General Yuzuru Chat

[MrPudding]

 

 

no more fuji tv?!

 

edit: 

 

[yazunori hanya]

Hello everyone!! I'm new here, pls treat me well T.T

 

May I know what is happening with Fujitv live rn? They redirected me to https://forjoytv.com/register

 

Thank you T_T

 

[yuzuonice]

at least the confusion will be avoided now? :'D Maybe they got in trouble with the actual Fuji tv?

[Lunna]

10 часов назад, Rainbow сказал:

Usually, the poor achievement is blamed on the way English is taught in schools. It is said that there is too much classroom emphasis on grammar with very little time devoted to actual conversational practice. The emphasis is mainly on the silent skills of reading and writing. Listening is rather passive as opposed to being an active part of a conversation. The focus is on accuracy and avoiding grammatical mistakes. Students spend a great deal of time copying out what was written on the blackboard and memorizing it in preparation for tests… “

Actually I don't think it's differents a lot from other countries. In Russian schools we also mostly learn grammar and remembering texts there's no focus on conversation language. I'm comfortable speaking English now cuz of trips on vacation to Europe and reading forums/articles in English cuz of my hobbies but struggled a lot the first times.

But when I started to learn Japanese I began to understand Yuzu's struggle with English better - it's like the opposite planets ))) but Yuzu's English is cute, still remember how I was almost crying from laughing during his GPF 2015 interview with Sarah after FS 

[yuzuangel]

5 hours ago, yuzuonice said:

at least the confusion will be avoided now? :'D Maybe they got in trouble with the actual Fuji tv?

They weren't even affiliated??!?!?! lol

[rockstaryuzu]

18 hours ago, Rainbow said:

As you noticed, it is very hard for Japanese to learn English.  Especially many of us are not good at listening and speaking English.

To those of you who wish Yuzu spoke better English, let me explain as a Japanese why Japanese are poor in English communication.  There are many studies on this subject such as:

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2017/10/29/commentary/japan-commentary/japanese-trouble-learning-english/

It is a long article and some points are:

 

“…the English level of Japanese is ranked 35th out of 72 countries. The top three are the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden, which are all northern European nations. Among Asian countries, Singapore is placed sixth, Malaysia 12th, the Philippines 13th, India 22nd and South Korea 29th. Japan places between Russia and Uruguay.

Even though most Japanese learn English for at least six years in school, why are we still not reaching sufficient proficiency?

 

Usually, the poor achievement is blamed on the way English is taught in schools. It is said that there is too much classroom emphasis on grammar with very little time devoted to actual conversational practice. The emphasis is mainly on the silent skills of reading and writing. Listening is rather passive as opposed to being an active part of a conversation. The focus is on accuracy and avoiding grammatical mistakes. Students spend a great deal of time copying out what was written on the blackboard and memorizing it in preparation for tests… “

 

I can tell you this from my experience. We learn English in a classroom with English textbook read by a teacher who are non native English speaker and with heavy Japanese accent.  I want to emphasize that English language is absolutely different from Japanese in pronunciation and grammar, while European language speaker have easier time learning English because of similarities. 

 

Now imagine yourself being in a foreign country after studying their language (which is totally different from yours) for a few years with textbooks in a classroom instructed by a fellow countryman teacher who has never conversed in that language with native speaker.  In that foreign country you realize that people speak the language that sounds entirely different from the one you learned in the classroom. 

 

So please give Yuzu a break.  He needed to unlearn what he was taught in English class back home and started learning conversational English from scratch.  To me his English is excellent with good pronunciation.  Many of us Japanese would dream to be at his level.

 

Also Yuzu is an athlete and his focus and priority is training in FS.  Many Japanese athletes who are active in English speaking countries bring in their interpreters.  Most of the Japanese baseball players who joined US major leagues do not speak English even after playing there for many years, some for decades.  Compared to these athletes in other sports who are helped by interpreters he struggled to learn English and I admire his tenacity for not giving up.  There are some Japanese figure skaters who become quite good in English while training overseas but looks like they are partly helped by their off-ice active social lives.  We all know that Yuzu did not even go to dinner with Javi.

 

IMO his interview in Japanese with interpreter is a good idea as he can express his opinion freely without language handicap.  It is not the same situation but many Japanese politician and businessmen use interpreters in meeting and negotiations even when they are bilingual.  That way they have time to plan their answers while their interpreter is talking.  So until the time Yuzu feels comfortable speaking English I do not want him to be forced to speak English in interview.  Seems like he has more important thing to learn and focus now anyway.

