"Easy Japanese" Nearly half of the people need to work on it. Agency for Cultural Affairs First Survey September 25, 17:54
As the number of foreigners living in Japan increases, when the Agency for Cultural Affairs first surveyed efforts to convey information on disasters and administration in "easy Japanese" in an easy-to-understand manner, nearly half of the people think that "it is necessary". understood.
"Easy Japanese" can be easily understood by non-native speakers of Japanese, such as
▽ shortening one sentence,
▽ "danger" can be rephrased as "dangerous", and "large scale" can be rephrased as "large".
It conveys by using simple expressions.
The Agency for Cultural Affairs, which investigates changes in the usage of Japanese every year, conducted a survey on the theme of "easy Japanese" for the first time, and 1994 men and women over the age of 16 responded.
When asked if they knew about efforts to convey information on disasters and administration to foreigners living in Japan in "easy Japanese,"
68% of the respondents answered "I don't know.
" Only 30% of the respondents answered, "I know."
On the other hand, when asked about the efforts necessary to deliver information,
▽ "Provision of information in various languages" was the most common at 58%, followed by ▽ "Efforts to convey in easy Japanese" 46 It turned out that it became close to half.
In addition,
▽ "improvement of learning environment where you can learn Japanese" was 29%.
Yoshiharu Yanagisawa, chief of the Japanese Language Division of the Agency for Cultural Affairs, said, "While people from various countries live in Japan, I found that the Japanese themselves feel that they need to take action. Multilingualization alone has its limits. , I want to disseminate "easy Japanese" so that the government and the private sector can refer to it. "
In Minato-ku, Tokyo, where foreigners from 130 countries live
In local governments where many foreigners live, there is a growing movement to adopt "easy Japanese".
As of August, in Minato-ku, Tokyo, where nearly 20,000 foreigners live in about 130 countries, we are now opening a salon where you can interact with Japanese instructors in "easy Japanese" so that you can learn the Japanese necessary for daily life. It has been held since the year.
Approximately 10 people from 9 countries, including Pakistan and Cuba, participated in the meeting held at a junior high school in the ward on September 19.
At the salon, Japanese instructors and volunteers
▽ short sentences consisting of simple words
▽
try
to pronounce
"easy Japanese"
slowly with a little pause for each word, and
talk for about 2 hours to deepen exchanges. I did.
A 27-year-old Pakistani woman who has lived in Japan for five years said she had a hard time when she gave birth to two children in Japan because she could not understand the Japanese spoken by doctors and nurses other than the word "hospitalization."
The woman said, "I gave birth to a child without knowing anything. I want to learn simple Japanese for the children."
Also, a 40-year-old Chinese man has a similar meaning to Chinese in Chinese, for example, if you look at the word "Okinawa", you can tell that it is a place name, while Japanese with kun'yomi and onyomi is pronounced differently from Chinese. He said that he didn't immediately understand when he heard "Okinawa".
The man said, "I've lived for two years, but Japanese is difficult. I enjoyed talking to you today. I want to talk more with people from Japan and abroad."
According to a survey conducted by Minato Ward on foreigners living in the
city, 70% of the respondents answered that they would like to participate in community activities, while those who
actually answered that they participated. It was only 10%,
and it is said that one of
the
reasons was the "word wall".
Yusuke Miyamoto, Chief of Internationalization and Culture and Arts in Minato Ward, said, "Although multilingualization is progressing, it is difficult to respond to the languages of all countries. Foreigners can understand" easy Japanese "and English. Even Japanese people who can't do it can have international exchanges. I think that talking from the other person's point of view is at the same time compassionate. "
"Easy Japanese" course for doctors, etc.
On the 23rd, the International University of Health and Welfare held a public lecture on the theme of "easy Japanese" on a campus in Tokyo, and medical personnel and local government officials participated face-to-face and online.
In the lecture, Professor Kazunari Iwata of the University of the Sacred Heart, who is familiar with Japanese language education, served as a lecturer, and 55% of foreigners who received the new coronavirus and called the Life Counseling Center in Tokyo asked for a response in "easy Japanese". I explained that.
On top of that, as an easy-to-understand expression,
▽ "fill in" is replaced with "write", and
▽ "vaccination" is replaced with "injection or medicine to prevent illness"
.
He also said that honorific and humble words are difficult for foreigners to understand, and that it is important to shorten one sentence by rephrasing "I will take a rest" to "I will take a rest".
A male secretary of the hospital who participated said, "We have increased the notation in English and Chinese in the hospital, but the number of patients in various countries has increased and the support for multilingualization has not been able to keep up, so we used it at the hospital. I want to go. "
In addition, a female care manager said, "I learned" easy Japanese "for the first time. I think it is an easy-to-understand way of speaking not only for foreigners but also for the elderly, so I would like to spread the initiative."
Experts How to use words can make a big difference in how easy it is to live
Experts working on the spread of "easy Japanese" point out that the ease of living for foreigners can be greatly changed by just using one word.
Professor Yuko Takeda of Juntendo University School of Medicine is making a video to spread "easy Japanese" in the medical field where words are life-threatening, and in the video released on the 25th, she interacts with foreign patients at the hospital. The conversation is shown.
Professor Takeda said, "There is also a survey result that there are overwhelmingly more foreigners living in Japanese than in English. I wonder what kind of difficulties people who do not speak Japanese are encountering. The ease of living will change dramatically if you reach out and change the wording a little. For us, it is our mother tongue, so we do not need to memorize new words and want to find out the words in ourselves. I was talking.