https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TofNjIjt0TQ
^Interesting social experiment where 3 non-Japanese people (1 Asian, 1 black, 1 white) walked around and spoke with Japanese people to see if they would treat them the same as anyone else in Japan and respond in Japanese, or if they would attempt to mix with English or use English. The majority of respondents treated them the same as anyone else and exclusively spoke to them in Japanese.
In my personal observation, I find that one of the challenges for Anglophones in learning Japanese (or any other foreign language) is that a lot of people in other countries want to learn and/or practise English, and in countries like Japan, people are often more than willing to try and speak English with you (or at least mix some English with Japanese) to try and be helpful. But of course, it's not helpful because it hinders your ability to learn Japanese! But this little social experiment demonstrates that if foreigners are willing to take the initiative and speak in Japanese to Japanese people, then they will respond in kind. Where respondents mixed or used English it was often because the foreigner (the black girl) is speaking Japanese with a notable accent or she outright admits that she doesn't fully understand what is being said or shown to her (in her defence the video does explain that she is still a learner of Japanese whereas the other two are already fluent speakers; and the way that she tells off one guy for touching her hair was actually really good).
So yeah, so long as you actually take the initiative to engage with Japanese people in Japanese, then Japanese people will respond in kind. And needless to say that your ability to learn Japanese will then increase exponentially. Anyone who is living in Japan (or has lived or will be going) will have the super added bonus advantage of being surrounded by native speakers and be able to do this on a daily basis. Those of us living outside of Japan obviously have more limited options, but we gotta take any opportunity where we can find it.And it's interesting what topics turn up... I managed to have a conversation with a Japanese friend recently and we talked about IVF in Japanese -- I learnt quite a lot of things about IVF (and fertility in general) that I never knew before.
P.S.: As I've probably mentioned before, whenever Japanese people speak to me in English, I just reply in Japanese.
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Originally Posted by Tetsuwan Convoy
