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Show Japs Learn English as Matter of Course English is taught in the public schools all over Japan. Later, when 1 came to travel widely in the Interior, I often found bright schoolboys fourteen four-teen or fifteen years old who would volunteer as interpreters, Theodore Geoffrey writes in the Saturday Evening Eve-ning Post. In another generation English may be a second language for the Japanese, even as the Dutch today are competent linguists, because the world cannot be bothered to learn Dutch. English, unless n Japanese has been educated abroad, becomes rather peculiar pe-culiar in Japanese mouths, for according ac-cording to Japanese custom, every eon-sonant eon-sonant must be followed by a vowel, and there Is no "1" or "v" or "th." Thus "beer" becomes "bieru" ; "gluss," "gurssu," and "hotel," "hoteru." |