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From: bnostran@lynx.neu.edu (Barbara Nostrand)
Subject: Re: why Americans can't speak Japanese well.
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Date: Thu, 5 Dec 1996 04:52:42 GMT
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Gentle readers!

Tanaka Tomoyuki wrote:
> >I wonder what the average score would be if American college freshmen 
> >were required to take the TOEFL.
> 
> they'll probably do pretty well. --- around 500-550.
> 
> (my last TOEFL score was around 670.)

Congratulations on your high TOEFL score.  I have never taken the TOEFL,
so I really can not speak authoritatively about it.  However, the TOEFL
is intended to measure English proficiency sufficient for attending 
univeristy in the United States.  Consequently, claiming that U.S. students
would achieve a score of around 500 or 550 bespeaks a bit of hubris.

> ;;; (Mr.) TANAKA Tomoyuki   (Tanaka is my family name.)

Since we are being instructed about Japanese names, a subject which I have
a modest interest in, I presume that Ta-naka is (JIS 4544 JIS 4366).  Now,
which way do you write Tomo-yuki?  My Sharp PA 8500 lists some twenty
different ways for writing it and there are probably quite a few more.
(I also have a Sharp PA 7000, but the flexprint to the keypad seems to
have broken a lead.)

Finally, one of the main reasons that American speak Japanese so poorly is
that they are forbidden by the Japanese to speak Japanese well.  This general
prohibition extends to all Caucasians, but is particularly directed toward
Americans and other English speakers.  I recall standing on the platform
at Shinjuku waiting for my train home when a band of young Japanese women
descended upon a hapless pair of tall blong women and insisted upon practicing
their English.  The pair of blond women replied in halting English that they
were Germans and didn't really know English.  For that matter, caucasians
speaking Japanese was considered to hold sufficient comic potential during
the previous decade that there were at one time two competing "Kent"s on 
Japanese televsion whose chief claim to fame was that they spoke Japanese.  
Further, there was a recuring skit on one of the evening manzai programs where 
someone would encounter a pair of Todai foreign students.  Ironically, the
Japanese can be quite hostile toward people who appear Asiatic, but who do
not speak Japanese.

                                       Barbara Nostrand, Ph.D.
                                       (SAT 680 verbal, 720 numeric)
