Japan ranks 92nd in English proficiency, lowest ever: survey - The Mainichi
mainichi.jp
TOKYO -- Japan ranked a record low 92nd in the 2024 English proficiency ranking of 116 countries and regions where English is not the native language,

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.

  • Dizzy Devil Ducky@lemm.eeEnglish
    4·
    4 days ago

    True. Also doesn’t help when you sometimes mix up シ(shi) and ツ (tsu) because the font (or someone else’s handwriting) makes them look very similar.

    • tiredofsametab@fedia.io
      2·
      4 days ago

      Alignment/starting position is the key. The "-like strokes in shi are left-aligned, the "-like ones in tsu are top-aligned. Same for ‘so’ and ‘n’. This is why people talk about stroke order being important (although in this case it’s not simply the order).

      • leftzero@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
        1·
        4 days ago

        I don’t know Japanese at all, but the way my phone renders those characters I can’t tell anything about stroke order, and can only tell them apart because they’re next to each other…

        I imagine there might be larger differences with Japanese specific fonts, but with whatever this one is the difference seems about the same as using italics with Latin characters…