Re: Culture clash

Phil Yff <phil.yff@xxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

Are you suggesting that:

The spoken Japanese language is much easier for a native English
speaker to learn after childhood, than it is for a native English
speaker to learn during childhood.

No.

Or are you suggesting that:

The spoken Japanese language is much easier for a native English
speaker to learn after childhood, than it is for a native Japanese
speaker to learn the spoken English language after childhood.

Yes.

If the latter, a greater percentage of native Japanese speakers
learn English after childhood than native English speakers learn
Japanese.

What relevance do you think this has to the ease of learning in each
case? How do you remove the factor of enormous economic pressure for
adult-NSoJ-learning-English, and very little the other way?

My evidence, on the other hand, is largely anecdotal. NSoE that I
speak with who have learned Japanese *outside* Japan to the point of
conversational fluency speak highly of how ordered and easily-learned
the (spoken) language is. Whereas NSoJ that I speak with struggle for
many years with English *immersed* in an English-dominant environment
and still frequently make frustrating corner-case errors that
significantly impede understanding.

The *perception* of these (anecdotally-selected) people, at least,
bears out the hypothesis that adult-NSoE-learning-Japanese has an
easier time than a corresponding adult-NSoJ-learning-English.

--
\ "I think it would be a good idea." -- Mahatma Gandhi (when |
`\ asked what he thought of Western civilization) |
_o__) |
Ben Finney
.

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