The REAL Reason Why Japanese People Can't Speak English 

I feel so incredibly lucky that I grew up speaking both English and Japanese. Many of the English textbooks and workbooks included strange phrases that you would never use in real life.

Learning a language is very use it or lose it. Don’t consistently use it, you’ll forget everything. And the lifestyle of japan just doesn’t encourage English enough. I don’t blame the kids- the tests were also lame.

As a Malaysian who's main language is Chinese and Malay, learning and knowing English definitely did help me finding more entertainment and joy in my life. My first motivation to learn and speak English is that I wanted to understand Pewdiepie's video after having so much fun without even understanding him. There's definitely joy to be felt when I could understand English videos and its endearing to see people try to speak even if they may fail, the prime example would be Natsuki-san, he's so cool!

As an Indonesian, English is the first foreign language that I've learned. But after years of learning numerous foreign languages (English, German, Japanese, Italian, Russian, and Hebrew), many things you've learned in a classroom won't be used in daily life. I realized that when I became an English teacher for elementary school students. Yes, you'll learn basics like grammar that a total pain in the arse, but take it as a guideline to improve your skill by yourself outside the classroom. You'll learn so much vocabularies and phrases that commonly used in daily life, get comfortable with the language until you have the "language sense" so you don't really need to think hard to constuct an understandable sentence and then train slowly to build grammarly proper sentences which usually only needed in formal situations like in your workplace or such. Don't take language learning as a burden or you won't learn much. By all means, make it fun to learn. Internet is humongous, use it well. In my own case, instead of only courses or formal educations, I learned English, German, and Japanese mostly through media like movies, videos, novels or comic books (or manga), and of course: the Internet. Among all other languages that I've learned, those three stick to my head better because of that. For such thing as Joey said about English speaking test in schools asking student's opinion about plastic usage within different countries, that topic is used usually for B2 level in CEFR which means it's a higher intermediate level that people commonly reach when they're about to finish their studies in the university. That's completely too difficult for most middle schooler, let alone an elementary student. The government really need to rethink about that.

I’m a 100% Japanese. I think that the reason that they can’t is because of Katakana. They don’t hear it. They read it. Japanese structure vs English structure. JP is designed to be read because each words (or letters for that matter) has meanings. I went through the process of becoming an English speaker by getting rid of those Katakanas and focusing on hearing only. You should know this, In order to understand Japanese, you must know the meanings of the individual letters. Hashi vs Hashi. They should stop using Katakana in English classes.

Japanese students at public schools are not taught to freely express themselves but to learn fixed expressions of "proper" written English from textbooks and where the real emphasis is on grammar. It doesn't help that the pronunciation of foreign word is taught mostly through katakana transcriptions, which results in English (or any other foreign language) which is hardly understandable by anyone outside of Japan or japanese knowledge. Add to this a general shyness of many japanese citizen and the fear of making any kind of mistake. This blocks a natural acquisition of foreign languages.

As a Japanese former resident of Hawaii that later transferred to Japan I agree with your opinion a lot. People here don’t need to learn English and people who come back from abroad feel out of place in the work place / school. As do I myself. The reason why I was able to maintain my English skills in a country where the majority of people don’t speak it is because I enjoy movies, books, tv shows, etc.

In my case, I grew in a Spanish speaking country, went to a British English school and when i finished it, i took the FCE and failed it. Yet, besides that being a slap in the face to my pride, i didn't surrender and i kept watching English shows without subs and I kept talking with people from other countries. This played a key role in my English skills and now some foreigners that comes to my country, whenever i speak with them, they are surprised by my level of English and how good I sound. They feel comfortable. Talking to others is vital for keep retaining your level and improving it. Nowadays I listen to your videos, Trash Taste and other podcasts or videos and keep practicing my english.

as a French Canadian i can say that not everyone is well versed in English where i live, but it is mandatory to learn and you only need to travel 20 KM to the next town and it is already English everywhere! in my case, i learnt English cause TV shows like Spider Man and X-Men were way better than the crap in the French channels!

I'm not from an English-speaking country (It's my second language) and I do know English quite well, but it's not thanks to school. Except for grammar, the base of my English is from Pokemon and many (in my country) tell me that I have a high level of English, so I say Japan should show English Pokemon to the kids

When we went back to Japan in Feb 23, we visited my wife's town and had dinner with some of her friends. We all brought our kids and I got to talking with 3 siblings. Their English surprised me so much! They were 16, 14 and 11, and they could speak basic English very well. I encouraged them to make mistakes and ask me freely anything they wanted. They all listened to English music, watched English movies and TV shows, but they just couldn't get over the initial embarrassment of making a mistake. Once we broke the ice and everyone was relaxed, they were more open to practicing their English and chatting.

I'm from Panama, where Spanish is the tongue of the land. I learned English through music, tv and movies and I can say it's the single most important thing I've ever learned in my life. It has allowed me to experience art, entertainment, information and perspectives that go beyond what is available in my language. It shapes my opinions by listening to news from around the world instead of just the local ones. It makes it a lot easier to find good resources for things I want to learn. The very work I have is thanks to being able to speak English because I work with people from around the world, while staying at home. This skill gives me access to so much that now that I have a son, if there's one thing I want to pass to him (besides being a good person) is to be multilingual. I think it's a pity to go through life locked to a single language. The world becomes so much bigger, and smaller in some ways, when you can expand your experiences though language.

The best way to teach a language to a nation is to fill its television with movies and shows made in the target language and add subtitles in their native language. That is literally the reason why everybody here in Nordic countries are fluent in English.

