English in Japan
 

I know that English is really important to some countries, but Japan has been the only country, whos native language is not English, that uses too much English in their media: music, movie and their titiles, tv shows, anime, and especially video games. Maybe im wrong, and theres another country that uses more english, but Japan has been the only one i seen.

I was playing an import Japanese game, and the characters were speaking English all the time with Japanese subtitiles, the menu options were in English with with Japanese subtitles. Even the titile of the game was in English with the small Japanese titile below. It will be obvious, if the game was American in Japan, but no, its a Japanese game. Its not the first time I seen it, theres other games with the same things too.

I seen something similar with anime. I havent watch anime lately, but I remember that most animes had English titiles with the small Japanese titile below.

Last but not least, music. I havent also listen to some Jmusic lately, but it was reallly rarely to dont see atleast one English word in a Japanese song or maybe half the song in English.

I dont know why they are doing this. Are the Japanese been force to learn English then?
By the way, Im not complaining; Im just curious and wondering why they do this.

I can tell that you clearly don't know much about the Japanese language. We (Japanese) use 8,000 times more words from Chinese than from English. Why not bring that fact to discussion first? Japanese and Chinese aren't even linguistically related languages, mind you.

Besides, your point fails when you actually expect the Japanese people to read your posts, which are in English.

Well I think they use a lot english titles for their movies, games, etc. because it's modern and "cool" but the news, magazines, most part of games and even anime are basiclly in japanese language as well as manga. And they are forced learning english in school and I think they want to get better in languages, especially in english, because they were pretty bad at pisa test so they change some media to english to give the people more contact to the language.

You didnt understand my post. I didnt say that the Japanese use more english than japanese. And no i dont know alot about japanese language, and thats why im here to learn a few stuff, so you dont have to get all crazy. All I said was that the japanese use more english than any other foreign country. You should learn how to read first, before commenting.

thanks for your respond. yes, most of the time they use english for titiles. A few games like: Resident Evil and Silent Hill, the dialogue and menu titiles are in english, and the descriptions and subtitles are in japanese.

resident evil and silent hill are based american games I think. At sometime I've heared that the first version of those games were developed in america so it's logical to give the whole series the same english name :D But I'm not quite sure^^

Japan's not the only language to have this happen. My friend is Indian and often mixes English with her native Punjab, and Hindi music and shows do the same. I could be wrong but I believe that perhaps the level of English used in these native languages could be to do with the fact both had English-Speakers colonising their countries at some point (I may be using the wrong word here). India for example was run by the Brittish, and Japan after the war had many, many Americans stationed there. I think after so long certain words or phrases become picked up in the native language. For example the Americans brought with them coffee to Japan, so the word for coffee is 'kohi' (sounding the same nearly), as it's the word introduced to them. So a lot of the 'English' words you hear as 'loan words', words for things that before the English introduced to them they had no words for.

Maybe that could be the reason. I got to play the Japanese game demo of Bayoneta, and it has English dialogue and menu titles in English, and I doubt that game is based on American games, is it?.

yeah, i notice that when learning a few japanese. theres many loan words.

I don't know that game but maybe they just want to be "cool" or they are lazy and don't want to programm additional languages so they just do one that can be understood everywhere and just subtitle it xD :mtongue:

lol hahahaha, i am starting to think that too.

The subject of a very beautiful Thank you my brother
 

The subject of a very beautiful Thank you my brother

its not just japan.

i've seen it in the middle east, in india, pakistan, parts of africa, malaysia, thailand, blah,blah,blah,....

it happens everywhere pretty much, and yeah alot of it has to do with it being percieved as being modern or cool.

and to that poster on the first page,.... how is japanese not linguistically related to chinese?

They're two different ~types~ of language? I think Japanese is a "conglutinate" (sp?) language, IE words can change their meaning by what you 'glue' on the end so 'taberu'- to eat, can become 'tabe-na-katta' To eat not past tense or rather, i didn't eat. Then chinese is a concrete or fixed language? words don't change, rather you add words or change their position in a sentence to change meaning. It's also tonal. Basically, they are totally different, and no one is exactly sure where on earth Japanese language developed from, because it definitely didn't come from China. It's more closely related to southern asian languages. The kanji confuses the issue as it makes it ~seem~ very chinese, but that's like looking at a mouse and an elephant and going 'Yep! they're related, you can tell cause they both got four legs!'.

