Minty
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What does this have to do with the fact that Japan is a big country ? Nowadays almost everybody uses English for business in international contexts - even when a Chinese meets a Korean. But English is only native to England in Europe (though it has become the native language of most people in Wales, Scotland and Ireland).
Hence therefore Japan is small, because Japanese is only really spoken in Japan.
Anyway, for the sake of the argument, Koreans, Manchus and Taiwanese had to learn Japanese when they were Japanese colonies. Believe it or not, I have met a lot of people who could speak at least some Japanese when I was travelling around Asia (especially in India). In the 1980's and 90's it was very popular for Americans and Australians to learn Japanese for business, when the Japanese economy was still good. Nowadays it's Mandarin.
I know that, my grandparents on my mother's side, they are Taiwanese and they speak perfect Japanese. However, my mother's generation she was born in 1949, the Japanese language was already not allowed to be spoken in school. Unlike English their ex colonies who have continued to study English, and countries like Singapore and cities like Macau and Hong Kong even took more pride when they speak English rather than Mandarin! I can’t say the same thing for ex Japanese colonies!
Migrating to Japan is therefore not as attractive as England, because they don't have the equivalent Australia, New Zealand, Canada, The US. The choice is so limited! That's why they are small!
Nevertheless, Japanese is probably still the most popular Asian language learnt in Western countries (I mean learnt for fun, because people are interested in Japanese culture).
Is that right, I met some young French people learning Chinese, so they went to Taiwan and China and complained that the country is not pretty!
I would say people learn Japanese because it is a wealthy country! And as they need the US to protect them from China and North Korea they must "obey" the US, which makes them well liked by Americans, hence well introduced Japanese to the rest of the other Europeans. And for the middle Easterners and Africans they themselves are dirt poor except for a few exceptions, of course they like countries that are rich!
Wrong reasoning. European powers (chiefly Britain, France, and the Netherlands) had colonised most of Asia, but the Japanese made them lose their colonies. The British Empire started collapsing the day Singapore surrendered to the Japanese. French Indo-China never recovered from the Japanese conquest.
False only Britain colonised most of Asia, that's why people here are so ignorant of Asian people! But this is also because most Europeans don't care much about Asia, that's why they don't know much about it, and me the victim of harassment for their assumptions based on ignorance! If you like I can give you some of the most pathetic examples of what people here have said to me!
Anyway, what does this have to do with the fact that Japan is a big country and a bigger economic power than any single European country?
This is the reason why immigrants choose Western countries rather than Japan! I would rather live in any other first world European ruled countries rather than Japan, even though I look like them a lot. Learning Japanese for me has just as much advantage to me as learning French. Japan is alone Europeans have each other!
So what? What's your point? There was no EU in the 1950's, 60's and 70's when immigration was at its historical highest in Europe.
The EU wasn't constructed yet, but the Europeans were making plans to avoid future wars. They were already mending their wounds. By comparison the relationship between the Europeans was much better than Japan's relationship with the Far East.
I am not talking about East Europeans immigrants to East Germany (of which there were very few). Millions of Turkish immigrants came to work to West Germany during the Cold War years. Nowadays Germany is the country that accepted the most political refugees and asylum seekers in the developed world. To give you an idea, there are now more Third World immigrants/refugees going to Germany than to the USA! I think this has to do with the sense of culpability that Germans feel towards WWII and the Holocaust. They are trying to be nice to make up for it.
I have been to Germany and Austria I met many Eastern European immigrants over there, I could tell because they had a different accent when they spoke to me in English. I know about the Turkish immigrants we all know the Turks are desperately trying to join the EU, and they are very poor, so why is it so surprising that there are heaps of Turks there?
Can you name a country where people like poor, uneducated, badly-behaved immigrants?
Well, in Australia when our government catches illegal immigrants and the government kicks them out people think the government is right, but here in France people would protest and say things like oh those poor people...we should let them stay! So the next time you see poor uneducated badly behaved immigrants doing harm to the European society think of what I said!
At the beginning I had to go to school with these poor pathethnic immigrants I was badly harassed by them because I come from a rich country. I know exactly what that's like!!!
With that logic, there shouldn't be any (non-European) immigrants to Germany, the Netherlands or Scandinavia.
Why wouldn't there be any immigrants, for the poor Asians or Africans any of the first world western countries is heaven to them! Moreover all those Countries speak English well, most people in the world can at least speak some English communication is very important in survival!
Indonesia was a Dutch colony, but the Dutch never bothered to teach their language in their colonies. It's surprising that a (half) Malaysian like you doesn't know that the Dutch used Bahasa Melayu as a lingua franca to communicate with the locals in Indonesia. They were the only Europeans who used an indigenous tongue instead of their own. The result is that a language native to Malaysia is now the official language of Indonesia, where it wasn't spoken at all a few centuries ago.
That's not what the Indonesians told me, they said that the Dutch tortured them! That's why they don't speak Dutch! Instead Indonesians speak English, I had a lot of classmates from there, and they speak English with an Indonesian accent. The old generation pretends they can't speak Dutch but in fact they can!
So why did so many Indonesians feel like migrating to the Netherlands, a cold and distant country which language they didn't know?
For all the poor Asian countries moving to a first world country is heaven, and since Japan was more xenophobic in their immigration law they look for other alternatives. Moreover most Asian people think white people are all the same, that's why all the Japanese, Koreans, Thais etc with their white boyfriends/husbands all think we are all the same, because it is about white Asian couples!!!
By the way, ethnic Indonesians only make up 2.3% of the Dutch population , while other immigrants amount to 15% of the population. There are actually more Turks and almost as many Moroccans as Indonesians in the Netherlands, and neither country has any historical or linguistic tie with the Netherlands.
Well, for the Africans to live in Europe is heaven, they don't care which of the first world country they get to go, any first world countries would do, and if they already had families and friends there, that makes moving there even more attractive! And at least for them to survive in Europe is still easier, they look much more like European People than Japanese people, especially the white ones, and for the dark ones they can pass as Southern Italian, Southern Spanish, Southern Portuguese or some Greek people even!
I know, I grew up near Luxembourg. But again, what's your point ? People go to Luxembourg for the money (it's the richest country in the world in GDP per capita). But why weren't there more people going to Japan in the 80's and early 90's when salaries were the highest in the world ?
That is because it is much easier to mingle in a society where people look closer to you, for Europeans and Africans and Middle Easterners learning Japanese is hard, and yet it remains as the most popular Asian language because people like Japanese products or that Japan has a special relationship with the US and makes them closer to Europe. I once had a Réunion lady who loudly told others that in Africa Japanese are considered white where as Chinese are considered Black, she thought I didn't understand but I did. I find this very insulting, and it further shows that all of this is about money and politics. Chinese people are not "obedient" to the west hence my ancestors were attacked during the opium war, and after when the Japanese attacked China, China went all the way down, hence our poor reputation today, not to mention I am not even from China!!! Face it Japan is a friend to the West and China an enemy!!! Of course there are those who are on our side but very little!!! However that is changing, I heard it on radio that the younger generation want to learn Chinese in High school but there are not enough teachers to go around! We will just need to wait for those generation to grow up, you are obviously the older generation who prefer the Japanese, ofcourse you don't agree on my point of view!
Then at least we agree on this.
You cannot expect people from a complete different background to agree on everything you have to say, that's why there is this debate, what's the point of talking to people who think like you the whole time?
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