Mark my words

JUST as native English-speakers stumble with Japanese, the Japanese struggle mightily with English, not to mention Korean or Chinese. In the widely used TOEFL tests of English as a foreign language, Japan invariably ranks second from bottom among the 29 countries participating in the scheme. Compared with the 150m people around the world who speak English as a second language, there are only 9m non-native speakers of Japanese--and most of those were forced to learn the language during Japan's era of colonial occupation, and are now dying of old age. For those who put their faith in technology, therefore, it was encouraging to hear Shinzo Abe, Japan's prime minister, demonstrate his linguistic skills a few weeks ago with a palm-sized gizmo that provided instantaneous translations of spoken Japanese into near-flawless English and Chinese. Mr Abe can manage perfectly well without such a device, being one of the few Japanese prime ministers in recent years to speak English fluently.