![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/Fall-of-Language-Japanese.png\")
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Linguistic Life in South Korea once moved me to write a short essay in Korean called \u201c\uc601\uc5b4\uc5d0 \ub300\ud55c \ub124 \uac00\uc9c0 \uac70\uc9d3\ub9d0<\/a>\u201d or \u201cFour Lies About English.\u201d The first lie, to translate it back into that native language of mine, holds that English speakers can live comfortably in every country in the world; the second, that all those countries have agreed to communicate in English with each other; the third, that because the people of countries like Sweden or Germany speak English well in addition to their native languages, Koreans can and should do the same; and the fourth, that anyone unable to master English is a fool. These particular misconceptions, though I could have included others, have taken root in Korean society to the extent that many Koreans grow flabbergasted when I try to disabuse them.<\/p>\n
Not that I alone can do much to mend Korea\u2019s deeply unhealthy relationship with English, a language now slathered liberally on every surface of its cityscapes \u2014 except the advertisements for cram schools and practice apps, which shame their readers for having spent years and years studying English without any speaking ability to show for it. Japan, a country I visit often, hasn\u2019t caught as virulent an \u201cEnglish fever,\u201d as Koreans call it (or as I called it\u00a0on\u00a0LARB<\/em>\u2019s\u00a0Korea Blog<\/em>\u00a0last year<\/a>, \u201cEnglish cancer\u201d), and so, despite my far weaker command of Japanese than Korean, I always feel a weight lift from my mind when I go there, taking comfort in the unambiguous fact that the language of Japan is Japanese: those I address in it will never, ever reply in English \u2014 and were I to speak in English, most of them would reply, often at length, in Japanese anyway.<\/p>\n
The Japanese novelist Minae Mizumura, however, does believe that her countrymen labor under \u201cthe feeling that they\u00a0ought<\/em>\u00a0to know English,\u201d an \u201cirrational obsession, a paranoia that has spread across the nation like a plague.\u201d As in Korea, it happens because \u201cmost people, despite years of suffering from mandatory English courses in junior high, high school, and college, end up with little or no grasp of the language,\u201d and so, \u201cfeeling defeated, and blaming themselves for the defeat, ordinary people have succumbed to a kind of mass hysteria, convinced despite all evidence to the contrary that they can and must master the language.\u201d Mizumura makes this diagnosis in her treatise\u00a0The Fall of Language in the Age of English<\/em>, a surprise hit upon its original publication in Japan in 2008 and recently translated by Mari Yoshihara and Juliet Winters Carpenter.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n