Do alot of people in japan speak english?

Do alot of people in japan speak english and would it cost alot to hire a translator Im sure I wont be going to japan for a few years at least just doin a little research on it. Oh yea and alot of the signs are in english and japanese in the big cities right.

 

that's a funny question. japan has the worst rate of English speakers in Asia. Yes, maybe 5% can speak English with another 10% knowing som epretty poor English To be honest, you'd better learn Japanese if you actually want to get more than a few words spoken to you. The signs however are in English and Japanese. Where I live they are in Japanese, English and Korean But there are also quite a few Japanese olny signs

Yakumo

 

shall we blame katakana for that?

 

The sad thing is is that everyone studies English in all grades past elementary school, and often during college, yet still cant' string a sentence together.

 

what ??? is that true ? is my english better that some in Japan ? and i thought my english sucked ? (well not to insult any japanese at all)
hmm that is special.

Peace
WolverineDK

 

Japanese are pathetic at English and like GaijinPunch said, they study it from the age of 6 to 20 yet still haven't got a clue how to speak. Truly pathetic. Then they have he cheek to call non Japanese that can't speak Japanese stupid.

Yakumo

 

what is odd though is alot of import games have some baisic english and even the comapnies put their names in english, what is the reason for this in japan if they are not good at english?

 

To look cool ! Japanese products are full of shit English or just pure bull shit English that sounds so snooty as if the drink or what ever it is will change your life forever or give you multiple orgasms.

Yakumo

 

I am guessing it's an American influence. On the surface, Japanese culture has taken over many aspects of the 'Western lifestyle', this might be a reason for English being used in many titles.

Also, they might want to get more international recognition by English names, although 'Nintendo', 'Konami',... are 100% Japanese names (in romaji).

 

Remember I wrote about crazy japanese bullshit English? Well here's some that I saw today.


And this one isn't even that bad.

Yakumo

 

Why thank you, I will enjoy my good taste with my smile! :-D

Thanks for the new sig Yakumo!

 

Yeah, I thought the "multiple orgasms" bit was pretty funny. They don't honestly put shit like that on packages/signs/aderts/whatever, do they?

 

I doubt it, but you'll find shirts with inappropriate sayings on them from what I've read.

 

They don't actually say a product will give you multiple orgasms but the way they go one about it you'd think that the product would

Yakumo

 

I don't live in Japan, I just went there for a week and a half, so Yakumo has waaaaay more experience with this than I do, but I found that in far more Japanese people can read English as opposed to being able to speak it.

If you write something down for them, especially for a younger person who's studied English more recently, they're much more likely to know what you're talking about. They don't hear American spoken English very often, so they neither speak nor listen to it very well (better than your avg' American's Japanese though), but I found they're much better at reading it.

Lots of signs in English, at least in the city.

If you're just visiting Japan, hiring a translator would be ridiculous. If you have a couple years, just learn some conversational Japanese. You don't need to know much at all, just know how to apologize, how to ask where things are, know some nouns of stuff you'll need (i.e. beeru), etc...

Also, learn your Katakana. Most menus are in Katakana, and they're English words, just spelled out with Japanese characters (the kana). So if you know what sounds the symbols relate to, you can sound out the words and read the menu/sign. Helped me immensely.

 

Thanks guys sorru I havent replied in a while. wow I would think japenese would speak more english than they do but I have heard it is one of the hardest languages in the world to learn with all the rules and such so maybe that is why they are poor at speaking english.

BTW I heard the japenese dont have a word for surrender in theyre language is that true?

 

ah, you want a hard lenguage? try spanish.

 

or Dutch
(though nobody bothers anyway)

 

What's hard about Spanish?

 

try danish . (not the pastry !!!!)