15:25 "how much English helped you" saved my life as Joey trapped me in his basement and taught me English to watch his videos

I'm from Germany and learned English as a second language at school. I then studied it at uni and am now an English teacher myself. But I must say that all of this formal education is nothing compared to actually using the language in a real life situation. I was very shy of speaking it despite always getting good grades, until I met my boyfriend from Sweden with whom I live together now and we speak English at home. Now I've realized that you are allowed to make mistakes and the most important thing is just making yourself understood. I try to pass this idea on to my own students now :)

I’m half Japanese but lived only 2 out of my 27 years in Japan (though I also went to Japanese schools in other countries for elementary and middle school). My parents hired a tutor that taught me English once a week, but I never really learned to use it until we moved to an English-speaking country and was placed in a situation of “speak or perish”. Tbh this also happened when my parents put me in a Japanese elementary school, after being with Spanish-speakers in kinder and in extracurriculars. I wouldn’t learn unless I was convinced that it was necessary. I think the same goes for these Japanese kids, and I can’t blame them; most people aren’t so privileged as to be able to throw themselves into a foreign country to learn the language 😅

I think Philippines is a prime example of it being the primary language next to Filipino for English. Most people can speak write and understand. Working out of the country is so common that most people interact and work with it everyday , though I think some mannerism and speech patterns of Filipinos are very noticeable fi they learned inside of the Philippines as opposed to elsewhere.

I think I'd rather see 'please do not water the plants' sounds really polite like the Japanese culture

I am 100% Brazilian and English has helped me a lot. It is my third language, but it is the language that is benefiting me the most. Now I am living in America and finishing my second University. I don't know how to express how important English is for me. It helped me with my career and with my hobbies.

English as a second language here (as you asked at the end). I work in the software development industry, and most modern dev languages have much more documentation in English than any other language. They also use English verbs and attributes for their structure, so I'd probably have a much harder time if I didn't know English. I moved to the US, where I joined a company that has multinationals work teams. I lead such a team, with developers from Serbia, Hungary, Uganda, and the US itself. We all communicate in English. No English, no way to make this team work.

I'm an English instructor and in this institute the main focus is for students to speak and listen and understand. It is hard, specially for those people who are just starting with the basics, but it really works once they get used to it. As teachers, we mainly correct what might cause them problems in the future, and we always encourage them to try to express themselves even if they don't know the exact word. I want to learn Japanese in the future and I'm preparing myself for the hardships already

Is it just me or is there a slight delay between audio and video?

I am English and only speak English so I have huge respect for those who learn other languages. My grandad was Polish, my dad half Polish but for some reason my Grandad Kazimierz stopped speaking Poish to me as soon as I learned how to talk. I strongly beleive my grandad did not want me speaking Polish as he feared I would be bullied and have no friends. So now my surname is Kowalczyk but I cannot speak Polish and have never been to Poland and have no Polish friends.

As an ESL tutor it makes me really happy when I hear the stories of why my Japanese (and other non-english speaking) students wants to learn English in the first place. Even if they just want to learn it for fun or for their future. I also have a lot of older people that are still learning English which is realy good! Some of them are just bored and wanna learn something new and would love to interact with tourists more. The older people, mind you!!

So english for Japanese people is like Spanish for non-hispanic American people. Teachers are made to 'teach' you 'conversational skills' found only within textbook scenarios in class and that's it. No one practices real conversations during class nor outside of class with one another (even with the teacher outside of the class! We still speak English to one another and just sprinkle a Spanish word or 2 in). As students, we memorize the bare minimum to get through the school year: hola, como estas, Bien y tu, necessito usar el bano por favor, y adios. Outside of that, I don't know how to ask real questions or convey how I'm truly feeling to someone in spanish if I were to try. I've learned more from Duolingo and even they don't teach proper Spanish, but I sure as hell have learned more from them than the several years of Spanish classes I took in middle and high school. It sucks.

TBH, I didn't learn my second nor my third language at school either... For the second, German, I was just fortunate enough to live at the border. For the third, English, I was forced to speak it at work. The one language I only "met" at school is unfortunately long forgotten. It was French. French is crazy hard. Did you see their numbers?! E.g. 89 literally translates into 4 times 20 (and- editors note, they don't bother to say "and") 9.... I'm sorry French folks, but wtff??? And than there's 79...

I don’t know about education these days, but 20 years ago when I was studying Japanese full time at uni…I honestly have no idea how I was passing. I apparently had a university level understanding of a language I could barely read, and could barely express even the simplest of thoughts in. I suppose to someone who knew NO Japanese, it might have sounded like I was quite good, but I knew myself that I just couldn’t form sentences, couldn’t understand anything without looking up every second or third word. My fears were confirmed when I went to Japan and couldn’t even exist in the most basic of circumstances. Was I better off than a tourist with no language education? Only slightly! I was just lucky I went with others from my class, people who were far better at the language than me. Because I don’t know if I would have been able to find anyone to ask. Even the “English speaking Doctor” I spoke to at the hospital…really only knew as much English as I knew Japanese. Between us, we made it work.

My first language is Polish and I live in Poland. English has definitely helped me to understand, and learn more about the world, different countries, cultures, all of it. Yes, there are some Polish resources on all countries and cultures but it is not comparable to the amount of them in English. So many people from around the world speaking the language or even living in Eng-speaking countries (mostly in the us) really helped me to understand global issues like xenophobia or racism that aren't addressed much among Poles because of how homogeneous we are. Learning it gave me a chance to realize that I like learning languages, alphabets and where they come from in general. It also supports my other hobbies, makes it easier to travel overboard.

It’s a shame. I know some American adults who still struggle with English. I think it’s the environment. We concern ourselves to much with conforming to standardize tests.

Learning more than one language is always valuable. Especially the more commonly known ones. I’d love to learn not only Japanese/Chinese but Spanish, German, Portuguese, and Russian.

