The number of U.S. students studying abroad in Japan is continuing to increase, having recovered from a sharp decline in the 2010–20111 school year.
This is in contrast to the situation in China, which has been seeing fewer and fewer U.S. students.
I’m not sure what accounts for the sharp drop in 2010–2011. It occurred before the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
China is continuing to decline as a destination for U.S. study-abroad students, slipping from fifth place to sixth (behind Britain, Spain, Italy, France, and Germany; with Ireland, Australia, Costa Rica, and Japan completing the top ten).
This likely indicates that the craze for learning Mandarin has already peaked. Greater awareness of the unhealthy levels of pollution in China may also be a factor.
Note: The dip in the 2002–2003 school year was a result of worries about the outbreak of SARS.
Meanwhile, almost all other parts of East Asia saw increases in 2015–2016 over 2014–2015:
| Destination | Students in 2014-15 | Students in 2015-16 | % Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| China | 12,790 | 11,688 | -8.6 |
| Hong Kong | 1,508 | 1,612 | 6.9 |
| Japan | 6,053 | 7,145 | 18.0 |
| Macau | 3 | 4 | 33.3 |
| Mongolia | 71 | 71 | 0.0 |
| South Korea | 3,520 | 3,622 | 2.9 |
| Taiwan | 880 | 980 | 11.4 |
sources:
Additional reading:
Yesterday we looked at the popularity of the Chinese character TLD for Singapore Internet domains. Today we’re going to examine the Chinese character ccTLDs (country code top-level domains) for those places that use Chinese characters and compare the figures with those for the respective Roman alphabet TLDs.
In other words, how, for example, does the use of 
domains compare with the use of .tw domains?
Since, unlike the case with Singapore, I don’t have the registration figures, I’m having to make do with Google hits, which is a different measure. For this purpose, Google is unfortunately a bit of a blunt instrument. But at least it should be a fairly evenhanded blunt instrument and will be useful in establishing baselines for later comparisons.
A few notes before we get started:
), so it is omitted here.
and 
, so those figures are still at zero. 
ccTLD, even though the Ma administration, which was in power when Taiwan’s ccTLDs went into effect, officially prefers the more complex form of to — not to mention prefering it to 
.| Google Hits | Percent of Total | |
|---|---|---|
| MACAU | ||
| .mo | 18400000 | 100.00 |
|
|
0 | 0.00 |
|
|
0 | 0.00 |
| TAIWAN | ||
| .tw | 206000000 | 99.86 |
|
|
67600 | 0.03 |
|
|
0 | 0.00 |
|
|
230000 | 0.11 |
| HONG KONG | ||
| .hk | 193000000 | 99.94 |
|
118000 | 0.06 |
| SINGAPORE | ||
| .sg | 97800000 | 100.00 |
|
2 | 0.00 |
| CHINA | ||
| .cn | 315000000 | 99.61 |
|
973000 | 0.31 |
|
251000 | 0.08 |
So in no instance does the Chinese character ccTLD reach even one half of one percent of the total for any given place.
Here are the results in a chart.
Note that the ratio of simplified:traditional forms in China and Taiwan are roughly mirror images of each other, as is perhaps to be expected.
See also Platform on Tai, Pinyin News, December 30, 2011
The top 10 destinations for U.S. students studying abroad were unchanged in the 2009–2010 school year compared to the year before. China remained in fifth place, with its numbers up only 1.7% over the previous year.
By far the largest gains of destinations in the top 25 were those by Israel (60.7% — up to 3,146 visiting students) and India (44.4% — up to 3,884). Though not in the top 25, Taiwan also experienced very strong growth at 42.4% (850 students) — far higher than any other country in East Asia.
In second place for growth in East Asia was Japan (6.6%), which will soon replace Costa Rica in the top 10 if trends continue.
For places of origin of international students studying in the United States, China was by far the leader, with 157,558 students, about 50% more than India’s 103,895 students in the States. Third and fourth places were held by South Korea and Canada, respectively. Taiwan was fifth with 24,818 students.
Source:
Previous posts on this subject:
OK, Google has improved its Pinyin converter some, though it still fails in important areas. So that’s the present situation for Google and Mandarin.
How about for Google and Japanese?
Professor J. Marshall Unger of the Ohio State University’s Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures generously agreed to reexamine Google’s performance in conversions to rōmaji (Japanese written in romanization).
Below is his latest evaluation.
For his initial analysis (in December 2009), see Google Translate and rōmaji.
