about learning to speak English to serve an odd Ang Moh or two.

 

[surrephoto]

English and Japanese are very different languages so unless u are born to live in a bilingual environment exposed to both on a regular basis it is very difficult to sound convincing native in both at the same time.

English has much more consonants and vowels than Japanese.

Japanese grammar is completely different from English being SOV and not SVO language. This is why many Japanese people who speak English need to have "thought packets" and many pauses before they respond intelligibly. The situation for English speaker who learn Japanese is mainly the grammar issue (stackable words) so having good pronunciation is never the problem.

I noticed that speakers of languages with similar, equal or more consonants/vowels to English speak English often very well albeit with their native accents.