Thought provoking post. I'm learning Japanese myself. I'm planning on visiting Japan in the future. I maded a few friends who are Japanese on Facebook and Instagram. Plus I watch anime and read manga andJapanese mythology and folklore. And I would like to visit Kyoto and few other places. I also practice Shinto and Zen Buddhism. The norito is in Japanese and English. So I'm learning from books as well as Google translate. It's difficult. But I want to learn. ❤

I’m Swedish and am fluent in English, have learnt Spanish in school and am learning Japanese in my free time. English has most defenetly been really usefull in my life and has personally been really easy to learn. I’ve been surounded with english since 5 years and up to now almost 17. It’s quite a big subject in our schools here and we start to learn it really early. English is also quite simular to my native language beacuse it’s so close and beacause of the vikings back in the day. But the most important thing that I think helped me the most is that I’ve been consuming english content my hole life through all the shows, youtube, videogames, social media, books, well badically everything. The only ”weak” areas I have are spelling and talking, beacause I don’t do it so often, but I’m guite decent at it. But for example I’ve learnt spanish from 6:th-9:th grade so I have a good understanding of the language by listening and reading. But I’m bot so good in the other areas mostly beacause I was never as interested in the language or had a big reason to learn the language. So that is also a big important factor in learning a language. I’ve been learning japanese for about 300 days and I allredy feel that I’m not so far away from the level in my Spanish. It’s probably beacause my genuine interest in the language, culture, anime, manga, j-metal/j-rock, etc. I’ve also been reading both manga and watched anime and shows in only japanese to imerse myself in the language. My conclusion is that as long as your motivated and have a reason to learn the language, nothing can stop you, even how difficult that language is!

I don't blame them it's my first language and i can barely speak it

I do not agree with the idea that the burden is on Japanese people to learn English in order to make foreigners 'more comfortable'. As far as I'm concerned, if you plan to be moving to another country, you had better damn well learn that country's language first. At least to a conversational level. edit: for those talking about tourism, I still believe the onus is on the tourist to learn at least basic phrases so as to not be rude. This applies to all countries.

We have foreign students coming here in the Philippines to learn english. They are mostly our asian neighbors including some from s korea, vietnam, japan, malaysia, etc. In my opinion it's all about teaching approach and exposure to get them to gradually apply it. We have english speaking zones posted on those specialty schools here so they can practically use english regularly.

This coming from a Belgian: making at least one foreign language compulsory from an elementary school level was one of the best ideas the ministry for education ever had. The fact that we've been a multilingual country since forever does help with that though. Just imagine learning a new language in school as a kid and then being able to use what you learned in school if you go on vacation in your own country, not even that far away. It's a huge boost to wanting to learn and retain a language, it breeds incentives. I believe that this multilinguality is also part of why we've been so eager to play the diplomacy game, being able to communicate clearly with all your neighbouring countries even though they might not speak the same language is a huge boon especially in a time when English had not been established yet as a lingua franca. And this is part of the reason why we were so eager to jump on the EU and NATO bandwagons from the beginning, and likely also one of the reasons why their headquarters are in Brussels and not somewhere else.

I think it has to do a lot with that the kids are learning formal english (polite). When I was in japan, a lot of the english students wanted me to teach slang and practice with them. I did 😂 but I reminded them you only talk like that with your friends. I stressed it is important to know when to call someone a “homie”, like don’t call your boss that.

English tests in my country (Hungary) also had ridiculous topics when I was in school. recycling, planning a trip and shit like that, that even in my mother language would take me hours of preparation to talk about. on my test I got family as topic. and my family is so fucked up, I couldn't really say anything that wouldn't concern the teacher. on top of that the stress and I could only say my mother has brown hair. they really should come up with easy topics. something ppl actually talk about with others.

There are several interesting points in this article and this video. When learning the language, it’s easier to grasp and practice the language when there are occasions to use it (as for many other topics). When I learned Spanish in the international program, the teacher took situations and occasions for the students to practice the language, i.e., go to a Peruvian or Mexican restaurant with Spanish-speaking staff to make us practice Spanish, learning Spanish songs, enjoy hispanic food, movies, etc. Granted, this may not be possible or as accessible in Japan and maybe other countries, but it helps to have some form of immersion, even if not 100%. There may be something about the culture and society too: if vacation and traveling in a foreign country are some things that people commonly observe and practice, then the openness to learn and enjoy other cultures also include learning the language and appreciating the language. I learned French in school as it was the law - English was a “second language” only taught starting in 3rd grade at the time. Yet I knew English earlier because we travel to the US often, watched the news in English, newspaper was in English. Neither are my native language. Thanks for sharing this, Joey. I like your take of editorials on this news.

So I was born in Estonia (shoutout to every Estonian who watches Joey btw, tibud olete) and English now is the most important thing in my life. I could not go to uni in the Netherlands without being able to listen, speak, write etc in English and nor could I have found such amazing friends along the way. Obviously it won't be like that for every Japanese person but also when I am back in Estonia then I find so many foreigners who just come up and ask for help or something about history (just to note, we are usually really ''introverted'', similar to Japan but we will still help people in need, like the Japanese). Just for that reason alone (though it's only in the touristy places) Japanese should learn at least basic conversations in English, you never know you might make a friend or help a foreigner understand your culture better. P.S. English helped me to understand and study other languages much easier, such as Spanish, German and Dutch (haven't studied a whole lot though, only to speak a bit)

