

How the UK found Japanese speakers in a hurry in WW2 - samaysharma
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33860778

======
ume
Another of the SOAS intake at that time was Bernard T Smith, an RAF officer,
who was posted to Japan in 1946 to take part in the rebuilding process.
Bernard was subsequently involved in the UK computing industry. His paper on a
general purpose query language, SPECOL, is interesting to read today given it
was published in the 60s.
([http://comjnl.oxfordjournals.org/content/11/2/121.full.pdf](http://comjnl.oxfordjournals.org/content/11/2/121.full.pdf))

(My company published a Japanese translation of his 1946 memoirs and I had the
very good fortune to meet Bernard. Sadly, he passed away last year).

~~~
Pamar
Interesting, thanks. Btw I checked SPECOL on Wikipedia and there is no entry
(for the query language) - maybe someone can remedy this?

------
ilamont
Based on the accounts in the article, it seems that Britain was unprepared for
conflict with Japan, and the crash language program basically failed.

Years ago, I read in a book or magazine article that the British Imperial
service was actually quite strong when it came to language instruction. In
Malaya, as I recall, they were able to teach officers Cantonese, Hokkien, and
other Chinese dialects that are quite hard for non-native speakers to master.
I assume that the diplomatic service was similarly effective when it came to
training their officers in the languages required to carry out their overseas
missions.

So, British officials were able to learn foreign languages, including obscure
Asian languages used in their colonies. Yet Japanese was not considered a
priority, even though Japan had been regarded as an expansionist regional
power for decades (which every Western colonial power was aware of, thanks to
Japan's concessions in China, its puppet state in Manchuria, and other
militaristic activities/ambitions in the 1920s and 1930s).

~~~
cafard
Anthony Burgess writes about this in his memoir _Little Wilson and Big God_ :

"Colonial functionaries had to learn the major language of their territory at
a formidable level. A kitchen jargon, good enough for wives, with bad grammar
and a master-race pronunciation, was usually preferred by the natives, who did
not believe it was possible for a foreigner with a white skin to learn their
language. Colonial civil servants had to disconcert these natives with a
linguistic mastery, including a control of many registers, equal to, or
greater than, their own. In Malaya, there were many languages, but Malay was
considered, for political reasons, to be the obligatory specialisation. You
could, if you were mad enough, learn Hakka or Cantonese or Kuo-Yu or Tamil or
Hindi or Urdu, but you had to take examinations in Malay. You had to take the
Standard One examination in your first year and the Standard Two before the
end of your first three-year tour. If you failed, an efficiency bar was
invoked, and you were not entitled to annual pay increments."

Burgess was by his account unusually competent linguistically, passing
Standard Two by the end of his first year (which made him, he says, disliked)
and Standard Three by the end of his tour (which made him hated).

[Edit: Burgess write of his first boss in Malaya that "During the war he had
had the chance to learn Japanesr, and he had been sent on a course with fine
amenities, including recording apparatus. He had used this apparatus for
recording popular songs. I id not think this funny."]

------
repiret
The article makes frequent use of the term Sixth-former, which I hadn't heard
before:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixth_form](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixth_form)

It appears to be the equivalent of 11th and 12th grade in the US.

~~~
abritinthebay
Yup, it's the part of UK school that happens post compulsory education (so
after 16yrs old).

Basically post-16 you can go out and work, or learn a trade, go to a trade-
school, or continue with your more formal education at 6th Form level at
either your school or a college (and we treat colleges as different to a
university).

~~~
chrisseaton
Also interesting for Americans is that in the six-form you will start to
specialise down to three or four subjects, one of which you may study at
university.

People say UK degrees are short, and PhDs here are even shorter, but in part
that's because at 16 I was already specialising in computer science, maths and
physics.

~~~
davnicwil
On the other hand, this creates an adverse effect of specialising in what
you're good at and what will be best for qualifying you for the type of degree
you want to do, at the expense of a broader education.

I too took Maths, Physics and Computing to A level because I knew I'd want to
end up doing a Physics or Computer Science degree, and because I knew these
subjects were my safest bets for As. For those outside the UK education
system, all As at A-level is essentially the minimum requirement for getting
into the best UK universities, so you're under a lot of pressure to ensure you
get them if you want to go to one of these.

I would have really liked to carry on studying other things - French, in
particular. But because there would have been more of a risk of me 'dropping'
to a B in French, as opposed to a maths/science subject, though I would have
enjoyed it I would have been foolish to do so under that system.

Instead I ended up taking French night classes years later, when I was out of
University and the general educational funnel where you are strongly
incentivised to focus solely on your specialisation of the moment for the best
grade(s). It was much harder than it would have been at 16, and I'm much worse
at French now than I could have been as a result, which is a real shame.

Specialising early has benefits, for sure, but a very real drawback is that
you have to sacrifice the development of other skills, knowledge and interests
to do it properly. I'm not convinced 16 is a better age than 18 to start doing
that, even if it means you're ultimately in education a year or two longer.

