I am a Venezuelan girl living in Japan and I've been dating a Japanese guy for almost a year now. I speak Spanish, English and enough Japanese to live here but it's definitely not enough to communicate properly in a relationship, but he's not interested in learning either English or Spanish. The lack of support from his part in that sense is making my depression worse.
I like him as a person and I want to make things work with him but I feel like it's not fair that only I do the effort to learn his language when it's so damn difficult.
Should I just suck it up and continue to try to learn it and suffer alone, or give up and find someone willing to learn about my culture?
Do you think it is worth to try to make him learn English or Spanish when he's clearly not interested?
Interracial relationship
Yes try to get him to learn one of those. If he really values y'all's relationship he won't mind putting in extra effort.
A healthy relationship is when both parties work together like a team. You shouldn't be the only one putting in effort.
Not everyone has the ability to learn multiple languages, you moved to Japan, you should've been prepared for something like this. Try learning communication through your hands, it works better than forcing incoherent mistranslations.
I wish I had friends going through a similar situation but as you can imagine this is not a common thing. I plan to stay in Japan for a long time and I know I have to improve my Japanese but it's discouraging how he doesn't try to put much effort from his part.
Thank you, that's what I thought from the beginning but he's never made time to learn and it's been almost a year already :(
communication through hands?
women are retarded, you cant even speak to eachother yet you like him as a person, you just like his looks or money, i dont care which but get a grip whore
Go back to Jow Forums.
Kinesics, body language, nonverbal communication, hell standard sign language. Share ways you communicate other than verbally, if mutes can do it it can't be difficult.
Don't delude yourself, we all suffer alone. Even if he was a nice Venezuelan who cared about you, he could only get so far supporting you.
Talk to him about wanting to communicate better and you should learn Japanese too, I mean fuck it you are living in fucking Japan, you need that shit.
If he cares he will try to improve the communication either learning spanish/english, trying to communicate some other way or helping you learn faster.
My point is, if you think the language barrier is fatal and that overcoming it will cure your depression, you are deluding yourself.
I know enough Japanese to understand him and people around me, it's just not a language that you can become able to speak by yourself that easily
I know him as a person because I understand his language, it's actually him who can not tell what my personality is because he can't understand mine
I know my depression won't be cured by fixing the communication problem with him, but if it stays like this it will only get worse.
I get I'm the only one who can heal myself from it but it just hurts that he's not willing to do the least to help me with that
>he's not interested
Those are the only 3 words you need to know about him. They apply to everything you're hoping for in a relationship
>Not everyone has the ability to learn multiple languages,
Yes they do. They just might not want to put the time into it.
Op I'd break up since it seems it makes you miserable and it won't change. You can't force him to learn.
Use this as an opportunity to learn Japanese, then dump his ass lol
If you've been living in Japan dating a Japanese guy for a year how is your Japanese that bad?
>the effort to learn his language when it's so damn difficult.
Spoken Japanese is WAY easier to learn for an English speaker than it is for a Japanese speaker to learn spoken English. And apparently Japanese is even easier coming from Spanish.
I'd say just give up on getting him to learn, for a Japanese person living in Japan it's very unlikely that he could get to a good enough level of Spanish or English to have a proper conversation (unless he was very dedicated and driven to learn which it doesn't sound like he is at all). Either focus on getting your Japanese better, or break up if it really bothers you.
For my 2 cents I'd say consider yourself lucky that you got a Japanese bf who isn't just a foreign language bandit who's only dating you because he wants to practice his Spanish or English...
Why does he have to learn fucking Spanish when he's in Japan? You live in Japan you learn Japanese. Anything spanish doesn't benefit him aside from speaking to you where you gain plenty of benefits from learning Japanese.
It's one thing to learn about another culture. I can understand your view if you're upset he isn't interested about your venzuelan culture. But learning Spanish is another thing and your boyfriend would barely benefit from it at all from learning it while you benefit much more learning Japanese.
I think wether it is easy or not to learn a language depends on each person and for the time I've been in Japan I'm coping as best as I can, but one thing is learning a language to use at work or even daily life, and another very different is becoming able to use it comfortably in a relationship.
You are right about me being lucky that he's not with me just to improve his language ability, but the extreme opposite is not good either
It is so fucking easy to spot the Americans in this thread lmao
>living in Japan
learn Japanese properly or leave
What kind of dead end job are you doing where you can survive at work but not talk to your boyfriend?
you're living in Japan, its on you to learn to speak the language. He is right not to learn your language.
じゃぁ これを読めないんかな~
日本では住んでいることが難しい
けれども彼氏も彼女に興味があったら英語をちょっと学ばないかと思ったからなんでその人を大好きなのか?
He assumes you will fit into his life and isn't too interested or invested in your wants and needs. If you have communicated this then you probably aren't compatible. Take this opportunity to enjoy Japan as a single young woman.
