The second most popular European Language after English in Japan? -

A friend of mine who is a linguist brought up this question to me, and i m rather curious myself now. English aside, what is the 2nd most popular European language to learn in Japan? French? German? Spanish? Italian?

Here s a survey that shows French then Spanish, but both are beaten by Korean and Chinese. http://whatjapanthinks.com/2007/01/31/la...

I would think French

I think Portuguese. There are more than 300,000 Japanese Brazilians living in Japan. I think this number is larger than French learners.

I have known several Japanese people who knew at least some Spanish. The sounds are very similar to the Japanese language. I was once lost in a Japanese city, and got directions in Spanish from a Japanese man. I seriously doubt that you will find many German speakers in Asia. To the Asian people I have known, German seems to be even more alien than English. Looks as if things have changed---my time in Japan was loooong ago.

The population of speaking European except English is very rare in native Japanese. Immigrants and short time visitors of their family speak their mother tongues so Brazilian and Peruvian are speaks Portuguese and Spanish respectively. The numbers of learning European languages itself by Japanese, (because other native speakers don t need to learn it there in Japan) the difference is almost negligible to compare with each other between those French, German, Spanish and Italian. Every numbers are so few.

There are over 1 million people from USA and over 1 million from Brazil living in Japan, every other group is in the low ten s of thousands. So many people speak English and Portuguese. Also French is thought in many schools as it is in many parts of the world.

It is definitely French! Many private schools even teach French in addition to English! And a long time ago, French was the no.1 world language and was taught in schools here too. Someone who can speak French is regarded as a highly educated person and gets a lot of respect. Many chefs and bakers speak French too. Many elderly doctors speak some German as they had to learn medical terms in German. Opera singers and musicians (most of them living abroad though) also speak German.

French.

Japanese who s speaking german , i ld like to heard that. LOL 2nd language is french