Foreign Native Japanese Speakers?

[Brooker]

It's fairly common in America to have a Japanese couple move to America and have a 100% Japanese child who is raised entirely in America and is a native speaker of English (in many cases that child never really learns Japanese).

This might be kind of a dumb question, but I was wondering if the reverse ever happens. Do foreign couples move to Japan, and have children who are 100% NOT-Japanese (I'm sure it happens with children who are half Japanese) and become "foreign native Japanese speakers"? It seems the circumstances for that to happen in Japan would be a little more rare than in America.

However, in the neighborhood where I lived in Tokyo (Minami Shinagawa) there were lots of Pakistani restaurant owners who spoke Japanese very well, but all of them learned Japanese as adults. Never saw their children, but I guess they could have been native Japanese speakers.

[Elizabeth]

Even this board must have members that have immigrated to Japan, some with spouses from the same/a third country and kids becoming fully bilingual.
Probably more commonly from elsewhere in Asia than Europe or the US.
I have always wondered about their legal status, though, since it is so rare for any foreigner to become a naturalized Japanese citizen :?

[Maciamo]

I think it certainly happens with some Asians (Koreas, Chinese...) and South Americans (Peruvians, Brazilians...), but I haven't heard the case of Japan-born Caucasians who can't speak a European language. But I do not some Westerners who were born and raised in Japan with Japanese as their education and main language, who speak Japanese better than their parent's language. However they tend to be bilingual, trilingual or more.

[Rgchrono]

i wonder if there are a lot of japanese who can speak spanish in japan?? O-O

there's a lot of brazilian/japanese over there, but they speak portuguese.

[Glenn]

I once knew a guy who was raised in Japan and spoke fluent Japanese. I can't say whether it was native level, but I know that he spoke to all of the Japanese people in Japanese at school (in the US). Also, I believe that Krystal K (I think she's the one I'm thinking of) speaks native level Japanese. I think she's from an American family.

[epigene]

Glenn,

Crystal Kay grew up in Japan but has a Korean mother and African American father. She also went to an international school in Yokohama.

People who went to international schools in Japan are usually bilingual but lacks the reading/writing ability on the native Japanese level. (Of course, there are exceptions.) :bluush:

[Leroy_Brown]

In college knew a fella who was born and raised in Kobe. A son of an American Christian missionary, he spoke Japanese with Kansai-ben and spoke English with a slight Japanese accent.

[GaijinPunch]

Very rare cases, but they exist. I met two sons of missionaries. One apparently spoke native Japanese but I never heard it, so can't comment (friend of a friend I met at a bar). The other is very high-level, but not a level unnattainable by people that started in Uni.

You're about 1000 times more likely to find a half-caucasian rasised in Japan that speaks native Japanese. VERY unlikely but possible to find a half-caucasian raised in japan that speaks very bad English/other langauge. There's some half white chick model (whom apparently is now way past her prime) who AFAIK only speaks Japanese. Her mother I believe is from a European country.