I learned the basics of english at school (France is not the best country to learn english at school, trust me) and I got better alone, now i can understand it really well, and i speak and write it well enough so that it can be understood by others peoples. I am still a student, but it already helped me a lot ! I study ecology, and being able to read and understand scientific articles and thesis in english is really hepful to learn more and more. I also had to speak with english speaker to ask about their way to manage nature and learning about other countries' way of doing things is really helpful to have an open mind... (I'm sure i made a lot of mistakes in this text, but i'm tired and don"t want to correct them so sorry u native speakers)

I grew up in Germany, where English was mandatory since 4th grade and is now mandatory since 2nd grade I believe. I learned a lot of English through RU-vid and video games (Sonic was a major English teacher for me as a kid because he never had any dub, it always was English with German subtitles) When I was in 10th grade I also started speedrunning and Live streaming because of the speedrunning and that boostet my confidence and English speaking skills by a huge amount. But there were a lot of people who spoke terrible English because they did not engage with English media as much and they just didn't care I think it's insanely useful for travelling, for my work (software developer) for my hobbies like watching twitch, RU-vid, Movies and Shows with original audio, live streaming in english etc

i did learn english in school as not the first language, but i only learnt some very basic things while not learning others. so most of my knowledge of this language comes from reading manga scans (translated in english) or youtube videos. to make you understand how much the internet(and not a school teacher) actually taught me english, i can add that i also learnt french in school, but at the same time hating the way it was taught to me and now i remember just some vague small things

Hi! I’m learning Japanese as my 5th language. I generally dislike learning languages but of course once you know one, you gain access to so much new culture that was locked away from you before, not to mention accessing completely new modes of thinking. My education (one of the European Schools in Luxembourg, 12 years total of primary+secondary education, 6-18) had us learn 3 compulsory languages. The European schools have a system of language sections; there are parallel classes for native tongues, like English, French, German, Spanish, etc. If I recall correctly there were 9 or 10 of them at mine. They were all mixed for classes in the 2nd language, so each L2 class had a mixture of 9 nationalities that picked that 2nd language; and the teacher would only speak english (for L2 En. Some also picked french, and 5 years later when L3 became compulsory, they would usually pick english). You couldn’t really communicate with your neighbours outside of your second language, or the teacher, so if you had something to say, you had about an hour a day, 5 days a week, for about 6 years to figure it out. After that there were less classes, but other subjects like PE, art, history, geography, music, philosophy, economics, were all in your second language, plus at that point you also had another language to worry about. I ended up communicative at spanish (4) and french (3), and of course fluent in polish (1) and english (2). If I knew I’d study typography and like linguistics back then, I would have probably also picked latin and ancient greek. Still, even with 4 languages out of the 6 I should have picked, I’ve been having an easy time structuring my own study of Japanese in a way that I know is suited for how I learn best. I’ll get a teacher once I need one to progress, and I will know roughly when that will be. Well then, your honour, now that you know my credentials, let us proceed with the case; I think a lot of classes in second language should be the norm, not just the actual language class. It makes you communicative. Pretty much everyone in my graduating year who had english L2 is fluent now. None of us will have to study english again to any technical capacity like grammar or syntax. Most of us sound ‘european’ with an ambiguous accent coming from a bunch of languages but could convincingly produce a neutral english, except the french, but whatever, the french are hopeless. They invented the conjugations of le verbe être. Learning some functionally different languages also allows you to start thinking in different ways, especially if you’re the internal monologue type of thinker. The most extreme example would be toki pona, I could imagine that if students learnt it as a third language, it would open up a lot of possibilities, since being a conlang designed for simplicity, it borrows features from many different languages. I find that multilingual people are generally more open to new things, aware of the world, and less dogmatic. Even if one of the cultures they interact with on a ‘first-name’ basis has a heavy bias in some direction, having access to another culture can help shift that away towards balance, inner peace, and 間 in the needlessly esoteric spiritual sense. The media you can consume widens. You stop thinking in binaries, for instance, there is no longer a single line of ‘literary geniuses’. There are parallel lines. Shakespeare could not have been French, but Stéphane Mallarmé could not have been english. The way you count in spoken Japanese is completely different than in any language I speak fluently, and having no future tense is also quite unique (though I guess English doesn’t have an inflectional future tenses either.) Languages without grammatical gender treat objects differently than those without. You can only experience the world through your senses and process it through thoughts, so having thoughts that interpret things completely differently is like a freaky set of spiritual extra magical brain senses. I know it might sound a bit too magical for any rational alpha males who mansplained nietzsche to their high school girlfriends in the audience. Well, the short (and objective rational male) of it is that you become a more eclectic person. Better opportunities? Sure. Easier life? Sure. Improving range of sounds you can produce to pronounce foreign names better and for learning future languages? Sure. Improved ability to whip out google translate when you’re blanking on a word in your native tongue but happen to know it in your 2nd or 3rd? Yes, common benefits. But then there is the whimsical of it that I like. You sound different, your accents mix and make something new and unique. You become a more chill person holistically, not performatively.. usually, anyway. You know more. Even as someone who doesn’t *like* learning languages, I can appreciate everything that comes of it. Language education is not just missing in Japan, it’s missing almost everywhere in the world. I think 2 languages are a good start, but compulsory 3 is also pretty awesome, and gives you a lot of ground for working on other languages in your own time if you wish to. Even if you can’t afford to travel, or if you’ll go right ahead and forget your third language, having a period in life where you’re learning this black box from a completely ignorant perspective, analytically, is a small cognitive miracle and provides you with an ATLA Iroh-level understanding of practice in picking up new skills or learning long term things, akin to learning to play a musical instrument or practicing martial arts for a long time (they also come with cultural benefits same as languages!), the key difference being that many tasks you get in jobs that are not physical labour will benefit more from a 2-4+ year brain practice project in your portfolio than having spent a hundred hours on wrist and finger independence exercises for a Chopin Étude. Foiled again by the double thirds! Not to discredit musicianship or martial arts. I too plead guilty of music myself. Idk man I just feel like learning a language or two is good for you, holistically.

