Thoughts on the Ethnologue numbers of Japanese L2 speakers

12 comments

1. At my old university, Japanese was 2nd after Spanish. However, I think the online presence of Japanese learners vs other language learners is a bit skewed because the amount of people who are going to frequent reddit and other internet spaces are also more likely to be the people that like anime, Japanese culture, etc in my opinion.

   Japanese is of course a difficult language, but it’s still a language the same as other languages. The only big difference is that it has Kanji which adds a lot more time to studying imo. Despite that though, I still feel Japanese is kinda niche and many people take it on as their first foreign language and quickly give up while also thinking “oh, it’s just the hardest language in the world. Of course I can’t do it.” When in reality, learning languages is just hard af, Japanese just a bit more so.

   I say Japanese is niche because despite Japan being one of the largest economies in the world, I feel like we just don’t see it much outside of Japan. The people learning it either seem to learn it for recreation (anime etc) and because they live and work in Japan. Anyways, that’s my 2 cents.

2. > almost none of them become competent L2 speakers.

   you might be onto something here. does everyone who pick up a guitar become a good player? does everyone who tries boxing for a few months become a world champion? i think you already know the answer.

   learning japanese is just like any other hobby.

   and the most important thing? it doesnt matter if you never “master” the language. you dont need to. im not fluent(yet) but i use japanese every day and enjoy it. what more can you ask for?

3. It is total garbage – The number of JLPT test takers – of which are learning Japanese and thus count as “l2” learners by even a vague criteria suggest well over a million per year. In fact several years exceeded a million itself, and those are people who take the formal test. It is something you pay for, so many beginners will not take it until N2/N1 level.

   So even by a low estimate the number of “learners” exceed 5 million, but for proficiency which is about N2/N1 – it is probably 500k. That too is a low estimate based on pass rates for JLPT over time.

   [http://jlpt.jp/e/statistics/](http://jlpt.jp/e/statistics/)

4. The number seems to be underestimated. I think it’s not rare for kids in some Asian schools to be learning Japanese, like in South Korea, Taiwan and even Australia.
   You could say they only count people that live in the countries with official language (I mean like Africans living Congo with French as the official language), but then you have German and therenare no German colonies anymore and the number of immigrants is much less than 60 mln.
   0.1 mln looks more like the number of foreigners in Japan speaking Japanese.

5. I’d say something like:
   – Japan doesn’t share a land border, severely limiting practicality of the Japanese language outside Japan. Huge difference compared to FR, ES, RU, or DE in this regard.
   – As a direct result of the above, Japanese language is a hobby (that many misinformed people try to learn with crap like duolingo, presumably). Not particularly surprising to see learners bulked at entry level, with literally no practical reason to rush. And drop off within few months. These aren’t things that happen with language with huge practical benefit.
   – The reason Japanese people suck at English is probably due to how English is locally not that big of a necessity in Japan. It means a lot in 大学入試 and many other life choices, but definitely unnecessary for survival.

   Don’t quote me on this though.

6. I would think geography and history have far more to do with this than anything intrinsic about the languages themselves. I think the number of people who learn any second language from a subreddit are not representative of people who learn languages at all. People learn to speak those languages because they border countries that speak them, they live in countries that have a lot of people that speak them, they historically have close ties with a country that speaks that language, there is a history of colonialism that left that language behind, those languages are the ones commonly taught in schools in their countries, and more. These tend to apply to Japanese much less than many other languages, for a bunch of geographic and historical reasons that I think are rather obvious.

   To take just one example: it was not that long ago that people in former Soviet states were required to learn Russian in school. Many of them still do learn it in school as a result.

   And lastly, perhaps the most obvious thing to point out, but likely the strongest motivation to learn a language is migration. Countries in Europe, for instance, have much higher nonnative populations than Japan—again, largely for obvious reasons. Those people are, or eventually will be, almost all L2 speakers.

7. Redditors are usually a bit nerdy and that’s why there are so many people on subreddits like LearnJapanese and Japanlife.

   The languages you mentioned are still widely spoken in many countries, especially, the ones that were occupied or colonised by the countries where these languages are spoken(France, Russia, Germany, Spain).
   Many people still “need” to learn these languages hard to study something academic or work for tourists from these countries.

