THE speeches of US President Barack Obama have become the favorite way for Japanese to study the English language, The New York Times has reported.
In Japan, their CD and an accompanying book containing Obama's inaugural address have sold 200,000 copies since a release in January, while a compilation of his speeches has done even better, at half a million copies, since last November, turning the president into Japan's most popular teacher of the English language.
Japanese publishers have been flooding the market with over a dozen language-learning titles, including “Speech Training: Learning to Deliver English Speech, Obama Style”, “Learn English Grammar From Obama” and “Yes, I Can With Obama: 40 Magical English Phrases From Presidential E-mails”. Companies are trying to tap into a foreign-language teaching industry that the Yano Research Institute said was valued at 767 billion yen ($8.6 billion) in 2008.
Why is there such a massive Japanese market for recordings and books of Obama's speeches? Japanese say that listening to Obama speak is a sure-fire way to enhance their English-speaking skills.
Most Japanese, including those studying English, would have difficulty comprehending a speech given by a native English speaker. But “Obama's English is easy to understand because he pronounces words clearly and speaks at a relatively slow clip,” said Professor Tadaharu Nikaido, a communication specialist. “Movies tend to be the most difficult for Japanese, especially when actors mumble their words.” Obama sets his range of vocabulary wide enough to accommodate all levels of English speakers, Nikaido added, and at the lower end, it sometimes comes within the range of non-native speakers' comprehension.
The Obama speech phenomenon peaked in the spring, observers say, and has given way to more books and magazines that focus on how Obama's communication skills might be adopted in Japan for business and political purposes. Professor Nikaido himself has recently published a book called “Creating an Audience Frenzy: Learning From Obama's Strategic Oratory”. At least half a dozen books and magazine covers of this kind have appeared in the past several months in Japan.