(Almost) Major in English Teaching here. I remember one of my teachers shitting on us due to the fact Mexico was one of the many countries that were slacking in English globally, like it was our fault or something. I agree, two years of lock down during the pandemic really damaged students performance. I spent four semesters facing my computer and I asure you I don't remember 90% of the things we saw, which is a shame because in a major like mine we see things like linguistics, a bit of translation, interpretation, English composition. Things that I believe really help you as an English learner. Can't imagine how it went down for students in Japan.

Being able to understand and speak to people from around the world was really important to me when I was younger. So learning English from a young age at school has really helped me alot and it has saved me. Also I pretty much have learned to speak English to much now I always forget stuff in Norwegian now xD. But I don’t regret it one bit I wouldn’t feel complete without English at this point.

Me and my siblings went to Japan in 2019 and whilst we were at the imperial Palace in Kyoto some Japanese students came up to us and tried to talk in English (I know basic Japanese and had Japanese lessons prior to coming so could speak to them a bit) They spoke some sentences that they'd practiced but had no idea what we were saying. Fair enough we are English and maybe they expected an American accent but the region we are from in the UK is known for having a fairly easy to understand accent haha

As a Hungarian, I can safely say that learning how to speak English did wonders to my life, as I realized that I could find much more information on the internet in English than in Hungarian (no surprises there). At first, I just used my knowledge for listening to music, watching shows, playing videogames, crocheting based on others' patterns, etc. However, recently, watching youtube videos became an excellent and really fun way of studying biology for me, which is a ton of help since I'll have to take an advanced level exam (Matura exam) of biology at the end of secondary school so that I can apply for psycology in college, and in this country, how high you score in those kind of exams determines whether or not you get into college. So, to anyone who's reading this comment, learning English is pretty cool. (But you probably already know that. )

"How much has English helped you?" Considering almost every piece of content I consume, be it videos, articles, books and so on is in English, I'd say it helped me quite a bit! Seriously now, English is THE global language. EVERYTHING is in English! It's not that knowing English opens many of doors and makes a lot of knowledge accessible - we've come to the point where NOT KNOWING English is a DISADVANTAGE! I can't even imagine being unable to access all of the information that can be found on the web (which is primarily in English). Passing up on learning English is like being nearsighted, but refusing to wear glasses. So... Yeah, I'd say it's really, really important to know English. It definitely has been crucial in my life, so far!

Language production is extremely difficult in any second language, even to express simple ideas. I've been studying Japanese for 3+ years and I can still barely express what I'm thinking sometimes.

I believe the situation between my country (Mexico) and yours when it comes to English is quite similar. I started learning English when I was in 4th grade and now, nearly 20 years later, I'm an English as a foreign language teacher. I loved learning it and now I use it as much as I do my native tongue, if not more some days (sometimes it's not even work related). However, I teach HS and MS kids and let me tell you that they usually aren't interested at all in learning another language. Usually, this is due to that same argument you mentioned "why learn it if I'm never leaving my country?" And I think, until that mindset is changed, the attitude towards learning it won't change.

This is a great video. I'm working as an English teacher in a completely average highschool and there's as big barrier in terms of speaking. I focus every one of my lessons on speaking practise, presentations and confidence building.

English isn't my tongue. I've been learning it from a very young age at school, but it hasn't really helped me to be able to understand and use the language. The only thing that actually helped me and that I still do is self-learning. Learning a new language can be really beneficial as you open up a new world to explore. The decision to improve my English was one of the best decisions I've ever made. The amount of media I'm able to consume and enjoy right now is definitely worth it.

The test sounds like what Finnish high schoolers had to go through to get nationally graded. The listening comprehension was fast-paced and we took a lot practice tests and still answering the open questions feel really difficult. Also there's no spoken part lol

Hey Joey hearing yourself mention how some people may end up forgetting how to speak within the lingo from their homeland totally made myself feel so very thankful that both my parents have been enjoying numerous kinds of Indonesian music when at home or even within their cars during every year of our lives here within Western Australia and I still regularly listen to a number of meaningful songs within different languages from other corners of the Earth that usually have my mood going through the roof with joyfulness so I thank you for reminding myself man 😎

It really helps to grow up hearing and trying the sounds of other languages. It's difficult to learn to create sounds that you're not familiar with, and that is very discouraging to many people.

Learning English as a second language has for sure been the single most valuable thing I've ever learned! It just expands your whole personal, professional, and general information gathering abilities and expands your cognitive horizon from just 1 (or perhaps a few) countries speaking another language to essentially the whole world.

Yeah... in my country English class was super bare bones. Only my personal interest in english media got me serious enough to invest my free time into learning it. It wasn't exactly "studying", more like: Reading, watching, playing stuff in English and bit by bit it just stuck to me. Currently learning Japanese and my goal is to get at least N3 .

Hello there Joey. Never have i ever clicked on a sponsor link so fast. It's actually a fun game. Thanks TheAnimeMan xD

I work with many Japanese professionals in Aviation and all the design technical specs are done in English. Despite their experience or years of exposure in the U.S., speaking English isnt their strong suite, but they can read/write and understand very complex topics.

As someone who failed all my language classes (I only know a few French words) I completely understand why it’s so difficult for these kids to understand English. Hearing a language is far easier for me then writing it or trying to pronounce the words

I live in Russia and kinda stumbled upon English and started learning it on my own while in school. And it feels like a superpower, it's like a whole world is unlocked to me. It always feels like I have so much new to tell to other people. While English is compulsory in Russian schools, people usually don't learn it well enough to actually use.