I know that back when Nam Nguyen was training with TCC, he mentioned on his social media that he tried to help Yuzu practise English. Personally I think Yuzu's doing pretty well, it's just that his ability in English isn't up to the level where he can easily express the things he wants to say, the way he says them in Japanese. (I've seen commentary by translators online about how good his use of language is, in Japanese, that he's very poetic and thoughtful with his words. If that's the case, then it makes speaking English doubly frustrating for him because he's trying to say complicated things a lot of the time.) He seems to be able to understand English pretty well though. 

[rockstaryuzu]

20 hours ago, Sammie said:

What was your friend reaction? 

My friends are used to my gushing over famous people.  

She listened, but I think she was trying not to laugh at me.

[Orchid]

Yuzuru's English is soo cute!! 

Actually, watching videos with my favourite Japanese and Chinese skaters, and Yuzu particularly, speaking English is my little guilty pleasure  It's also helping me to develop my English too.

Have you ever heard of Satoko speaking English? This's just amazing! She should gave some lessons to her teammates.

[Rainbow]

7 hours ago, Lunna said:

 but Yuzu's English is cute, still remember how I was almost crying from laughing during his GPF 2015 interview with Sarah after FS 

When foreigners speak Japanese with struggles I find it quite adorable, too.  Even with messed up pronunciation and grammar, I appreciate their effort and admire their courage to talk in our language. 

[KatjaThera]

When it comes to English spoken by Japanese people, I was majorly spoiled by being a fan of Jin Akanishi. Even though his reputation is in tatters now, his English skills are still generally admired (except by a select few lol). He went from barely speaking any English to virtually fluent after spending just 6 months in Los Angeles, by himself, studying English, but also hanging with native speakers. And then he continued improving by interacting with foreigners, to the point that one anecdote from the filming of 47 Ronin is that the director had to ask him to sound more 'Japanese' because his accent was very LA compared to the other Japanese actors (some of which had been acting in Hollywood for years) and it stood out. Watching the movie, in the end, his English still stands out, IMO. It's not perfect - and it clearly gets worse if he doesn't practice - but his pronunciation is some of the best I've ever heard in any Japanese that wasn't raised bilingual.

 

Because of that, I'm sure it's not impossible for anyone to get better English skills, especially not a perfectionist like Yuzu. But it takes a true love of the language and culture and full immersion, and none of those really interest him. To him, English is a tool, so he'll try to learn it, but he's learning because he has to, not because he really wants to, for the sake of knowing a language. That can make a huge difference.

 

Also, as for how they learn English in schools, one thing I always though was a negative influence, was the use of katakana to teach English. It messes up any attempts at gaining correct pronunciation. Beyond that, I agree that it's pretty much the same anywhere. English taught in schools is rarely enough. I took private classes throughout high school and even that wasn't enough, and I continued polishing my skills in time, simply by using it a lot, reading a lot and, very importantly, having people correct my mistakes.

 

However, the consequence is that there are now several more people in the world learning Japanese, thanks to him. So that's a bright side lol

 

55 minutes ago, Rainbow said:

When foreigners speak Japanese with struggles I find it quite adorable, too.  Even with messed up pronunciation and grammar, I appreciate their effort and admire their courage to talk in our language. 

I usually hate talking in any language - I'm more into written communication lol - but I actually love speaking Japanese with Japanese people. They always seem to be truly delighted when they see I can speak - even if not correctly - that it just feels good. I'm more nervous speaking with Japanese people I know, and who have expectations of me and my Japanese skills, but with people I don't know, it's great. I always worry about being accidentally impolite, but the warmth of the reactions I get is enough to make that worry go away, pretty much lol (And I just remembered a lady I met over a year ago, I talked to her for probably over an hour, but she was very cool in that she corrected me when I was wrong. I didn't exactly memorize the corrections - we were front row at a concert, waiting for it to start - but I was really thankful for it.)

[sallycinnamon]

2 hours ago, Orchid said:

Yuzuru's English is soo cute!! 

Actually, watching videos with my favourite Japanese and Chinese skaters, and Yuzu particularly, speaking English is my little guilty pleasure  It's also helping me to develop my English too.

Have you ever heard of Satoko speaking English? This's just amazing! She should gave some lessons to her teammates.