~~~
mikekchar
Just to cheer you up a bit, I taught EFL (English as a Foreign Language) for 5
years and did quite a lot of study into language acquisition. I now firmly
believe that it would not have been any easier for you to learn a language at
16 than at your current age. In fact, you have many other advantages at an
older age that would argue that you will do much better now.

I could write a book on the subject, but very quickly, the myth that children
learn faster than adults is just a myth. In fact, the average child (who is
doing almost nothing other than studying their native language in every waking
moment) learns about 1000 new word families per year up until they reach 20
(at which point they will have acquired about 20,000 word families). "Word
family" means a word and it's associated extensions -- police and policeman
are one word family. It also includes conjugation/inflection of verbs, etc.

The average 5 year old has about 5000 word families and probably about 2000
grammatical constructs. It takes them 5 years to learn that. Talk to a 5 year
old so you can get a sense of what kind of proficiency that means ;-). A 10
year old has about 10,000 word families and about 3000 grammatical structures
(basically all except very strange ones). They can't read a newspaper and
understand it, but they can watch your average movie or TV show without any
difficulty. To achieve adult level proficiency with an ability to read news
papers, read technical documentation, write well in your job, etc. takes about
18-20 years. Many, many people in the general population fail to reach that
level.

Your failure has very little to do with your age. If you spent 10 years
studying French full time, you could do much better than a 10 year old. Your
failure has to do with the fact that languages are taught very, very, very
poorly at schools (even private night schools). There are unreasonable
expectations (like 2000 words of vocabulary -- words, not word families! --
will make you "fluent"). Also, the instruction tends to focus on teaching you
grammatical rules from which you tortuously try to construct sentences. If you
diligently apply yourself you will be able to construct many grammatically
correct sentences... which are idiomatically wrong and hence unhelpful unless
you have very accommodating conversation partners.

My big helpful hints:

\- Don't compare your fluency/proficiency in French with that of your native
language. It will take you at least 20 years to reach that level, unless you
find some amazing shortcuts.

\- Learn languages by sentence, rather than by vocabulary or grammar. Take an
exemplar that you don't know the meaning to and learn it. Don't bother with
grammar rules unless you just happen to like grammar.

\- If you happen to like grammar, study it in French, not English. This will
give you a wonderful supply of exemplar sentences to learn.

\- Study frequently for short periods of time. 15 minutes 3 times a day will
give you _much_ more ability than a 10 hour session once a week.

\- Study realistic sentences. Read books. Doesn't matter what. Just struggle
through and memorize the meaning of any exemplars that you don't know.

\- Watch TV with subtitles. As much as you can.

\- Get a lot of French music (with lyrics). Learn them and sing them with the
original. Record yourself and study the differences.

\- Don't ever give up. Ever. Even if you give up, start again. Start today.
Start now. It's only 15 minutes. How is 15 minutes going to hurt you?

\- Find a reason to continue doing this. It doesn't matter what it is, but you
need reasons to fuel you for at least the next 5-10 years.

Your 16 year old self may have been able to comprehend the basic of basic
french basics as they shoved it down your throat at school (possibly without
actually letting you speak). Your older self actually has a chance to learn
the language with fluency and proficiency as long as you take a realistic
approach. Good luck!

~~~
davnicwil
What a helpful and inspiring reply, thanks a lot!

The only one of your hints I've properly followed in the past is the TV with
subtitles one (specifically, watching a French series called engrenages
[spiral] which by the way is fantastic!) and I agree that this really does a
lot of good - it seemed to cement a lot of stock phrases and expressions by
osmosis. I wasn't necessarily concentrating too hard on the language, more
just engaged in the storyline, but was picking up a lot of things purely
through repetition, in situational contexts, etc - I'm no expert but think
this probably closely simulates how language is learned naturally through
listening to parents, teachers, etc.

~~~
mikekchar
If you are interested in the subject a very popular set of hypotheses at the
moment come from Stephen Krashen of the university of California. He has
helpfully put his book online:
[http://www.sdkrashen.com/content/books/principles_and_practi...](http://www.sdkrashen.com/content/books/principles_and_practice.pdf)

I will say that, like many studies in psychology, I find his research to be
less than rigorously tested. I think it is reasonable to keep a skeptical eye,
but even if the work is guided by intuition, it appears to be very good
intuition.

