RSS

Japanese people aren’t actually impressed with your Japanese

Mon, May 19, 2008

Japanese Culture, Language, Society

You know, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but sometimes it’s my job. If you’ve ever used your Japanese with a Japanese person, you know how impressed…they seem. You say something (anything, even if it’s only vaguely Japanese) and they will respond with ecstatic claps, squeals of joy, and “jyouzu jyouzu sugoi jyouzu” over and over like a broken record.

Gosh, I really don’t want to do this, but I thought you should all know the truth. Here’s what Japanese people actually think about your Japanese:

Now, I don’t want to get you down. I don’t want to uninspire you. It’s not your fault. You can blame the philosophers, the “intellectuals”, and the cultural anthropologists of the Japanese post-war era. Most of the blame can be put on them, amongst others.

You see, there is this thing called Nihonjinron, which basically means “Theory of the Japanese (people).” Right after World War II, Japan was feeling particularly sad. They had just lost the war, and they were being occupied by the Americans. Nihonjinron was this big thing that came along that helped separate the Japanese from the threat of western cultural influence. Nihonjinron is full of bogus theories that make the Japanese unique from everyone else.

Although there are a ton of Nihonjinron theories out there, here are a few of the more ridiculous ones, for your enjoyment:

  1. Japanese evolved from a separate set of primates, which makes them unique (and, to some, superior).
  2. Japanese have a special “masculine and feminine” that makes them unique. They believe that this feminine form of language came from thousands of years ago. Although it was proven that feminine language only came into existence in the Meiji Era, most Japanese still believe in this, and are taught this in school.
  3. Japanese brains are different from non-Japanese brains. More on this in the next point.
  4. And finally, the one that has to do with this article: The Japanese language is so unique that only people with specially developed (Japanese brains) can hope to ever be able to understand it and speak it. And this is why…

Japanese people aren’t actually impressed with your Japanese. Well, I shouldn’t say that. They are impressed, but mostly because they never expected you to be able to speak any Japanese in the first place.

You need to a flashplayer enabled browser to view this YouTube video

Japanese people think they are very unique. They think that they are the most unique and homogenized culture on earth. It is prejudice like this that causes them problems when it comes to internationalization.

So now, if you’ve ever wondered why Japanese people are so impressed by the littlest bits of Japanese, now you know. Don’t get discouraged, though! I’m not saying your Japanese is bad. It’s hard to become perfect. I mean, look at Japanese people who try to speak English. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a native Japanese person develop “perfect” Engrish. It’s tough both ways…though, I suppose the difficulty in English is probably due to the fact that only big Caucasians (who of course have bigger, specialized brains) can comprehend the vastness of the English language. Amerikajinron, anybody?

*disclaimer: This, of course, isn’t to say that every Japanese person thinks like this. This is just one explanation to the “why Japanese praise people speaking Japanese so much” theory.

  • Facebook
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Fark
  • Mixx
  • StumbleUpon
  • Google
  • Technorati
  • Pownce
  • e-mail
  • Sphinn
  • Reddit

This post was written by:

koichi - who has written 82 posts on Tofugu.com.

Koichi is a cool frood that knows where his towel's at. He created Tofugu, and is currently working on a few other projects as well: Koichiben & BoxedTofu.

Contact the author

Viewing 48 Comments