Jaimegracey comments

Italian-English. Mexican-English. German-English. Finnish-English. The southern regions of the fourth smallest mountain of Papa New Guinea-English. UK-English. Aussie-English. Chinese-English.

These are all dialects of English. There are enough speakers of English that reign from each of these countries that the English speaking world has learned to understand each of their unique spoken styles. All of these dialects, along with every other country in the world that manages that have a majority of their population proficient in English, are what comprise the global English language. UK, US, South Africa, AUS and every other country that speaks English natively, I am sorry to be bearer of bad news but your version of English is just another dialect now.

In the entire scheme of things It really doesn't matter if Japanese people learn that a car has a bonnet or a hood because if their goal of being a part of a global English community is ever met then the English spoken by the majority of Japanese people will be……..you guessed it!!! Japanese-English!! The global English community will simply learn to understand Japanese-English because Japanese people will play some important role in the community.

This is already happening in so many native-English dialect speaking countries I am surprised the debate in this thread even exists. If I walk into my favorite juicy bun joint, I receive those tasty delights not because the Chinese-English speaking attendant speaks a perfect “Queen’s English” or that I, a native-English dialect speaker, have spent years mastering Chinese; it happens because we both need each other for that moment in time, and this need has occurred for us both in enough occasions that I have learned to understand Chinese-English and he/she has learned to speak the necessary English as a Chinese person to handle a order of juicy buns.

If it gives you the warm fuzzies to hear a Japanese person speak with a Australian accent, then by all means keep this debate alive. I just think that once Japanese people become a part of the global English community, the majority of them will sound...Japanese.