Very quickly. There are 5 main hypotheses:

\- Acquisition-Learning distinction hypothesis that states that language
acquisition (ability to use the language freely without undue conscious
thought) is different than learning (being able to remember facts about the
language). Acquisition is required for fluency.

\- Natural Order hypothesis states that grammar constructs in language are
acquired in a certain order, no matter what order you teach the material. This
has actually been show in studies and verified independently. Of the 5
hypotheses, I think this is the most rigorously tested. Somebody actually
proposed the natural order for English grammar, but I can't find the link. It
is (surprisingly) not very important what it is (see below)

\- Monitor hypothesis states that there is a process in your brain which
essentially scans language input and output and states whether it parses or
not. For example, "Harold and me are going to the store", _sounds_ wrong even
if you don't know that "me" should be used as an object of the sentence, but
is instead being used as a subject.

\- Input hypothesis (the most important, but also most controversial
hypothesis). Acquisition results largely/only from being exposed to input that
you understand (input being language that you hear or read). In other words,
in order to acquire language, it is sufficient to expose yourself to language
that you can understand (in any way -- it being explained, obvious from
context, etc, etc). Practice with output (speaking, writing) is not necessary
(though, personally I think it may be helpful in some circumstances --
certainly helpful just from the acquisition of the physical skill of forming
the sounds).

\- Affective filter hypothesis states that language acquisition is hampered
(and perhaps halted altogether) in situations of stress. Language acquisition
occurs when the person is in a relaxed environment, without any pressure to
achieve anything in particular (obviously a big problem for classrooms if
true).

There is one other corollary which is quite important, known as "i + 1". It
states that when language acquisition occurs, if your current ability is "i",
then you will automatically acquire "i + 1" along the lines of the natural
order hypothesis. As long as you are exposed to the material in a way that
allows you to understands what it means (again, though context, explanation,
etc) you will naturally acquire the next bit that you need. There is no need
to teach to the natural order (and in fact Krashen suggests that it is counter
productive because you limit what the students are exposed to).

So the upshot is that you simply have to expose yourself to language that you
can understand and you will acquire language. There is no need (and it may be
counter productive) to limit the types of grammar that you are exposed to
because you will automatically acquire the next bit that you need in the
natural order as long as you are exposed to it. Limiting the types of grammar
you are exposed to will only slow you down. Learning (as opposed to
acquisition) is not necessary, but can be helpful in strengthening your
monitor (which is good for providing feedback). However, Krashen warns that
too much reliance on the monitor (as is common in classroom teaching) will not
lead to acquisition.

I would add a few personal observations. My experience is that these
hypotheses largely fit what happened in my classroom and in my own study of
Japanese. Krashen does not talk extensively about the role of memory in
acquisition, nor does he talk about the need for repeating exposure to certain
input. I think he is probably right that it is unnecessary to consider this,
but my experience is that memory helps to speed the process by allowing you to
understand more input.

This is why I suggest memorizing the meanings of sentences. If you do so, you
will have more context for trying to understand new input. It's not really
important for acquisition, per se, but it gives you a super fast look up table
of examples so that you can understand more new input. Especially when coupled
with reading (where you can progress at any speed that you like), this has
dramatically improved the pace with which I could learn Japanese. It really
appeared to help my students as well.

There are probably lots of study techniques that would work according to these
hypotheses. Even the "study lots of grammar" technique is not at all bad if it
is coupled with "read a lot of books and struggle through comprehending the
sentences using the grammar rules you learned". The problem is that most
teachers couple grammar memorization with language _output_ , leading to
students who know lots about a language, but if they acquire anything it is a
kind of baby language of non-idiomatic phrases that they invent themselves
(like... programmers... ahem...)

One other very important thing to realize is that there is not anywhere enough
time to get the repetition necessary to acquire large proficiency in a
language in the classroom. It _must_ be self study!!! Again, this is where
most people (and especially teachers) get it wrong. Even when I ask teachers,
"How did you become fluent in X?", they _never_ reply "at school". And yet,
they still believe they can teach people to become fluent in a language at
school.

Just as a caveat, there _are_ some classroom techniques evolving which
seriously limit the scope of language in order to teach fluency of a small
subset in the classroom. This can work very, very well if you are simply
teaching the students how to continue on in their own study once they gain
confidence in their ability to become fluent in a small subsection of the
language. Unfortunately, the hubris of teachers (like programmers) is largely
unbounded and for some reason they think they can go beyond this role...

Hope you found this interesting. I really should put this content somewhere
semi-permanent. I seem to type the same thing every few month ;-)

------
rodgerd
> and Britain's huge military base in Singapore had fallen.

"Had given up so quickly it's a bloody cheek for any Englishman to use that
joke from the Simpsons about surrender monkeys" would be more accurate.

