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The topic I chose is topic number 10. Problems for learners in a country of your choice. And I will try to answer the question “why it might be more difficult for Japanese people to study English than any other country?” from my general knowledge about the Japanese language and society, and from my personal experience talking to many Japanese people who learn or teach English themselves. While Japan is an advanced country with one of the strongest economies, the level of English speakers there is quite low. That is due to various causes that might affect the difficulty of the English language from the Japanese perspective. 1. Phonetic explanation: The Japanese language contains no consonants: Indeed, having no consonants in your mother language may cause difficulties learning any language that contains them. Let’s look at a few American fast food companies’ names that were adopted to the Japanese language as well, and see the differences in pronunciation: McDonald’s will be pronounced in Japanese in this fashion: mekudonarudo, Burger king will be pronounced as baga kingu, Starbucks will be pronounced as sutabakusu. Looking at that, it might be clearer that Japanese people are not inherently used to use consonants not mentioning that they do not contain letters that the English language contains. for example, the Japanese language does not contain the letter L, it does not contain the sound “we” and will translate it into “ui”. 2. Grammatical reasons: Japanese does not contain plural form and it does not contain future tense: In addition to not having consonants, the Japanese language does not contain plural form (to be accurate, it does but it is only used for people and attached to pronouns). Hence, they will say (with literal translation): “I ate 3 apple today”. The Japanese language does not contain future tense as well. You can only use verbs in past and present tense. Hence, they will say (with literal translation): “tomorrow, I eat steak”. Not having these two key concepts in your mother language night make studying English a lot more difficult. 3. The Japanese society: strict and homogenic: Although we’ve past 20 percent of the 21st century, Japan did not take much influence from the western world regarding social codes and behavior. The concept of shame in the Japanese society is so strong, that Japanese people would rather not say a word in English, from the fear of making a mistake. In my experience traveling Japan, I found only a small number of people who were “brave” enough or willing enough to speak English. Fortunately, I picked up some Japanese as I traveled and was able to communicate. Besides the strict social codes, Japan is demographically homogenic. That means that they have a little to no chance of practicing with a native. To summarize, In this essay I wanted to answer the question “why it might be more difficult for Japanese people to study English than any other country?”. I gave 3 reasons that can offer an explanation to that question, starting from a phonetic explanation, to a grammatical explanation and finished with a social explanation. In my opinion for those reasons, Japanese people might find it harder to study English than any other country.