I ran the test passage through Google Translate again. There’s some improvement, but it’s still pretty mediocre.
| Original | Google Translate |
|---|---|
| ６日午後４時３５分ごろ、東京都千代田区皇居外苑の都道（内堀通り）の二重橋前交差点で、中国からの観光客の４０代の男性が乗用車にはねられ、全身を強く打って間もなく死亡した。車は歩道に乗り上げて歩いていた男性（６９）もはね、男性は頭を強く打って意識不明の重体。丸の内署は、運転していた東京都港区白金３丁目、会社役員高橋延拓容疑者（２４）を自動車運転過失傷害の疑いで現行犯逮捕し、容疑を同致死に切り替えて調べている。 | 6-Nichi gogo 4-ji 35-fun-goro, Tōkyō-to Chiyoda-ku Kōkyogaien no todō (uchibori-dōri) no Nijūbashi zen kōsaten de, Chūgoku kara no kankō kyaku no 40-dai no dansei ga jōyōsha ni hane rare, zenshin o tsuyoku Utte mamonaku shibō shita. Kuruma wa hodō ni noriagete aruite ita dansei (69) mo hane, dansei wa atama o tsuyoku utte ishiki fumei no jūtai. Marunouchi-sho wa, unten shite ita Tōkyō-to Minato-ku hakkin 3-chōme, kaisha yakuin Takahashi nobe Tsubuse yōgi-sha (24) o jidōsha unten kashitsu shōgai no utagai de genkō-han taiho shi, yōgi o dō chishi ni kirikaete shirabete iru. |
| 同署によると、死亡した男性は横断歩道を歩いて渡っていたところを直進してきた車にはねられた。車は左に急ハンドルを切り、車道と歩道の境に置かれた仮設のさくをはね上げ、歩道に乗り上げたという。さくは歩道でランニングをしていた男性（３４）に当たり、男性は両足に軽いけが。 | Dōsho ni yoru to, shibō shita dansei wa ōdan hodō o aruite watatte ita tokoro o chokushin shite kita kuruma ni hane rareta. Kuruma wa hidari ni kyū handoru o kiri, shadō to hodō no sakai ni oka reta kasetsu no saku o haneage, hodō ni noriageta toyuu. Saku wa hodō de ran’ningu o shite ita dansei (34) niatari, dansei wa ryōashi ni karui kega. |
| 同署は、死亡した男性の身元確認を進めるとともに、当時の交差点の信号の状況を調べている。 | Dōsho wa, shibō shita dansei no mimoto kakunin o susumeru totomoni, tōji no kōsaten no shingō no jōkyō o shirabete iru. |
| 現場周辺は東京観光のスポットの一つだが、最近はジョギングを楽しむ人も増えている。 | Genba shūhen wa Tōkyō kankō no supotto no hitotsudaga, saikin wa jogingu o tanoshimu hito mo fuete iru. |
Notes:
So, to update: Google gets kudos for conscientiousness, but I stick by my original comments.
For more by Prof. Unger, see Pinyin.info’s recommended readings, which includes selections from The Fifth Generation Fallacy: Why Japan Is Betting Its Future on Artificial Intelligence, Literacy and Script Reform in Occupation Japan: Reading Between the Lines, and Ideogram: Chinese Characters and the Myth of Disembodied Meaning.
China remained the fifth most popular destination for U.S. students studying abroad during the 2008/09 school year, and it continued to account for 5 percent of U.S. study abroad.
In the previous academic year, growth for the PRC as a destination increased 19.0 percent, while study abroad as a whole increased 8.5 percent. But for 2008/09 growth for China was a much smaller 3.9 percent, while the total worldwide figure declined -0.8 percent. Figures for the top four destinations also dropped.
The order of the top 10 remained the same as in the previous year, except Mexico and Germany switched places.
Some other figures of possible interest:
Study in Asia increased slightly.
source: Open Doors data portal
Previous posts on this subject:
The most recent issue of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland (third series, volume 20, part 1, January 2010) features the following articles on romanization movements and script reforms.
Unfortunately, none of these cover any Sinitic languages or the case of Vietnam. And Gottlieb’s take on rōmaji is certainly more conservative than Unger’s. But I expect this will all make for interesting reading.
I am able to view all of the articles on my system. But perhaps others will run up against a subscription wall.
I thank Victor H. Mair for drawing this publication to my attention.
The Kyoto-based Japan Kanji Aptitude Testing Foundation — the group behind the Kanji of the Year announcement and which runs Japan’s well-attended kanji aptitude tests — is registered as a public-interest corporation, which means that it is not supposed to generate profits greater than it needs to operate (much like a non-profit organization in the United States). On March 10, however, Japan’s Ministry of Education stepped in, saying that the foundation was making too much money and needed to overhaul its operations.
How much money are we talking about?
The foundation racked up profits of ¥880 million [US$8.8 million] in fiscal 2006 and ¥660 million in fiscal 2007. The value of its assets increased from ¥5 billion at the end of fiscal 2004 to ¥7.35 billion at the end of fiscal 2007. It would not be far-fetched to say that the foundation has created a kanji business. Kanken became a registered trademark. In fiscal 2007 alone, the foundation sold some 1.5 million copies of books. It is also providing kanji-related questions to TV shows.
But there are more problems than just how much of the money the foundation makes. It has been funneling money into companies controlled by the foundation’s director and his son, the deputy director. “In fiscal 2007, commissions to these companies amounted to 2.48 billion yen [US$24.9 million], accounting for about 40 percent of the foundation’s annual expenditures,” the Asahi Shimbun reported.
Moreover, it appears the companies did little work for the large amount of money they received.
The Ministry of Education has warned the foundation before, with not much in the way of results. The foundation is to report back to the ministry by April 15. Given how entrenched the foundation is within Japan, I don’t expect much to change.
sources: