I Think Some Japanese People Want To Speak English
Why to Japanese people answer me in English when I speak to them in Japanese?
A question that many foreign Japanese-speakers find themselves asking at one point or another.
I had been speaking Japanese outside of Japan for about a year when I first set foot in Tokyo. I landed in the country excited to exercise my language skills and headed right to the nearest JR ticket counter to ask for a map and to buy some tickets.
Prepared with my Japanese language skills and a level on confidence which was probably undeserved at the time, I walked up to the counter and made my request in full Japanese. The staff smiled, opened a drawer, and replied to me in what I can only describe as a near-embarrassing attempt at English which came out jumbled and incomprehensible…
I stood, confused.
Why… why when I spoke to her in Japanese, did she answer me in English? And in broken English at that…
I couldn’t understand what she said but didn’t want to make her feel as low as she had just made me feel, and so I put on a smile in return and nodded my head pretending to understand what she had just said to me.
This is a situation that is all-too-familiar for foreigners in Japan.
You say something to a Japanese person in Japanese, and they respond in English.
It’s frustrating.
When I first got to Japan, this bothered me like crazy… It would happen at restaurants, on airplanes, while shopping, and even with friends. And especially in the beginning it felt like a punch in the stomach every single time.
I would always doubt my Japanese skill when it happened. I would wonder if my Japanese was so bad that they felt the need to push the interaction into English just to achieve an acceptable level of communication with me…
But over the years, as my Japanese language skills developed and grew in fluency, elegance, and overall pzazz, I came to realize that it was time to adjust my confidence level. It seemed that my nihongo skill level had little, if nothing, to do with it. The more I improved, the more my confidence grew. And the more my confidence in m Japanese skill grew, the more I began to understand that Some Japanese people just want to speak English. And the more I understood this point, the less I cared when it happened. In fact, it has worked itself comfortably and naturally into my life to the point where I barely notice anymore.
But that doesn’t mean it goes unnoticed by everyone. Japanese people responding to your nihongo in English can be everything from discouraging to shocking, or for some, even embarrassing or disappointing.
On numerous occasions, I have had to laugh as I hear people say things like “I have had more chances to speak Japanese in my own country then when I visited Japan. Everyone here seems to want to practice their English”
Why do I laugh? Because it’s true.
Over the years, I have had the opportunity to meet more Japanese people in social and business situations than I can even count. And I have found that there are 4 main types of English-speaking Japanese people that you will commonly encounter:
Type A – Can’t Speak English, But Want To
This type is pretty much harmless. They are generally friendly and may simply be fascinated with foreigners or English but had little chance in their life to use or try it. At the very worst, they are the type who view gaijin as a brand, and may even go through great efforts to befriend you.
Some people will take their attempts at English as “microaggressions” (aka a mild, unintentional form of racism), but in the end, I think it holds more of a child-like curiosity tone to it. (I once went a little far with this analogy comparing it to a young child seeing a new animal for the first time, and mimicking the animals sound in the hopes of achieving communication. They might just wanna be friends! – this analogy was not well taken by some. lol)
Type B – Can Speak English, But Have No Confidence
This type, much like Type A, are relatively harmless. Chances are, unless you actually ask them, or unless someone else says something, you may not even know that they speak English. They come in all shapes and personality types, and usually had a rather specific reason for studying English in the first place (whether it was for a certain goal, or simply a strong personal interest). While still very much aware of the fact that you are a foreigner (and potentially more aware than Type A of what that really means), Type B will usually be happy as long as they can communicate with you.
Type C – Can Speak English, But Don’t Really Care
I like this type. They can speak English, but will typically carry the communication with you in whatever language you set as the precedent. More often than not, the language will jump back and forth seamlessly in conversation with them, and there is more often than not, a general feeling of equality. Type C is the truly internationally-minded type and unfortunately they are also the rarest type.