Actually in Junior School in Japan, in English class we talk about recycling and reusability and actually have used the plastic bags as an example (though Uk and Japan) and it is in our textbooks recycling and reusing (One World English Junior High School ). Also in elementary school, students have to talk about their dream goal, write about it and present it (One World English Elementary School ). So there is a chance they do have knowledge on this. One thing to note, I teach 90-95% in English and my students scores are now in their mid 90's average. But I know many English teachers who only teach in Japanese as they aren't confident speaking English.

so, i'm from belgium, and learning english did help me a lot with finding more content to explore (books, movies, your videos as well, games) and to understand some of my favorite franchises that i've grown up with (pokemon is a good example. we had no dutch version of the game). it helped me find new friends too that i met irl as well. since they only speak english, i can enjoy talking with them, watching movies with them and not having to worry about a big language barrier. you may ask then if my french is any good, being from belgium, and sadly i have to say: my french is bad. i can do the bare minimum. we learnt it at school, but i had no opportunity to maintain the language too. i had nobody to speak french with, i didn't bother reading in french because, well, not much of my favorite things that i enjoy are exclusively in french. if i see some or hear some words again, i do remember and recognize some words i've learnt before, but i still can't hold a conversation in french at all. it also doesn't help that if i try to speak it to explain something (i worked at a convention as a volunteer and had to tell people not to block the view of the stage by sitting down rather than standing in front of people) that they reply back really fast and also tend to get angry that i can't hold a full discussion about why they don't want to move and stick to the same words. it's a bit intimidating, honestly. it makes me not want to try and talk in french because of it ^^' but i tried anyway. i guess that's something.

Personally, learning English has made a *big* impact in my life and I'm so proud for taken a huge interest in english since I was a kid. Big shout out to the Barbie movies for getting me into english

Norwegian here, English has been extremely helpful. I enjoy everything that has to do with computers, and the resources out there in English is huge. It also happens to be the Lingua Franca of the world, so if something is translated into a single other language, chances are that language is English. I don't expect subtitles in Norwegian, but there's almost always an English one.

As a swede who started learning english at age 8, it has become one of the most important skillsets in my life because I fell in love with a Uruguayan and ended up moving accross the world to be with him. I am now learning spanish (in english) which makes it my my 4th language, because i also know german before that. I speak english daily with my boyfriend and it has gone so far that I struggle with swedish these days because I rarely speak it. There isn't even an ikea here haha. That's how far I am from the swedish language 🥲

I started learning english at second, maybe third grade, if I remember correctly and I'm still learning and will continue to do so. It has been immensively helpful, and basically has been saviour throughout adulthood in job hunting among other things and has made my current career in IT. I could've never got this far, without it. I was never great or even good in any other subjects in school, mostly because I just didn't pay attention or didn't listen most of the time. However english always was the thing for me, or languages in general, and I am glad that I actually bothered to learn it. I used to talk out loud whenever I was doing homework or some such, as silly as it sounds. I also played alot of online games, which of course helped out a ton with writing, sentence structure and such. In my honest opinion, it is one of the fundamental languages you should learn aside your own native language, atleast a bit to get by in everyday life. It's such a valuable skill to have.

Simple reason. Because if a Japanese person lives in Japan, he/she does not need English. How many people in the world seriously study a foreign language they do not use? When taking high school or university entrance exams, English is one of the subjects of the exam, so people study it, but when the exam is over, they forget about it. Japanese who live in Japan but need English because they have a job, organization, or school that involves foreigners study English so that they can speak English (conversational English).

i live in Mexico and work for a US company, so yes, learning another language can give you more opportunities to get a job.

I asked several of my language partners that are native Japanese about this too. Although their answers were at least 3 of the 6 of them were bullied when they started speaking better non-片言 in school because some of their peers thought they were being a "smartass" about making the rest of the students look stupid/not good at English. One of them mentioned that the teachers themselves focus more on just reading/writing while they themselves do not speak English correctly. If you were lucky to have a native English speaker, you could get some better speaking experiences, but due to how crappy English programs like JET are, it seems that until fairly recently with Joey mentioning the whole mandate on learning it, it seemed the school systems in Japan were hell-bent on not making things easy for JET people to reliably stay in one location. Anyways, after they could study abroad or when they graduated high school and would study on their own time, they continued to improve their English speaking, and how I ended up running into them (through a language learning app).

I've learned English from the 5th year of school onward in Portugal and it has been fundamental both professionally and to meet and socialize with people on the internet and outside my country. I do think it was easier for me because movies and cartoons weren't dubbed back when I learned so it was pretty easy to immerse myself in the language. I know that with the advent of streaming it's fairly easy to have shows streamed in different languages but for example, my parents that rather watch dubbed shows on netflix than in English, it comes down to comfort over language immersion I suppose.

So as a German who learned english up to a point that I consider almost native, it helped me a LLLLLOT. Just to get it out of the way, I was literally never interested in learning english, it just somehow happened with me consuming english stuff like your videos 😂 so back to the main point, english gave me a bigger spectrum of what I can consume. I would generally say that the crazier stuff happens in the english speaking community. We just don't have someone like Mr. Beast or Pewdiepie or even someone like you in the german community. I can also connect to different communities perfectly well like I am currently writing a comment to exactly do so. And at last, the most important thing for me. My god, researching stuff in english is SOOOOOOO much better, holy shit 😂 you can basically find 20× more things in english than in german, it's insane. Especially right now. I am trying to study in japan and if I couldn't research this stuff in english, I would likely just not find my answers (and my japanese is currently not good enough). So learning english (by accident 😅) literally opened me up to the world, even if that sounds a little bit crazy 😂

“an US 9th grader, so an Australian 6th grader” Everyone outside of the US and AUS: 👁️👄👁️

Bruv! I love when you make these kinds of videos. Have you thought of getting a couple books on language acquisition theory? It seems you have the linguist bug in you. Love your content. Greetings from the Inland Empire in sunny, sunny California.

here in the philippines, we have a dedicated english class for most schools(i dont know about public schools tho but i know for a fact about private schools) but i never really learned english in my school, i learned about 95 to 99% of my english here in the internet and maybe some handful of books. so far tho, it has affected my life greatly to learn english by myself. i can use a massive chunk of the internet, i can interact with millions of other people who also know english, hell i might even interact with somesome who also knows english in this comment section for all i know. it has also helped me in my work(grocery bagger) i interacted with a southern American couple very positively since i also spoke decent english.

