Japan ranks 92nd in English proficiency, lowest ever: survey - The Mainichi
mainichi.jp
TOKYO -- Japan ranked a record low 92nd in the 2024 English proficiency ranking of 116 countries and regions where English is not the native language,

Summary

Japan’s English proficiency ranking dropped to 92nd out of 116 countries, the lowest ever recorded.

The decline is attributed to stagnant English proficiency among young people, particularly due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Netherlands ranked first, followed by European countries, while the Philippines and Malaysia ranked 22nd and 26th, respectively.

  • Gsus4@mander.xyzEnglish
    1·
    4 hours ago

    Thanks for that.

    Japanese has a tone system but it’s simple enough a foreigner can get by without knowing it

    Isn’t this just learning each word’s tonic syllable? Or if you mean the flow of a sentence, the general waving tone structure like in Spanish or French?

    • NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io
      2·
      3 hours ago

      Neither. Japanese has two tones, high and low (for comparison Mandarin has 4 and Cantonese has I think 7), and each vowel/vowel+consonant in a word takes one of these two. For example there are a bunch of words pronounced koukai in Japanese and they’re split 50/50 on whether their tone is high low low low or low high high high, and the words oyster and persimmon (both kaki) are famous for having opposite tones, one low high and the other high low.

      By the way Japanese straight up doesn’t have stressed syllables so the idea of a tonic syllable doesn’t really translate to the language.