Type D – Can Speak English And Want To Show It
This is the type to watch out for. They are the ones who will blatantly ignore your Japanese and respond with English, and they are commonly a little different from the average Japanese person. These people see English as “cool” and therefore want to be seen/heard speaking it as often as possible. Unfortunately, this usually comes from a deep seeded issue with their self-esteem, and therefore it doesn’t stop with English. It is far from uncommon for these people to be disliked by fellow Japanese and foreigners alike for being condescending or generally annoying.
Note: I have purposefully left out 2 types from this list
Type P, which are people like the JR staff above, who may just be doing it for the sake of “professionalism” and making things easier.
and Type O, which are the elderly people who will approach you in any range of situations just to practice their English.
I have left these types out, because 9 times out of 10, the person in types P or O will also overlap into one of the above 4 types.
So when it comes down to it, there is only one type that you really need to be concerned about; Type D. But even though three out of four sounds like pretty good odds, it’s still a little tough to put a population percentage statistic to each type, so it’s still up to you to identify and adjust your social filter.
I was going to add an entire section talking about what do do when a Japanese person responds to your Japanese in English, but instead, I’d really like to hear your thoughts. What do you do in that situation?
Closing Thought…
The scary part is that if you really think about it… You could apply almost every point in this to foreigners who speak Japanese….
I think the categorisation holds water. Well done. With the Japanese’s English, no matter how highly they think of it, is always awkward and full of “JEnglish” terms and grammar which is understandable once you get used to Japanese English, but definitely not correct.
What I dislike about the B and D types is the fact that they can be so convinced that they speak perfect English (although they are far from it) that they will correct your much better (even perfect) English because it is more high level and contains grammar that goes over their heads. I had Japanese people correct my correct English with obviously false J-English which they believed to be true. In the beginning, I told them that they were taught wrongly, but of course, them being Japanese, they thought of me as arrogant and my disregard for their corrrection to be “rude”. Oh well.
Yes, there are cocks in every country, but one thing Anglos are less likely to be cocks about is language. Half of the reason is better sensitivity to the issues, the other is less skill in second-languages.
Nice, but I’m not sure your JR ticket person actually falls into any of those categories. A through D all seem to apply mainly to civilians/men on the street.
Maybe you need a couple of On Duty ones as well, when the attempts to use English are of a part with the whole ‘service’ culture; where being seen to try to help is more important than how helpful you actually are.
Still, they’re all better than Parisian waiters. Condescending arseholes.
.Finally someone writes about this!
I have been wondering this forever. It’s really inconsiderate and since Japanese people are all about the greater good, it always surprised me to see them do something so obviously selfish.
maybe it’s rude of me to feel this way, but if I speak to you in Japanese, its because I want to use Japanese. So don’t ignore what I say and respond in English.
I was at the JAL check-in counter at Narita airport, and asked the staff about the baggage allowance (in-Japanese) and she answers me in English. So I responded to that in Japanese and tried to make it a little more obvious that I wanted to use Japanese, and she rolls her eyes and answers me in English again. it was so irritating that I finally told her that this was my last chance to speak Japanese before going home and asked her if she could do me the courtesy of responding to my japanese in Japanese, and she rolls her eyes again and goes crazy using super-long sentences filled with superfluous words and self-canceling statements just to piss me off.
even her co-workers were looking at her like she was a psycho.
the whole thing really soured me on Japan and especially on JAL.
Totally agree with most of what you’ve written.
I think almost every foreigner goes through this, apart from those who don’t care about learning or speaking Japanese anyways.
I felt the same as you when I just came here.
I lost my confidence and thought something was wrong with my Japanese, but many years later my Japanese skills have grown so much.
I only speak Japanese these days (apart from work, but even there I speak in Japanese with my co-workers).
Since my skills have improved so much and I travel throughout all of Japan all alone, I’ve run into many situations.
I especially hated it when I had to rush to get the next train, just stopping to quickly as from which track it would leave and the station guy starts to mumble something in English which obviously I couldn’t understand. In situations like that I could freak out!!