I'm doing my masters and working as an english teacher at the same time, maybe you don't know but formal/business Japanese is completely different from casual Japanese, the honorific terms seem like a whole different language and that's what I've been working on and I'm actually becoming good at, but speaking with casual expressions just doesn't come natural to me, it feels forced and fake to use informal terms when I'm not Japanese myself, but I'm trying nonetheless.
It would be so much less stressful for me if I could just put my guard down when I'm with him and not have to translate everything in my head before saying it
Sorry I'm on mobile, meant to refer to
>I think wether it is easy or not to learn a language depends on each person
That is definitely true, but it's also true that your environment has a big impact too. In the vast majority of cases it should be a lot easier for you, as someone living in Japan in an immersed environment, to learn Japanese than it will be for him to learn English or Spanish from textbooks. And yes, you would be willing to help teach him I'm sure, but would you really want to put in the effort to pour that much input of the language into him when he can't even hold a conversation or understand you? Plus all the time you spend teaching him your Japanese progress suffers. I get that learning Japanese may not be the ultimate goal for you but since you're the one in the immersed environment it's probably a much quicker route to better communication if you just suck it up and work on your Japanese instead of spending time spoon feeding him English or Spanish.
読めますよ
彼女が自分よりも外国語ができるっていうのは自分のプライドが傷つくってことだと本人が言ってる、劣等感ってやつかな?
彼が最初からちょうど私のタイプだったんで、なんであの人が好きになった、なんでいまだに付き合ってるかは説明できないし自分でも疑うことはあるけど、結局色々あって我慢してくれてるからやっぱり好きって思うしかない
>He assumes you will fit into his life
Exactly this
Maybe yeah I can learn from this whole situation but I do like him and I'm still willing to make it work, I guess I'm not sure he is just as committed
Date a westerner instead. Almost all of them speak some English and seeing as they already speak a romance language, they could probably become fluent quite fast.
Don't listen to the weebs. You'll never be that accepted in Japan and your Japanese will always be lacking like any non-native speaker.
Your Japanese is fine, it would take a very very long time for a Japanese person to get to this level of English from scratch unless they moved to an English speaking country. Even if he starts to study one of your languages, you will still be able to have a better conversation with your Japanese (unless your written Japanese is way better than your spoken...)
That's the most reasonable alternative I guess, thank you
It just feels like things won't last very long if it's only me who puts in all the effort, I'll keep trying until I can't anymore though, I just wish it didn't have to be so stressful
My written Japanese is better than my spoken that's for sure :(
One more question, is it a turnoff for you guys if your significant other has an accent or is not capable to easily have a deep conversation with you? That's also what worries me in the long run
Also if he doesn't ever learn at least conversational english I'll never be able to introduce him to my family and friends which is kind of important for me :(
Sweetie, how do you actually think you're dating someone on the other side of the world when you can't even communicate clearly? All you have is verbal communication, and if you aren't speaking the same language, you don't even have that.
Conversing in any language with a non-native speaker is a pain in the ass and inefficient unless they are exceptionally fluent. Only a very small minority will ever reach that stage and it's likely the language is close to their own. The further you go from your native language, the lower the chance of mastering it.
Anyway, the average person will seem more unintelligent in their non-native language. It probably won't make or break the relationship, but it's harder to have a stable relationship with imperfect communication. It may lead to more fighting for that reason, and then you have to include cultural differences that can also be a huge problem.
If you plan to stay in Japan for the rest of your life, you should commit a lot of time to mastering Japanese. If it's only going to be until you finish school, then the relationship doesn't have much to stand on anyway and you would probably be more comfortable with a foreigner. Japanese is practically useless outside of Japan. It has fewer native speakers than most common languages.
No they actually don't, tell me what bilingual person do you know that began learning a 2nd language in their 20s? nevermind the fact this person speaks a language nothing related to hers. At what point does it make sense to have two people speaking languages neither can fully grasp?
Guys I really thought I could make it work with him, and the reason I made this thread is because I had an ugly fight with him about the whole communication issue, we've been having more and more fights about it recently but I just want to find a solution to this and be happy with him.
How unrealistic is it to hope that things might get better?
Find a guy who already speaks english or spanish
bitter incel detected.
He probably looks down on you and your nationality. He doesn't want to learn English or Spanish because he doesn't see a real future with you.
Lmao you should’ve known what you’d be getting into dating Japanese men, Japanese people aren’t very open no matter who the person is and it’s foolish and arrogant to think you can understand something or culture from which you are clearly not from you should’ve done you’re homework but figure it out yourself you’re grown think with your head a bit more.
Realistically, if you've already spoken to him about it, and he still isn't interested in meeting you half way, you have your answer.
Do whatever you must to stay out of shithole Venezuela
Weebs are out in full force in the thread. Reminder that no matter how well you think you speak Japanese, you sound like a shitty foreigner to them and will never be completely fluent.
Japanese is the hardest common language for English speakers to learn. Most of them don't speak a second language either so good luck communicating with the xenophobic gooks.
