93 Hilarious Examples Of English Gone Wrong in Japan

According to the Japan Consulting Office, a global corporate training and consulting firm that has been operating since 2006, one of the biggest reasons why Japanese people struggle with English is the fact that Japan, being an island, has been isolated from the rest of the world for hundreds of years and with very limited immigration and a very homogenous culture, there was, and still is, little need to learn a foreign language. Most Japanese people can go about their lives without speaking any English.

"Beyond the lack of great need to use English, the way that English is taught in Japanese schools does not encourage communication or conversation," the Japan Consulting Office explains on its website. "Rather, the emphasis is on studying grammar, not talking or making yourself understood. Students learn vocabulary and simple sentences, but don't learn to use and speak the language."

The Japan Consulting Office says that Japanese people are known to be rather shy and find it very embarrassing to make mistakes in front of others. This perfectionist tendency makes it difficult for them to find the courage to speak without being sure everything they say is correct.

"Even in job interviews, only the applicant's TOEIC test score might be reviewed without ever checking [their] actual language skill level," the company adds.

Then there's the language itself. Japanese is very different from English and other Indo-European languages. This makes learning English a real challenge for many Japanese people.

For example, the word order in Japanese can be quite different from that of English. In English, the word order is usually as follows: [Subject] – [Verb] – [Object]. In Japanese, however, the usual order is often: [Subject] – [Object] – [Verb].

Japanese is also a highly contextual language, so subjects or topics can be left out. But if someone were to try the same thing in English, the result would often sound incomplete and confusing.

So, in other words, learning English as a Japanese speaker is about as difficult as learning Japanese as an English speaker. It's not that easy!

To put things into perspective, Japan ranks 96th out of 123 non-English-speaking countries in English proficiency, below Malaysia, South Korea, Nepal, Vietnam, Mongolia, Indonesia, and China.

However, even with the relatively small number of English speakers in the country, some are concerned that the Japanese language and literature may be overshadowed by the behemoth that is English.

For instance, in 2008, Minae Mizumura made waves with her book The Fall of Language in the Age of English, in which she traces the development of English and Japanese and argues for greater focus on Japanese-language education.

Mizumura argued that Japan should establish a national literary canon and better literature education, as fewer Japanese are able to read literary classics.

Surveys show that many Japanese evaluated their own reading habits similarly—in a 2014 study, 70 percent of respondents said that they believed people in Japan read fewer books than they used to.

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