Lately I’ve never had it that somebody tried to continue speaking English with me.
I just persistently use fluent Japanese and on top of that I tell them that I don’t understand English well (which is a lie), because I’m German (which is true).
I don’t see the point why ANY of us (my Japanese communication partner nor me) should use ENGLISH when we are in JAPAN and NEITHER of us is a NATIVE speaker of ENGLISH!!
It just doesn’t make sense at all.
When people approach me in English … and it often happens that they don’t do it straightforward face-to-face, but from behind or from the side, so I don’t really see that they’re talking to ME, I just totally ignore it.
I mean .. really, how should I know they’re talking to me, just because they’re using English??!!!!
I don’t care if they think that I’m rude.
I do react if somebody approaches me face-to-face, especially if they use Japanese.
But not if somebody throws some English at (maybe?!) me from behind.
I’m happy for people who also want to try another language. I honestly think it’s ignorant that a good number of those people assume a foreign face equals English. I adjust my reactions depending on how I perceive their attitude. For example, if I’m in a foreign-heavy area, I’ll play along with the clerks’ “Nihongo ga jyouzu desu ne!” game. They probably get customers who think everyone needs to speak English for them, you know? So in this case, it’s nothing personal. On the other hand, I will not speak English to people who use labored, often meaningless “Katakana English” in a way that feels insulting to me. In my time in the Japanese company, I’ve run into a number of people who think I can perceive an entire message or read their mind from two words in Katakana English. Again, for example (example within an example?), they’ll put some English magazine in my hands and say, 「ハイスクール・マガジン」, and nod at me meaningfully. Okay, great. What about it? You wanna speak English? Let’s talk! I have a boss who was notorious for this ridiculous behavior. When we were in the car together, he would point to things outside the window. 「ファミリー・マート。コカコーラ。マクドナルド。ジャパニーズ・シュライン。」 And it was like, GREAT? What about them? I swear to god, he pointed out McDonald’s to me no less than three times during one outing, all because I’m American. And then he would point to himself and say he couldn’t speak English. Is that so? I decided to try and show him his Katakana English was no good using Japanese-style subtlety (which sounds much meaner than it was). If he used Katakana English, I would pretend to not understand until he used the Japanese word or would repeat the Katakana English in real Japanese. Once he pointed to the metro and said, 「サブエイ。」 I said, 「レストラン？」 He pointed more fervently to the metro and repeated himself. I knew exactly what he was talking about, but I made him repeat himself three times. He was relentless. So then I said, 「Ohhhhh, 地下鉄？？？」 The reason I did it was because he didn’t try to use English to be nice to me; he was being condescending, was the type who thinks foreigners can’t learn Japanese or possibly understand Japanese culture. He would often turn to me and say, 「日本語が難しいですねぇ？」 At first, I would agree because, YES, it is! When I realized why he was saying it, I changed my answer. 「英語のほうが難しいと思うんです。」
I felt bad the other night, though. One guy kept saying Katakana English words at me in a way that kind of resembled your Type D. It was alienating to my other co-worker who doesn’t speak any English, so I spoke only Japanese to include everyone. Then he asked in Japanese why I was only using Japanese when he spoke English to me. I couldn’t tell him the truth, that what he was speaking was hardly English and that it wasn’t nice to our co-worker, so I told him my Midwestern English is difficult to understand. It was weird because I did the same thing that we’re ranting about here…
TL;DR: Katakana English is frustrating when full Japanese could convey the message more completely. Type D people suck. Sorry for the novel.
Feels like it’s really scary haha. but anyway, we foreigners can at least go ahead and try to direct the conversation towards the language that we want right? I mean ask them that if they want to converse in English then we can have an agreement to help each other out right? Btw, I’m not from America hahah
They actually touch on this in ダーリンは外国人. His way to fix this was when he asks a question, he used the little he knew of the Kansai dialect. The Japanese people, he mused, would think “Wow, he speaks in Kansai Dialect, he must speak Japanese well!” and always answer back in Japanese.