When I lived in Japan (late 70s and again in the mid 80s) English was a required language for 8 years of their school. Many have feigned not being able to speak/understand English due to lack of use, not wanting to be wrong/appear foolish, and then there's also the matter of the teachers not always having great pronunciation. But often where they may not do well with speech, they may do better with the written word.

Sounds awesome! I've been wanting to go back for years, and the missus would love to as well.

i wish you could meet us there!! you and the wife.

my MN friend that has never traveled outside the USA, sheepishly asked me if his wife and him could join us. they are a bit nervous, and we happily extended the invite.

they told me they have never had sushi before. me; oh, i got this!

i think 1 or 2 days, and we probably wont see them again, as they get their travel legs beneath themselves.

i told them, "dont forget, we are older..old." i aint hitting a japanese nightclub.

We hired Mandarin Tutors for our son starting at age 5. It's not just learning the language, it's the accent too. Research has shown that your accent is set by age 8. My son studied in Hong Kong for a semester and had several friends from Mainland China. They said he spoke Mandarin with no accent.

I picked up a few words sitting in on his lessons but it has now been years so I don't remember a lot. I do like movies in Mandarin and I do pick up a few things as I watch. That said, I will never be able to speak another language fluently. My southern accent makes it hard to pronounce some English words properly (think pin and pen).

I have been playing Ghost of Yotei on the playstation. It's in Japanese with English subtitles, and I have no idea how those verbal words translate to the subtitles. My brain does not get it at all.

I would argue with the bit about accent being set. If that's the case, I think it's a relatively small percentage of the population.
I've met folks that have been speaking a second language for decades and have such a thick accent that they are hard to understand. I've also met folks that have been soaking a second language for <5 years and have almost no accent. I also know a woman that moved to England in her thirties and came back for a visit a few years later with a fairly strong British accent.

I believe that there's an intrinsic trait that some folks have that let them better audibly mimic others while other folks have a very hard time mimicking others. I believe it's also tried to hearing nuance in speech. Folks without the ability have a harder time understanding others that speak with an accent while those with the ability can more easily understand others with accents.

And the ability or lack is, of course, a range not binary.


Just my thoughts. So maybe you and the kids can still learn other languages without an accent issue.

I was once quite fluent in Spanish, and under no illusions that I didn’t have an accent that was obvious to any native speaker.

There are sounds in one language that are made differently than sounds in another. Millions of muscle memory repetitions are quite difficult to break. Some people are good mimics, others not so much.

When I lived in Australia as a kid, I started to pick up a bit of an Australian accent but it didn’t get very far.

When I listen to a native French speaker pronounce words, I’m quite confident that I could never achieve that level of mastery.

personally I have a different attitude towards accents. I am almost jealous of them.

it 100% means to me that the person speaking with an accent is multilingual. I work with a person from Ghana. speaks French and Mandarin. he reads and writes mandarin as well. my wife says he has a stiff accent but is understandable and a total BADASS.

I'm pretty sure when I am ordering food in my first language, I have a terrific accent. the person I am speaking to has never admonished me..ever. they have corrected or helped me clean it up, but never gave me S about it. that is a domestic thing. hahaha..