Do Japanese people know English?

smukherjee19 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Yes, especially if people living in the city. I have known Japanese people who can’t speak English well but can read technical CS papers and understand well enough to give a summary and presentation in Japanese.

Just keep in mind they are usually very good in reading, okayish in listening, and kinda needs work on speaking. But that’s expected. If you live a daily life in Japan like the Japanese, you barely need to speak English, or hear it, if at all. Even the foreign staff at the convenience store speak Japanese good enough for them to carry on their duties.

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frumiousirc 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The average native Japanese speaker knows more English than the average native English speaker knows Japanese.

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photios 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yeah. I'm not a native English speaker and I spent significant time and effort learning the damn language. It paid off.

What's preventing Japanese engineers from doing the same?

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koito17 3 hours ago | parent [-]

> What's preventing Japanese engineers from doing the same?

The fact they don't really need it in their life (or job). English is definitely necessary if you work service jobs in Tokyo (to deal with tourists), but not much anywhere else.

Japanese is one of a handful of languages where one can complete a postdoc entirely within the language. Many languages are not like this. e.g. in the Phillipines, STEM subjects are almost entirely taught in English, since Tagalog simply doesn't have words to describe most of the concepts. The result is something like 90% of the coursework being in English, with random Tagalog words mixed in. The concept is called "Taglish" if I recall correctly.

This is unnecessary in countries like Japan, China, South Korea, etc. If you're applying to a graduate school in Japan (or China, or Korea), expecting to receive education in English is actually the edge-case, not the expectation.

Also, at least in my company, there is an interesting trend where people are deciding learning English isn't really necessary since AI translation has gotten "good enough" for most use cases.

	▲	photios 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> The fact they don't really need it in their life (or job). English is definitely necessary if you work service jobs in Tokyo (to deal with tourists), but not much anywhere else. But the linked article seems to imply the opposite. I mean, working with an English PM sure sounds like the language is one of the job's core competencies.

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cinntaile 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The average Japanese person doesn't know English.