About English |
First Edition:2000-07-29 Last Updated: |
I was born in Japan. My parents are the Japanese, and speak only Japanese. And societies around us use only Japanese. So I learned the Japanese without any consciousness. The English was the first languages except the Japanese. It came up to me when I was eight years old. This events did not impact me heavily. I studied English in some degrees, and I have a negative feeling to the English.
My ability about English is very poor. I don't like English, and I don't want to speak to foreigners in English eagerly. TOEIC score I got in 1997 was about 690. This score shows that my ability about English is not good.
The reason why I create my homepage in English is that people who speaks English mainly wouldn't learn other languages. I have to tell my bad feeling about English. I would like to communicate with fair and not biased language, i.e. Esperanto. However, now I write my opinions easily with English, not Esperanto. I have been studied English for more than 25 years but studied Esperanto only for 4 years. The difference of experience is annoying me.
I know that a lot of people in the world think of importance of the Japanese, and most of them study Japanese hard. The total of Japanese language are biased to reading and writing. For foreingers, we the Japanese support speaking and hearing for them. And we have to endure their "strange" speaking.
My wife and I often go to a certain French restaurant. One day owner of the restaurant invited us to a party where six kinds of Austrailian wines will serve. We urged one of our friends, Mr. Koike, to join us. He agreed. Then Mr. Koike, my wife and I went to the restaurant.
At the restaurant 3 CEO's in Australian winary were invited. They come to Japan because they attend to wine fesitval held in Japan. No interpreter were invited so we had to communicate with them only in English. But we the trio enforced ourselves. Mr. Koike knows about wine very well, and my wife speaks English very fluently ( Now she want to get the License of Interpreter Guide !). I only speak when the two cannot tell what they think.
One of the winary CEO's said to us, "Any questions?". I answered to him, "This wine smells very complicated, not simple." He told me, "Complicated? You mean COMPLEX, right?" I said " I understand.". But, I cannot understand. What is the difference between "complex" and "complicated"?
Recently, Hitachi Corporaion introduced an promotion restrinction. It is the score of TOEIC. Middle managements are required over 650, and top managements are over 800. Hitachi said that the introduction of this system was due to failure of recent management of Hitachi. I believe the score itself is nonsence. Most important things are the willingness, challenging attitude and curiosity of employees.
About this page, an esprantiso commented to me in Esperanto by e-mail. I will thank to him for a lot of courgeous suggestions and will apologize for my poor vocabularies and structures of logic.
He told me that the management representative in Hitachi are lack in linguistics. I think so. An idea that score of TOEIC is propotional to ability of English is rarely nonsense. However, the representatives believe a stupid idea.
I will show you a story which reveals the foolness of representatives in Hitachi. The representatives set the level in TOEIC score which meet for top managements 750, which validated in various point in Japan. But a consultant of English in Hitachi suggested that top management are required over 800! The management and consultant were argued. As a result, the consultant's opinion were accepted. This fact shows that Hitachi's representatives cannot understand what is necessary in business in English. There is no difference between score 750 and 800 when the representatives execute highly difficult business decisions and negotiations. While people who want raise score from 750 to 800 must be in greal efforts for nonvaluable aim, and the effort will pour in English school. Probably such English school are managed by the consultant in English! (2001-10-21)
Mr. Yanai, who is CEO in First Retailing (UNIQLO), told the journalists that he requires more than score 700 for the representatives in UNIQLO.
I do not want to intend again about the foolness of the plan. Why English ? Why TOEIC ?
I'm afraid of the future for UNIQLO. Mr. Yanai said : "I have to transfer UNIQLO's DNA to all the employees. To achieve the intention, the language must be English. So I decided that the representatives have to get more than 700 scores."
What is UNIQLO's DNA ? Even if they do not understand what it is, but it comes and was gronw from UNIQLO's shops, and the shops are in Japan. In Japan, all the communications are transferred in Japanese. Therefore, I insist that UNIQLO's DNA must be transferred in Japanese. Note that TOYOTA's "KAIZEN" is not transferred as "IMPROVEMENT". (2010-06-24)
I read the newspaper Mainichi on May 4th, 2011. A journalist, Mr. Saitoh, objected that English would be a compulsory subject in Japanese elementary school. I agree the opinion and I got to know a new fact that 27 board members in Toyota are all the Japanese, beside all men! (2011-05-05)
Social Network System (SNS) are developed in recent years. Facebook is one of the most popular media in the SNS. I have an account in Facebook and communicate only in Japanese.
I found that some of my friends on Facebook communicate in English. Why they, who are all Japanese, communicate in English ? Well, they have to use English in their life. One lives in Australia, and another acts as an mathematician. On the other hand, I have no motivation to use English. Therefor I am poor at English. I wish they doesn't browse this webpage! (2016-06-12)
Marinkyo's School > About Language > About English
