Reflection on English in Japan and 'Japanese English'

ABSTRACT

Globalization invalidates Kachru's geography-based Three Circles model in that people communicate across all three circles. Millions of nonnative speakers use English influenced by their mother tongues and home cultures. Thus English as a Lingua Franca has become an assemblage of English of various linguacultural backgrounds.

However, the Japanese are still under the deeply-rooted native speakerism and pursue 'native-like' or 'near native' proficiency. The Japanese should not be ashamed of using English with the Japanese linguacultural flavor although we should aim at English which is understandable and acceptable to all English users rather than purposefully insist 'Japaneseness' in English. Fortunately we have a large stock of English lexis as loanwords in Japanese, most of which can be used in English as they are. We have great potentialities to be good English speakers.

KEYWORDS:

• adoration of the West
• native speakerism
• Japanese English
• loanwords

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.