But Japanese does have a lot of chinese loan words , roughly I suppose, in the same way English has a lot of french loan words. It's not created the language, but it's added an interesting garnish.

I had heard a long time ago of Japanese interest in English language- this is what actually made me curious of Japanese language and culture in return. I was very interested in a culture that was interested in my own.

I hope we continue to share cultures even more :)

cheers columbine, i didnt know that.

:) I didn't either until there was a special lecture on it at my university.

I suspect it's due in part to the occupation from WW2, also due to English being considered a "universal" trade lanquage for a good part of the last century. It's also partly due to "loan" words, many phrases in English have no counterpoint in other lanquages. Mostly due to the fact English is a hybridized language, where they incorperate new phrases and words constantly.

Consider my Home state of "Iowa," that's not English, it's Native American. Half the counties and towns in this state are named after native American words. English just utilizes what ever words are in an area and adds them to the overall vocabulary. There are several "Japanese", "German", "French", and "Spanish" words in English as well. English is essentially the "Borg" of Lanquage, it absorbs everything else and adds it to itself.

Ryzorian is right. In almost all modern cultures the drive to acquire words and phrases from other languages is international trade. Many Japanese products, and entire industries, are marketed to the west and the "universal" language for western nations is English. Even the French, who have fought long and hard to keep English words out of their language, have had to accept those terms that simply have no equivalent in their own. It is much simpler to accept an English word for something originally named in English, than to add yet another term simply for the sake of linguistic purity.

I believe that the use of English in Japanese music, particularly J-Rock/J-Metal comes from the fact that the music they are playing has its roots in English, and it may be that they want to express something that they simply feel sounds better in English. It's their choice, really, but they are not the only ones that do this; Nightwish and Children of Bodom are Finnish bands, yet their lyrics are in English, and so are those of Arch Enemy who's members are Swedish, except for the vocalist, who is German.

There's a difference between singing in English and singing in Japanese and english words into lyrics.

I personally, think it's a stupid thing to do, and that's the main reason why I'm not interested in Japanese music.

Well, they may consider "English" the lanquage structure for pop music/rock music, same as certain lanquages are perfered for Opera.

i do find it interesting though that a culture which puts so much emphasis on the subtleties of its own language, for the sake of politeness etc, seem to skip really understanding the loan words they use.

for example, instead of "getting even" as in beating a team this week that beat you last week, they frequently use "revenge" which is a bit harsh. or using the term "unacceptable" without realizing that it is quite an abrupt way of telling someone "no".

but i suppose english does the same with its loan words.

about the lyrics in english thing,.... tinymixtapes.com did an article on a big rapper in japan called Zeebra, who frequently throws in english phrases into his music,.... when asked why he did that, he said it had to do with having a common element lyrically so that someone who doesnt speak japanese will still get some of the lyrics and catch the vibe of the track. he gave the example of getting demo tapes from korean rappers where he doesnt understand a thing.

personally i dont listen to Zeebra, and I think its a cop out to excuse straight out imitation, but perhaps he does have a point, as Ryzorian said its just the de facto language of popular music.

Historically Japan has always been a nation of adapters. Although there is much pride in Japan's language and culture, and one foot is always firmly planted in that part of Japan, at the same time in the last couple centuries Japan has learned that the world has a lot to offer. From bread to cars to VCRs and far beyond, Japan is the country where a good idea gets better.

Unlike in France, where linguistic purity is fought for, Japanese don't see loan words as non-Japanese as much as new ways to say new things. Naturally the words adopted become "Japanese" and therefore don't always have the same meaning as their English (or other language) roots. There is no correcting, them, as they aren't wrong. Revenge might mean one thing in English, but リベンジ might be something else in Japanese.

yeah i know, and its one of the frustrating things about teaching english, or i suppose any other language....

half the time i find myself saying " well its not "wrong", but,....."

That makes some sense when you consider that the subtle differences (connotative meanings) are often direct results of the culture using the words. "Revenge" is a good example of this. When one regards a competition as a friendly exercise and of nto much significance, "revenge" is far too strong a term for winning against an opponent who won last time. But when the competition is one of great pride, to get revenge on an opponent who defeated you in the past is entirely accurate. Notice the correlated difference between '"won" and "defeated" as well.

When foreign terms are brought into use and you are not certain of the connotation they carry in the new syntax, I find it is best to turn to objective definitions first before common usage.