is English becoming more popular in Japan?
 

It may be a silly thread but....anyway.....I wonder if English has turned out to be a true fever among many Japanese, not only the youngest ones....what's led many people to study English over there in Japan?...music, globalization, economic issues, films, etc...

What do Japanese members of this forum feel about the language itself?

If English wasn't the world lingua franca, would you study it somehow?

As far as I know, in China that issue has been in right lately, mostly at schools...the same happens in South Korea.

English study is required in all levels of school from elementary through high school.

I don't think there is an "English fever". The Japanese I know find it difficult an illogical...which it is.

the same happens here in Brazil but I wonder how good is the level of English just taught at schools over there.....here, English classes have turned out to be boring and silly and the result....no comments....even at private schools the reality is tough to bear...

.............................

It's not English itself some Japanese are interested in, but the doors it unlocks. In my experience, English language teaching is improving in public schools, but is still awful compared to Japan's neighbors like China and Korea.

In my own opinion, the english language doesn't make much sense to me.
There are all these extra words that aren't really necessary, but only
make the sentence sound better and don't contribute to the meaning.

If I spoke a different language natively, I would probably find English
really hard to learn, with words like Articles and all. (the, a, etc.)

Though it is a necessary language if you want a job that does
business with other countries, obviously.

I wish the schools here in the U.S would offer more languages
to learn from, seeing that Spanish and French aren't the only
growing language out there and aren't the only languages that
people want to learn, just because they're common.

as far as I know Mandarin and even Arabic has been offered at some private schools out there......am I wrong?

Well Mandarin, I would expect ^__^
In general, at least in my area, Spanish and French is all that is offered.
I have a friend in California who is taking Mandarin I think, I forgot about
that. Though I also go to public schools, so :/ that may be the problem.

Could you explain how it's illogical?

I think I can.
Even though I have been born and raised in america, Even I can see how illogical english is. And I am HEAVILY into studying japanese. the best way to say it is to give a compairison.
A simple example is SPELLING. In english it is nessesary to spell each word right. even though if just one of the letters are incorrect, sometimes you can still understand it. While in japanese there is only 1 way to write each word.
english also has punctuation to deal with. while in japan the only usual one is the exclaimation point.:vsign: