“Is Learning Japanese a Waste of Time?” Are Foreign Languages Only Worth Learning for Practical Use?

The other day, I was watching a video of a talk show in which foreign guests spoke Japanese, and I heard an interesting discussion.

Apparently, debates regularly break out on forums such as Reddit over whether studying Japanese is a waste of time.

The reason is simple. Japanese is basically spoken only in Japan. Compared with English or Spanish, which can be used around the world, it has limited practical value.

Certainly, if you compare the study time you invest with the number of countries where you can use the language, Japanese is an inefficient choice.

But do people who learn foreign languages really make that kind of calculation in the first place?

Starting Because It Is Useful Does Not Mean You Will Master It

One observation about Americans learning Spanish stayed with me.

The United States has a large Spanish-speaking population. There are many opportunities to use the language at work and in everyday life, and Spanish is also the most popular foreign language taught in schools.

Many people begin studying Spanish because of its practical value.

However, one of the guests said, “I have never seen anyone start learning Spanish simply because it was useful and actually become proficient.”

That is a rather harsh opinion, but I understand the point.

Even if people study a language at school for several years, they will forget it if they never use it afterward. Practicality alone does not create the passion required to keep studying.

For example, the program explained that Filipino Americans learn Tagalog because they want to understand their roots and speak directly with relatives in the Philippines.

The same is probably true of foreigners who study Japanese.

Because they love Japanese anime. Because they are interested in Japanese history. Because they want to speak with Japanese people in Japanese.

Is that not reason enough?

If someone lectured a person learning piano as a hobby by saying, “Playing the piano will not raise your salary, so it is a waste of time,” I would consider that person extremely tiresome.

Yet as soon as the subject becomes foreign languages, some people suddenly begin calculating the return on investment.

Learning the “Other World” of Japanese

Another interesting opinion was that Japanese is worth learning precisely because it is so distinctive by global standards.

For a native English speaker, Japanese has completely different vocabulary, grammar, and even a different writing system.

Japanese speakers also omit subjects, change levels of politeness according to their relationship with the listener, and sometimes deliberately avoid stating a conclusion directly.

English also uses indirect expressions, but Japanese places particular importance on understanding the relationship between the speakers and reading the context of the situation.

In other words, learning Japanese is not simply a matter of replacing English words with Japanese ones.

It exposes you to a system entirely different from the rules of communication you had taken for granted.

I feel something similar in my own study of English.

When speaking English, I encounter situations where I need to put into clear words something I would have left vague in Japanese. Conversely, an expression that sounds natural in Japanese can sound strangely unnatural in English.

At first, I thought this was simply a problem with my language ability.

But as I continued studying, I began to feel that differences between languages are also connected to culture and to how people understand human relationships.

This is what makes learning a foreign language interesting.

By learning another language, you even begin to notice the strangeness of the Japanese you normally use.

If Efficiency Were All That Mattered, Life Would Be Very Boring

Studying Japanese will not enable you to work all over the world.

Even so, Japanese gives you access to Japanese ways of thinking and Japanese culture. You begin to understand jokes that are difficult to convey in translation, and lines in anime start to sound different.

To say that none of this has value seems to me a remarkably narrow standard.

For that matter, although I study English, I have no intention of finding a job overseas at this point in my life. Nor do I plan to make a fortune using English.

And yet I continue studying.

It allows me to encounter ideas I would never have found if I lived my life entirely in Japanese.

I think learning a foreign language is like acquiring a window through which you can look into another world.

Then again, I have studied English for years and still struggle to express what I want to say in online English lessons, so the return on my investment is highly questionable.

Even so, the view through the window is interesting.

There is just one problem: when I open that window during an online English lesson, a teacher is waiting on the other side.

And every time, the teacher asks, “What do you think?”

I am studying English to broaden my horizons, but first I have to explain my own thoughts in English.

My world has expanded.

Only my vocabulary remains as narrow as ever.