I think people are just getting more lazy. More and more I know of are learning Japanese from -GASP- anime. I know, I know, its sad. But I personally didn't expect it to be *this* low.

I think actually the number of people wanting to learn Japanese went way up over the last couple of years. Seemed like some people thought it was the “in” thing to do. Now it's probably going down to more realistic numbers.

Plus there are a lot more resources for people who have questions about the language which may also reduce people searching just under those specific terms. I know LiveJournal has dedicated communities just for learning Japanese. So people will go there if they have questions instead of searching on Google.

In fact that brings me to something else, the trend of people not bothering to look stuff up on Google or Yahoo or wherever, but instead asking others to do it for them…but I digress.

Funnily enough, I thought it was the opposite. At my university in Australia, the first-year (beginners) Japanese course has well over a hundred participants, whereas last year (my year) it had only sixty or seventy. I think it is because manga and anime are becoming more mainstream (the people who watched pokemon as kids are growing up?)?

Other than that, I can see why it might be in decline. China is beginning to take over (or has taken over) as the major source of interest in the region…

I don't really care I don't follow fades. But I guess it's still funny to know.

Perhaps everyone has graduated from beginners classes and has gotten into good habits?

I can't say I'd complain if it happened to become less popular. It gets pretty annoying when people think you're nothing but another trendy. As for whether it actually fell in popularity or not I'm not really sure.

At the school I went to there were usually 4 Japanese 1001 classes every Fall. There are usually twenty-something people in each class. Just going to 1002 halves that. This is definitely the, “weed out the weeaboos” process. By the time I was at 3002 there were 7 of us. The following semester the university decided that this was too few and wouldn't allow them to have a class, so I had to attend another school to continue. Luckily my state has a plan for this sort of thing where you attend another school, but it more or less looks like you were at your home institution. I got to go to a very nice school and pay my lowly public school tuition for it (yay Georgia). But I digress. While I think a lot of it may have to do with the way you “researched” on google trends, I think there are probably other reasons that still make your “reseach” meaningful (sorry, don't mean to rag on your methods, but c'mon). I think perhaps the need for speakers has gone down. Americans don't tend to care a whole lot about other languages to begin with, and with the trend for other countries to force their children to learn English, language barrier becomes less of an issue as time goes on. Another part may be that Japan isn't this crazy place of myth anymore. Thanks to sites like this, you can find out most anything you would want to know about the place without so much as learning kana. But if we're talking about this in an America-centric way, I think Japanese still does quite well among the few languages most are willing to learn. Unfortunately, when I was in high school it wasn't even an option for me. It was either Spanish, French, German, or Latin (“Latin? WTF?” I know, right. I took it anyways). But now more and more high schools in the state (Georgia) are offering Japanese (and probably Chinese now). So while the trend may be in slight decline, I think it's more important to consider it relative to the whole of languages, and its rather high popularity in the first place.

I kind of feel like everyone who has started to learn Japanese has realized that the fastest way to learn (yes there is a fast way) is to study abroad in the Land of the Rising sun. Not to say that this is the only reason but it is a trend I'm starting to notice that a lot more people are going over sea compared to when my senpai or I went. Plus with the sudden increase of ebooks on torrent sites (not saying that I download RIAA) and other applications out there it's not funny that we see this trend. On top of that since most of the Japanese learners w/ in their on regions know each other it's not to uncommon for one person to find something and spread it to the others. I've ranted to much.

NOT Popular if you have a asshole teacher that likes to mislead the entire class and talk only about Japanese culture in a LANGUAGE class and teach ZERO grammar. It discourage people from taking it further, I think that some teachers should really check themselves in the mental hospital. Specially if they know that the students are on the beginning and still learning TE and TA form… And on top of that they don't support you at all with no help at all. Even tho everyone in the class is failing, the teacher still thinks he knows what he's doing. And before exams they dont review in class at all, and expect you to do it on your own… This is one of the reason why Japanese is NOT a popular language to learn.

How is it possible to find fellow Japanese learners where you live? I think I'm the only persona in over 100 miles trying to learn the language sometimes!

I think I read/heard recently that the JLPT enrollment (at least in the U.S) has been increasing steadily the past few years. I'll try to find the link….

I went to a very large state school, and the Japanese department has exploded over the last 5 or 6 years. Now I'm really curious to know what the trends are and where!

Actually, I tried comparing “learning japanese” with “learning korean” and “learning chinese” into a search engine, and I got entirely different results, with Japanese getting even more hits than Chinese, and the trends of all languages going down. This leads me to believe that people are simply Googling “Japanese language” less than they were in 2004 – probably because they are Google “Rosetta stone” more often – or simply the access of information has become so great that people are searching less for something like how to learn a language. They already know where to go. I don't think it has anything to do with it being less popular.

I just picked up learning Japanese last June and I'm never turning back, it's a great language to learn, and I went to Japan, lots of foreigners over there learning the language. I don't think google trends can be used to draw any correlations, especially when the “trend” is a function of how you throw in your syntax. You get entirely different results between “japanese language” “learning japanese” and “help with japanese”.