8. I do think that 0.1 million seems really low. That’s like the total number of immigrants Japan gets in a year. Maybe they don’t actually learn Japanese. But I would have thought that a significant number of them at least try. Anyway, I suspect you’re right that the size of this subreddit mostly reflects that Japanese is a popular language one picks up for fun. There are some Asian countries where people learn it to get a better job, too, of course. To be honest, subreddit sizes probably mostly reflect how interested *Americans* are in something in the first place.

   It’s also no surprise that European languages will have many L2 speakers. In part due to historical reasons, but also because the borders are open. For example, many countries have L1 German speaker populations for historical reasons (France, Italy, Belgium, etc.), while Germany also has a large immigrant population – more than 25% of Germany’s population. This of course includes people who can just decide to live in Germany because they’re EU citizens, but Germany actually has significantly more immigrants from Asia than Japan has immigrants in total. And that’s still only Germany, there are more countries in Europe where German is spoken. *Of course* there will be more L2 speakers of German.

9. There reminds me, I was wondering where you would you think the average person drops or stops learn Japanese?
   Like do you think the average person stops after learning kana, halfway into N5, at the end of n4/start of n3? Further in? What do you think separates your average learner and someone more serious?

10. >the ratio of beginners to advanced on this subreddit is very, very high compared to other language-learning places

    Because there are a lot of people with limited knowledge of the language who don’t know how deep the rabbit hole goes. Most beginners are taken aback the moment they realize the staggering amount of effort involved, and even fewer stick around until the end. Misinformed beginners balk at what stands out the most (i.e. kanji), when it’s just something you’re supposed to slowly chip away at, and overlook other things that are just as, if not more difficult.

    Couple that with the fact that a lot of textbooks and traditional learning materials focus on straightforward stuff, and neglect to mention very important clues (e.g. categories of kanji, naritachi, patterns exhibited by compounds), and omit stuff that’s seen as ‘cumbersome’ (e.g. ‘hard to grasp’ things like the differences between は and が, yojijukugo, the myriad of compound verbs, onomatopoeic and mimetic sounds, the rest of a kanji’s readings) to avoid ‘overwhelming’ people. When everything is focused on getting one up and running as fast as possible, it’s easy to be misled (for better or worse).

    The problem is, you end up with a crushing amount of ‘technical debt’, and a feeling of emptiness upon realizing that you can’t do anything the moment a conversation veers off the script you’ve had drilled into your head. An especially egregious example is the insistence of teaching 丁寧語 (polite language) first, without even mentioning the 辞書形 (dictionary form), which leads to a lot of problems down the line (e.g. 僕が書いています本 instead of 僕が書いている本).

    But don’t worry, I’ve noticed that all languages are taught horribly. For example, you’d be hard-pressed to find language schools that bother teaching proper pronunciation nowadays, and you’ve got people who can’t use the subjunctive mood in any romance language. In some cases, it’s not taught at all. The funniest part is when it suddenly clicks in a learner’s head after a knowledgeable native takes a couple of minutes to explain the tenses properly.

11. There is absolutely no way that number is correct, but I think there’s probably something to be said about not equating learners and speakers of languages in general and Japanese in particular.

    Japanese is very, very difficult (or time consuming, depending on who you ask) to learn to a point where you’re halfway competent, and the criteria by which people judge Japanese ability has come to reflect that, probably to a point where some of it must seem absolutely baffling to learners of other languages. The standards really are absurdly low.

    The things that will get you classified as a bona fide “intermediate” or even “advanced” learner in Japanese would put you squarely in the beginner bracket in virtually all other languages, and one of the most popular and successful series of instructional books for English speaking learners of Japanese was authored by a man who admits to being functionally illiterate. This only works because 99% of people drop out before they have their kana down.

    So yeah, there might be a lot of Japanese learners, but counting all (or even most) of them as “speakers” might not be such a good idea.

12. Hey, I dont know anything about your source, but given that there are currently 1.8 million non-Japanese immigrants officially living in Japan, I would say 0.1 million L2 speakers seems off.