How often do you find a Japanese person in Japan that speaks English? -

I heard from a podcast that most adults in Japan have 3, 6, or 9 years of English training, most Japanese schoolchildren learn some English in school, and many mothers teach their children to be bilingual in English. How true is this? Do that many Japanese people speak English good? Or is it they barely speak English, like an American speaks Spanish?

I ve gotten to know a bunch of Japanese and visited Japan. It s like this, all Japanese study English in primary and secondary school but it s a very difficult subject (English contains sounds that don t exist in Japanese and follow unusual phonetic rules). One Japanese man was telling me that his English teacher wasn t fluent enough to give some American tourists directions... hence the recent influx of foreign English teachers. Many can read English better than they can speak it. Anyway many Japanese are shy to try to speak English, so it is hard to gauge their fluency. Some definitely seem to not speak a bit of English, others are very fluent.

Most Japn ppl do spend years studying English in their teen years but most of it is written and not focussed on spoken English. That is changing a bit now since many foreigners go to Japan to teach English in high schools. Despite this, it is still hard to say if this is enough for many ppl to communicate on a high level of English. But yes, a lot of Japn ppl have an understanding of English even if it is on a written/reading level. Japan is an island nation so they have fewer chances to really communicate with foreigners so if you visit a city outside of the big cities, you may not meet anyone who speaks English.

They learn to speak proper, standard English, not slang or conversational. Which is why it sounds more British English, rather than American English.

from wat i know, Japanese people do speak english but only the basics they would knwo words liek onematopia or soemthing like that. They would peobebly speak with a heavy accent too, unless their education was high in english. check this out on yahoo japan!

I live in a tourist town in Hawaii. We have many Japanese visitors. It is unusual that a Japanese tourist doesn t speak English and has a fairly good grasp of both vocabulary and grammar. They do have an accent, but I rarely have a problem understanding them. Japan places very high value on education.