/ agree
maybe the people thaat in 2004 began learning japanese are now in an advanced state and they use online resources to learn the language..so they dont need to google it cause they already have the elements to study

I think trend for “japanese language” is similar to any other. I checked “english language”, “french language”, “russian language”, “italian language”, “spanish language”, “german language”, “polish language”, “korean language”, “chinese language”, they have similar trends, and I think the same is for any other one. Maybe people around the world really have less interest in languages. I only noticed hindi is anomaly.

Absolutely agreed. The amount of people who say: “ooooh, I don't know anybody else doing Japanese, it's always something I've wanted to do though..” Yea, right..

Or perhaps it's that more people understand more languages now? Which is good, right?

Looks like “learning” is a downwards thread, not only learning Japanese :

http://www.google.com/trends?q=learning&ctab=0&…

I blame ('cause I must blame something, don't I?) the Internet population shifting from mainly tech-savvy, smart people, to a more representative part of the population, including a greater and growing part of the unwashed masses. Which hate learning. Hmpf.

http://www.google.com/trends?q=gossip&ctab=0&ge… <– Now, this is a growing trend!

That's a very good point Philippe, as more people get on to the internet the demographic shifts towards a more representative sample of the general population. Away from educated tech-savvy people towards people less interested in learning something and more interested in what their favourite celebrity had for lunch.

If you are really interested in learning Japanese, it shouldn't matter what is trending, or even what your friends think, or even what reasons other people have for learning Japanese. Internal motivation matters most: Why do you want to learn Japanese?

If you can't answer this question then it's always going to be problematic for you.

I both agree and disagree that more people are learning all their Japanese from anime.

While I do believe that more and more people are getting exposure to Japan via anime, there are also more and more resources about Japan popping up online that people are tapping into.

The reason that I think the trend for learning Japanese is declining is that the internet has become so saturated with material that people already have enough sites bookmarked that they don't want to search for more.

I actually started a beginners Japanese language course at college this September. The first time I walked into the class the wasn't a spair empty seat in sight, it was incredibly packed which I really did not expect. I originally thought that the would be at the most, eight or so people but boy was I wrong!

When the teacher, who is actually Chinese but lived in Japan for a long time, asked everyone the reason as to why they want to study Japanese Language most people replied with pretty trivial answers. I personally am studying it because I intend on doing my degree in international business related to Japan and the was one other guy who had a Chinese origin who was planning the same as me. Everyone else there decided to learn Japanese to ether play Japanese video games or watch Anime in Japanese. A couple of people wanted to learn because they have Japanese relatives or are planning to take a vacation to Japan but over all, if this is the size of the class when Japan is going out of fashion then I would hate to see it when it was in fashion!

I know that during my time at college, there was a gradual shift from a balanced department to a China-centric department. I think this had more to do with a lot of students double-majoring in business/politics and Chinese studies, or just taking Chinese as their required foreign language. Most of the kids in my Japanese language classes were anime/manga fans…I can remember only a few who were there just because it wasn't Latin/French/Spanish/German. Only a couple were business/politics majors.

they're normally friends that share an interest in some type of Japanese culture, ie. anime, manga or J-music. Also if there is a meet up group around your area or a language learning club go out to those. That is how I meet other Japanese learners.

I have a small group of friends online (no one in real life) that are into anime and manga, but that's about it. No such meet up group or club exists where I live (which makes living where I do a living hell). I mean, imagine living somewhere where you are the only one like yourself around. Very alienating.

I envy you guys for either living in big cities or having more diverse things to enjoy where you live!

Very interesting charts. I think I checked out the google trend charts a number of years ago but completely forgot about them. I find it hard to imagine that Japanese as a language and culture is becoming less popular though. My reason for saying so is because the internet is becoming so engrained in our global culture that lots of media (anime, manga) that wasn't available before is now just a few clicks away.

In fact, if it weren't for this media, in combination with my wife, I doubt I ever would have began my Japanese studies. Stop by my Japanese learning blog some time and say hello – I could always use some extra inspiration from my readers :) http://japanesewithchris.blogspot.com

I think this just has to do with the internet maturing. People are becoming more and more familiar with their territory of interest, and have less reliance on a search engine as a result. When I first started using the internet, whenever I wanted to find some information, a search engine was my first stop. Now, with almost every aspect of my life, there is a go-to website that I already know of.

I do not think interest in learning Japanese has gone down. My gut tells me it is only going up. Frankly, there are just so many good websites for learning Japanese now. Whenever someone comes to me and is interested, I tell them that there are an overwhelming number of resources to learn the language. When I started a couple of years ago, I was impressed with what I found, but now there are even more. I would say in general, this fact is becoming more transparent to people, who can then pass on the information by word of mouth. We're moving out of a “darker” age, where one begins their quest by making some sort of shot in the dark like, “how do I learn Japanese”, on Google.

Anyway, this is a complex question, and one that probably can't be answered too reliably by using some google stats data.