Quote:
Originally Posted by Mivo
The reason, I believe, was (partly still is) the lack of "application", need, and exposure. Until ten or fifteen years ago, it required actual effort to get undubbed movies, and even importing games was a hassle or cost extra. The average person just didn't need to know English and there wasn't much incentive to learn and actively use it.
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This is the same thing that happens in Japan, which is why it's a rarity, let me tell you...
...to find a Japanese person fluent in English.
I lived there for 3 years and I interacted with a lot of them, none of them was really fluent. You get students that are in their phd or master studies that can't form a simple sentence. I can't even fathom, that they publish their works without being able to read any of the international articles. And they do. Not to mention that katakana ruins their pronunciation to extremes. So when they wanna speak in English, they use katakana pronunciation, not English one, resulting in a total confusion of you as a listener (until you get used to it anyway). For example word fashion designer, they will pronounce as fasshon dezainaa (To hear how ridiculous that sounds go here:
https://translate.google.com/?ie=UTF...ion%20designer)
I talked to a lot of them about their English education and they all told me pretty much the same thing. When they are in primary and high school all they do is read texts and write. There's almost no conversation, dialogue, monologue or any form of spoken word in classroom. The teacher explains English in Japanese. So it's no wonder that when they are 25, and they have 15 years of learning English behind them, they can't put together a simple sentence.
Other factor is as you said, everything is dubbed.
Japanese English education has been in trouble for years, and they know it. They don't have enough good English professors that are Japanese, which is why any foreigner can get a job teaching English there. I did it, all my friends did it, and we are from all over the world.
Just the other day I got an email from Japanese Hulu advertising themselves as a way to learn English through their subtitled content.
I think that might actually help the Japanese a lot.