Originally Posted by
CMC SanDiego
My brother who lives in Japan (his wife is Japanese) recently confided in me that his 3 younger kids weren't allowed into the international school where his two older boys are going because they don't speak enough English (the probably speak some engrish). He says from now on he's going to try speaking just English with the kids because for too many years it's been all Japanese.
We're a little worried about that sort of thing with my boy. He spent his first six years and kindergarten here in the U.S., albeit w/long annual trips to Japan. We were pretty successful in raising him bilingually to that point - mom always talked to him in Japanese and versed him in hiragana/katakana, plenty of video skyping with Japanese relatives, the only TV he ever watched was Japanese language, my wife would rent videos every week at the Japanese grocery store. Actually, once when my sister visited and insisted we all watch Mary Poppins, my son was astonished that our TV could actually speak English.
Naturally, though, at that point his English was stronger than his Japanese, but he was fine with starting first grade at a regular Japanese public school w/absolutely no provision for Japanese as a second language.
A year and a half on, Japanese is definitely his strong suit and we are starting to figure out how to maintain and develop his English. The Japanese only TV idea was pretty effective in his toddler years, kids are fascinated by TV and it gives examples of the language in all sorts of contexts and usages, so we've thought of imposing an English only TV rule while he is in residence in Japan.
The problem with that is that I think the Japanese kids TV programming tends to be a little better. Generally, it seems more wholesome and uplifting, but what I really like is that Japanese TV is laden with lots of stuff about how things work at a fairly high level and it occurs in the most unlikely places. Once I was hanging out in the kitchen w/my mother-in-law, some typical housewife talk show was on, talking about shopping or something. They then move on to a segment about the yen carry trade, bring on a high level economist or two, real technical discussion/diagrams of the mechanism, ramifications, and so forth. This sort of thing happens all over Japanese TV.
And fish, just like it is always Hitler Week on the History Channel, if you flip through the channels, you can almost always find a program about fish or some aquatic creature, its life cycle, habitat, and, being Japan, how it is caught, prepared, and eaten. These shows almost always end with some host taking a tentative bite, eyes widening a bit, making an appreciative "mmmmm" sound.
Originally Posted by
CMC SanDiego
I once watched him reading a newspaper and with one article he was reading horizontally like our papers then I saw him jump to reading vertically on the next article. When I asked which way they normally write (up-down, across) he said they just do whatever fits into the available space best, and when you start reading you just read which ever direction makes sense. It blew my mind.
The other interesting thing is that Japanese pictographs and syllabary have a much greater information density than English written out in roman characters. So all the books tend to be much thinner/smaller, including translations of western works. My wife is always taking days/weeks slogging through these tiny little books, a similarly sized one printed in english you could probably read in a couple of hours.