I grew up in the Philippines and English is our second language. Being fluent in two languages is awesome since some foreign said its not easy to learn tagalog.

I mean, if you live in a strong monoculture society, and NEVER HAVE PLANS TO BRANCH OUTSIDE of your culture, what would motivate someone to learn another language? Seriously. Most times people learn a second language, maybe for business, friends, heritage, travel, etc. I met too many Japanese who aspire to none of the above, except for being in Japan around Japanese people. Can't blame them I guess.

Definitely the encouragement from people around you and not just the environment can help, if not then interests on watching films, tv shows and documentaries in English helps a lot in my case where I lived in a country where English wasn't even practiced outside school. At the early age don't be discourage to start imitating your favorite actors or scenes on things you've seen, and if you get to know people who are proficient in English, do let them know when to correct you to adapt further.

That question about the plastic bag usage in New Zealand and Japan sounds like something that would be in a DELE or SIELE test (Spanish fluency test).

I think the main reason is that they tend to "japanesize" english word and say that it's not a japanese word. Like how Pink in japanese is said Pinku. It's not a miss-spelt "Pink", they just are convinced that Pinku is Pink in Japanese. And this happens a lot of times, to the point where if you say "your pronounce is wrong" they think that you are the one who can't speak english

This topic is quite interesting to be honest. I really did not know that the English language was a issue in Japan. I mean I live in South Africa and we have around 11 official languages and majority of the schools here have English as a mandatory subject that everyone must learn. For me personally, the English language was quite easy to learn. I think the thing that made it easier to learn was the fact that my older siblings used to speak in the English a lot when I was younger, and I was also exposed to various forms of media (mostly American tv shows of course). Maybe exposure to "English-type" media could also help when you want to learn that language. I don't know.

Sometimes, english tests can be really nasty. Those questions asked in speaking sections are sometimes very specific about one particular area which we can be unfamiliar with. General knowledge is very crucial here to be able to come up with a satisfactory answer to all these questions within a limited time. I think my English is okay enough to handle daily conversations irl and even academics but I had to prepare really hard beforehand to get a desired score. Also, schools in my country never encouraged speaking and listening while we had a lot of practice in reading and grammar. Our listening skills probably come from films and music xD

I’m a Dominican who grew up in Spain, where they teach English since primary school and it’s mandatory. It was harder for me to learn because I also had to learn Catalan, I think that not speaking and practicing the other two languages made it harder for me to learn them properly and to feel confident when speaking them. In some way, I was also learning Spanish, since they had a different dialect and I was nine years old, so I needed to learn all the grammar properly 😭. Fortunately, I liked English speaking music artists and RU-vidrs, which helped me A LOT on my speaking and listening. When I moved to the US, I changed my hobbies (anime and manga) to English, so I could get use to the place and the language. Even so, until I had my first job at Walmart and HAD to speak, I didn’t feel comfortable when speaking English (after high school and 2 years of college in the US). Now I feel guilty that my thoughts are in English and not Spanish 😞😞….

Regarding the question at the end, for me, it's kinda weird. Even though English is not technically my first language (being Swedish), I don't have any memories of not being able to speak English. I remember visiting countries like Switzerland and UAE when being 5 or younger, and definitely being able to communicate with the local populace using English at that age. Also, as someone who read a lot of books during childhood, I remember deciding to stop reading books in Swedish completely at age 11, since I just... preferred how they sounded in English (a large deciding factor for that may be that the latest Harry Potter book at the time; The Order of the Phoenix, wasn't out in Swedish yet at that point in time, and I ended up enjoying reading it in English a lot more than I had reading the earlier books in Swedish (that being said, the book version of TOotP, unlike its movie counterpart, is probably the best of the series, sooo... yea... that may also have influenced me)). Back to the question though... I enjoy being bi-/trilingual (Spanish being my third language), and except for speaking with friends/family, I rarely use Swedish at all, despite still living in Sweden. In most cases, English is the only language you really need, so why should you NOT simply master the language that is arguably the lingua franca of the world?

As someone from the US, I definitely understand why it would be beneficial both for the kids and for Japan as a country if more Japanese people spoke English. The being said though it's hard for me to sit here and judge other countries for not speaking enough English considering my country's abysmal efforts to teach our kids foreign languages. We literally live in probably the most diverse country in the world, with large populations of various foreign language speakers, but yet we can't be bothered to make a genuine effort put at emphasis on foreign language learning in school.

I did 2 years of French in junior high school and retained very little. 2 and a half months of online Japanese before a 2 week trip didn't really help me have any conversations but made me feel like I have made a polite effort and everyone I spoke to (I can't really say with lol because I couldn't actually have a conversation) obviously appreciated it. I came across a lot of hospitality staff who spoke some English and that made my trip much easier.

