Episode 19: The Japanese and Foreign Languages

At Matsuyama Shinonome College in southwestern Japan, Steve McCarty was teaching an intensive course on Translation between Japanese and English. Two professors there, Kiyoshi Shioiri and Mima Saeki, agreed to be interviewed about the history of languages in Japan. For 16 minutes we discussed how the Japanese language formed thousands of years ago to the classical period (7th-11th Centuries), and foreign languages influencing Japan all the way to the present. Then we discussed the attitudes of Japanese people nowadays toward foreign languages, cultural factors why they have such difficulty acquiring English, how Japanese is very different from other languages, and getting the meaning across in translation and interpretation.