 

Satoko's English is really good but she lived in the US for 2 years when she was a child, so that helped a lot  

[EisElle]

re: languages

Spoiler

ok I'm out of my depth when talking about languages (and I really envy all of you who are multilingual, so amazing), but I remember I read a very interesting book summarizing the studies about the origins of human language, how it developed and then formed the variety of languages we have today, kinda a parallel story to how from some common ancestors (with a limited pool of genes) all the current populations were born (with all their diversity in e.g. phenotypes, or things like intolerance to alchool that we've discussed a few hundreds of pages ago).

iirc it also pointed out that people have harder time learning a language than in the tree of language evolution diverged from some 'common' origin earlier on...because things like phonemes are further apart, so it's somewhat more 'alien' than languages that share a longer common history (like e.g. romances languages vs japanese). this is probably the reason why in the article @Rainbow linked it says

Quote

Let’s take a look at data about language learning difficulty for native English speakers, compiled by the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) in the United States. The data shows how many hours of study are required on average for English-speaking State Department officials, who must be well-educated and highly-qualified people, to be able to achieve the daily conversational level in any particular language.

The result differed among four groups of languages as follows: Group 1, including French, Spanish and German, required 480 hours; Group 2, including Greek, Hindi and Indonesian, required 720 hours; Group 3, including Russian, Hebrew and Turkish, required 1,320 hours; and Group 4, including Japanese, Chinese, Korean and Arabic, required 2,400 to 2,760 hours. In fact, out of the 62 languages examined, Japanese was listed as the most difficult language to learn.

so it's totally to be expected that japanese people have hard time with english, and vice-versa, as their language diverged a long, long time ago and then developed in substantial autonomy (without many interchanges, for geographical and, much later, also political reasons)

it's also not surprising that, among asians countries, those that in the last 100-150 years had much closer interactions with english-speaking populations at the moment fare better than Japan when it comes to their english level.

 

studies (tho this one isn't very recent, but I haven't dug that much, I guess someone who studies linguistics can provide more up-to-date sources) proved that, starting from a certain age, the human brain just stops recognizing some phonemes that not belong to the language they immersed in (hear and speak on a daily basis). 

kinda as if part of of the auditory cortex acted like a device that can shut down after too long time in 'sleep mode'... That's why usually it's advised to make children learn languages, their brain is still able to discern different phonemes from different languages and if they keep hearing them, their brain will keep recognizing them*

so, if we apply this to e.g. Japanese people learning english, their brain literally has to adapt to an alien world of sounds, and of course learn to articulate them too, which is mightly hard as even the way one formulates sounds is linked to the language they have been immersed into...

if any, those who can do that so well that they sound like native speakers are to be admired, but those who can't aren't doing anything wrong

 

*and apparently live exposure works, while recordings not, so no surprise that having a social life in a foreign language helps

which makes me think, I should really speak more, becuase my listening and speaking are tragically underdeveloped compared to reading&writing

 

 

aaand to keep the post OT crossposting from the fanmade videos thread  because it sums up the many things that brought Yuzuru to be Yuzuru

(as the video are from chinese fans or at least I think they're chinese please tell me if the author didn't want the video shared outside of that platform)

16 minutes ago, LadyLou said:

and long summary of Yuzu. TRIGGER WARNIG: scenes form COC14, NHK17 and 2011 earthquake and tsunami. I strongly advice people who are particularly sensitive to the footage of the tsunami not to watch

but the video has an happy ending  I wish I could read the subtitlesbut still a good video with many emotions

https://www.bilibili.com/video/av28019389?from=search&seid=6870182790379170829

[Noelle]

8 hours ago, Rainbow said:

When foreigners speak Japanese with struggles I find it quite adorable, too.  Even with messed up pronunciation and grammar, I appreciate their effort and admire their courage to talk in our language. 

 

Ah, this makes me feel better as someone struggling with Japanese speaking skills! My only interest in Yuzu's English (other than yes, it's really cute) is that it makes me feel encouraged as someone learning Japanese. I think it's inspiring to see him use his imperfect English to communicate if necessary, but I love his Japanese interviews more because he is so thoughtful and detailed in his answers and, of course, he's more comfortable that way. I don't think he should have to put a lot of effort into leveling up his English even more if he doesn't want to... I mean, he is leveling up a 4A instead...  

 

[ralucutzagy]

 

[MrPudding]

lol nam