armstron@sjuvax.UUCP (03/17/84)
I hope to take a trip to either China or Japan after I graduate. Is ther any English spoken in either of these two countries? Just how difficult would it be to get by knowing nothing of either of these two languages? All help is gratefully appreciated. Thanx, Len Armstrong St. Joseph's University.
grass@uiuccsb.UUCP (03/23/84)
#R:sjuvax:-21100:uiuccsb:10500019:000:1240 uiuccsb!grass Mar 22 11:13:00 1984 I am under the impression that many Japanese study English, and the people I have known that have been to Japan have never mentioned any great language problems there. I am studying Japanese now, and I think that if you could manage it, you would get a lot just by learning one of the syllabaries (the katakana, used for foreign words), becuase a lot of store signs, etc. will be in katakana. Japanese has imported a LOT of English words (with Japanized pronunciations that sometimes distort them awfully) to describe things they have brought into their culture from American contact. Japanese pronunciation is NOT as difficult as you would think from looking at most text books or phrase books. It is a tonal language, but it is understandable even when you mess the tones up (unlike Chinese) as not so many minimal pairs rest on tone pronunciation alone. You can probably make good use of a phrase book becuase of that. It might be nice if you could learn a few greetings or the like, the people you meet will really appreciate the effort. In short, I don't expect you'll have major language problems in Japan. I suspect the same would be true in Taiwan, but I can't even guess if you are going to Mainland China. Good Luck!!