>Japanese is the hardest common language for English speakers to learn
That is such bullshit Japanese grammar is piss easy and the pronunciation isn't hard either, pretty much every sound exists in English. Plus the amount of commonly used words with the same or similar meanings is way smaller than English.
>you sound like a shitty foreigner to them and will never be completely fluent
>xenophobic gooks
These parts are less bullshit, but are you really going to get completely fluent in any second language that you start learning as a non-bilingual adult? The part about being xenophobic/having different standards about linguistic competency than other countries is 100% true though.
>That is such bullshit
No, it's not. They actually research this for diplomats. The U.S. Foreign Service considers Japanese the hardest common language to learn. You can learn four Germanic or Romantic languages in the same time period. Japanese is also one of the least efficient languages and has a very slow information rate. Try to find any evidence that supports your claim. I'm fairly sure you've taken some Weeb talking points and ran with them.
>Are you really going to get completely fluent in any second language that you start learning as a non-bilingual adult?
Plenty of people do. You'll have a much easier time if it's close to your native language. There's no convincing evidence that age is much of a factor in your ability to learn languages and in some areas, like understanding proper grammar, older people actually do better.
The fact remains that Japanese is mostly useless outside of Japan and very few people will relocate there to begin with. English teaching jobs are paying less and less each year. Not to mention technology will replace most English teaching jobs within a decade. Weebs are suckering people into thinking that it's a useful language and easy to learn, but the vast majority of people will give up long before they come close to being fluent. Nearly everyone would be better off learning something else.
I wouldn't say that's a red flag yet.
But if he keeps burning down your requests to improve the relationships, then you should jump ship.
You don't want to invest into a relationship where one side is only take.
They must be talking about the kanji memorization aspect of it because if you're just talking about learning to speak and listen it's easy as fuck.
Thousands of characters, three different writing systems, two syllabary systems. It's considered harder than Mandarin and Arabic. It takes around 2200 hours to learn versus 575-600 hours for most of the European languages.
I suppose you could understand the words without having the ability to read/write them, but you're basically illiterate at that point and would have a hard time getting by in any country. I'll have to take your word for it because I don't speak GookNoise. The only thing I wish to learn would be translated from:
'Two bombs were not enough'.
>Japanese is also one of the least efficient languages and has a very slow information rate.
This is exactly why I don't bother with Japanese, or any chink language for that matter. Their writting system is fucking retarded.
>tell me what bilingual person do you know that began learning a 2nd language in their 20s?
A lot of them, idiot. Hell, I've known people learning a language in their 30s and beyond. Miss me with your dumbass shit.
The reading and writing is hard, having a conversation with your boyfriend is piss easy.
How have you communicated for the past year?
Most people speak english, I would think it was the natural language to use while you learn japanese.
As for learning culture, you are the foreigner, I think it is fair for you to learn his culture.
But I also think he should be teaching you.
But he should also put in the effort to learn more english even if it is only you he talks english with.
I was watching this couple on youtube a few years ago (texan in tokyo). That talked about Japanese culture, and from that it seemed like speaking english was not something they do all the time unless forced to.
We've been communicating only in Japanese for the last year because of the reason that you and everyone else in the thread has mentioned, I am the foreigner, it is on me to learn Japanese if I'm staying. It was until this May that I had a heavy depressive episode after a friend killed herself that I couldn't bring myself to fake that I was enjoying speaking Japanese anymore. Ever since he's told me that I can talk to him in english if I want but he's not going to understand anyway so there's no meaning in doing that.
I'm supposed to meet him and talk about all of this in a couple of hours and I have no idea what to tell him, I don't know if I'm willing to put up with a relationship when communication is easy for just one side, living in Japan is hard in many ways but not having support in that sense from your significant other is really exhausting
Do you want to have mixed kids?
Yeah why not
Work hard at it, japanese isnt an easy language and nihon men tend to be shy for the most part. Its totally worth the effort.
You should speak the language of the country you're living in. How can you expect to live in Japan and be unable to communicate with 99% of the population?
You've probably made a mistake going there.
From my understanding, Japanese men are generally like that. It's a complete cultural thing. I don't anticipate him putting him effort not only because he's shown no interest in doing so, but because it's his place in Japanese culture and the male perspective surrounding him will only strengthen his conditioning on why he shouldn't have to learn a new language.
Japan as a culture is totally fucking different from any place I've heard of for both men and women. Good luck.
Not that user but I would say practically practically every parent that migrated to the US in the last 20 to 40 years. Learning a language is hard not impossible. You just need to put in the effort and motivation. Though both of those seldomly come to me so I probably won’t be fluent in a second language any time soon
>it's a complete cultural thing
Absolutely, that's what I've come to realize.
I just had a little talk with him and we're on better terms now, you guys helped me put things in perspective and I think maybe now I can tackle this whole thing with more awareness of the effort that I have to put in to make it work. Thank you all :)
You should try and ask him to help you study, teaching others isn't easy to do, so if he does it is a good way of showing he is interested in the relationship. Not trying to be rude,but you are in his country , asking him to learn your language before you learn his isn't "proper".