Summary

Japan’s English proficiency ranking dropped to 92nd out of 116 countries, the lowest ever recorded.

The decline is attributed to stagnant English proficiency among young people, particularly due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Netherlands ranked first, followed by European countries, while the Philippines and Malaysia ranked 22nd and 26th, respectively.

  • FelixCress@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    So, for comparison, how do English speaking countries rank in ability to speak Japanese?

    • filcuk@lemmy.zip
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      4 days ago

      Japanese isn’t widely adopted across the Internet as the default language, so this comparison is irrelevant.

      I’m only familiar with Western Internet, but if you don’t understand English, you’re isolating yourself from large parts of the world.

    • shikitohno@lemm.ee
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      4 days ago

      Would probably be more relevant to measure English-speaking countries’ ability to speak whatever the most commonly studied foreign language is, rather than Japanese. That would also probably need a caveat of eliminating native speakers and/or heritage speakers from the data set in some countries, as well.