I am more or less an extreme example in the difference of what a good motive for learning does to the learning process. I live in Finland, which has two national languages; Finnish and Swedish. Household and other people around me have always spoken Finnish. Actual classes regarding the subject start from grade 1 (age 7). English being a mandatory subject in school from grade 3 (age 10) onward and Swedish, despite being one of the main languages of the country, the learning process didn't start until grade 7 (age 14). All languages more or less continue until the end of the "comprehensive school" years aka grades 1-9 or ages 7-16, high school being an optional 3 years added on (I didn't take it, can't speak on how stuff is organized there). To this day I only know a few singular words of Swedish, but I would describe myself as close to fluent in English. I would put this down to just using the English language actively in everything before, during and after my school days. I consume almost all of my media and entertainment in English. I never had a proper use for Swedish outside of MAYBE needing it in work life. No medium has so far been considered to be better experienced in Swedish rather than Finnish or English, so my only motivation to even learn was just to get a passing grade. It also didn't help that my teacher for some reason put a super high emphasis on correct pronunciation rather than the correct way to use those words. I can sure as hell pronounce å correctly but I have no idea what I'm saying! When I compare myself to peers who know Swedish, but don't know English, our lives and such aren't that different, but I do tend to see a trend of small mindedness and a lack of understanding for foreign influences. This by no means an insult to those kinds of people, just an observed trend and exceptions to this are plentiful.

Germans cant speak English either... Like most of us understand English but don't speak it. (When i went through my verbal english exam, the examiners told me to move to London because my English was so good, I'm not even joking. I can confidently say I'm fluent lol)

this isn't necessairily problematic, english is forced upon the world. I'm not mad japan doesn't speak portuguese or czeh. But I understand the pragmatical economic utility.

I'm from Bulgaria, an Eastern European country. Growing up, the only channel that had cartoons all day long was in English, which motivated me to learn it, but also immensely helped because I already knew a lot of the grammar and vocabulary that we were learning at school through watching episodes in English over and over again (there were lots of reruns on that channel). Personally, that experience fostered a love of languages and English specifically. I genuinely think it is a beautiful language! Where I live, most people have to learn it at school, but schools vary in terms of when they start teaching it. Many people start learning in primary school, some in middle school and a few only start learning after getting into secondary school. Speaking English has been eye-opening! Being able to understand it helped me learn more about Western culture, I also did my Bachelor's degree in England. I am currently an English teacher. So I have had many opportunities thanks to having learned English. As for my fellow Bulgarians, many high skilled jobs require a knowledge of English and for this reason quite a few people are interested in learning it.

13:30 wow literally had a spine tingling hit of nostalgia hearing the Japanese Ambulance siren in the background But yeah my father was multi-lingual (French & German fluent, Italian Spanish Russian conversational and Malay/Indonesian Bahasa and Mandarin Chinese elementary/limited proficiency) and yet somehow never passed this skill/passion down to all of his kids and only English was spoken in the house , only one of my sisters is properly multi lingual (French and Greek) another has basic latin reading but that was picked up as a necessity of their job) and my Japanese was always bad, even when I shared house with two native speaker and spending a couple of years in total in Japans, but now its getting worse over the years from non practice/non exposure

Bomb, Tomb, Blood, Food.. English lol

For a while I was learning Japanese, stopped for a little bit, now I'm focusing on Spanish and Hawaiian and the most important thing I've learned is, when learning how to say something in that language, you have to accept that you are going to sound ridiculous and silly for a long time in the beginning. 6 months into Spanish and I'm finally starting to read and speak it better.

I'm German and I had the good fortune to have an excellent English teacher in school. She saw my potential and urged me to begin reading books in English. I started doing that at 16 and never really stopped (I'm now almost 34). I also started watching shows that are originally in English without subs (before it was cool hehe) and it improved my vocabulary and my hearing comprehension so much! While reading Harry Potter in English I discovered how many mistakes happen during translation and I never really trusted translations anymore. Of course I have to rely on translation of other languages, but I mostly consume English and Japanese media anyway. Also learning Japanese (albeit only to N3) made me realize that language is more than just for communication. I realized that you change your whole way of acting, speaking and feeling when you change the language. It's really fascinating. I frequently get annoyed at official subtitles for animes for example on Netflix because they sometimes make parts of sentences up that aren't really there. Back in the day there was no better thing than fansubs because those were done with so much passion and love for the material. But I digress. Languages are a beautiful thing that connects people and I wish that more people would take the trouble to learn languages. (Also sorry but English and German mess up my sense for which words are written in uppercase).

Amazing video Joey.

I can't blame them, major in English (not second language/linguistics), it's hard even european countries struggle with it and their languages are closer to English 😅 Japanese and English got 1 thing in common, context, but even then English context is harder

ayo wadup its your boi

Italian here, speaking English quite fluently. I started since the Elementary School (6 years) and I've always loved it, maybe that's why it never felt hard for me to study it. It helped me A LOT, considering that I'm working for USA as a comic artist, I can handle everything by myself, from the relations with editors and publishers to understanding and intepreting the scripts. I've been in Japan several times, my first was in 2000, and not being able to talk in English is a bit frustrating, even if you can perfectly stay there without speaking Japanese. But it's a bummer 'cause I'd love to share more with the locals, and it's pretty hard to find some that can talk good enough to share that kind of conversation. I'll move in Tokyo for a month with a collegue in November, to work there anjd fully living a city and a culture that has always influenced me in my work, and I'm trying to study a bit of japanese before that time, cause I'd love to live better the experience, even if I know that I can't make it on time. At least Italian and Japanese are similar cause words soounds exactly as they are written.

Learning the basics and vocabulary was definitely very important for me. but that stopped after 5 years and I didn't learn anything in high school (we still had english classes but they were a waste of time). playing games in english and watching english movies and youtube videos helped a lot though. I now actually prefer reading novels and mangas in english but speaking is still a bit rough since I never talk in English to others D: