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.
Which is ironic given how many English loanwords have infiltrated the language in recent times, to the point where sometimes I hear Japanese speak in a not overly formal context and half of the words they say are just English words with Japanese pronunciation.
Having learned both english and now in the process of learning Japanese, katakana English is so confusing sometimes. It’s kind of correct when you don’t think about what’s actually written, but you sometimes have to think long to understand that an エアコン (eakon) is just an air con(dition).
I always found saying katakana out loud made me understand.
Having lots of loaned words don’t mean much when English and Japanese have vastly different grammatical structures. There are also lots of non-English loaned words in Japanese, and from experience, the Japanese don’t always know which language a word is borrowed from, nor should the speakers of the language really need to care. In any case, grammar makes up an important part of a language, though it doesn’t come for free if you aren’t already exposed to the grammatical structure before.