Children and Wanikani

You will have to explain their meaning however, although polygamy is not really difficult to explain.

Oooh another parent! I have a 8mo old. My speech is terrible(sigh) but I do play the super simple Japanese channel for kids songs in Japanese and sing them to her as well. Its fun for me, exposes me to a bit of grammar and tenses and they are common songs and have English versions as well. It also uses some grammar more applicable for children, and I’ve picked a bit of that up too. My wife primarily plays the English ones and I play the Japanese. If anything, it gets her use to hearing the sounds and helps me. Who knows if she’ll ever pick it up or not. Lots of the verb vocab is around N4 - I don’t think dinosour is likely to show up, but waving, moving around, continue, stop and such do. I’m studying for the N4 right now.

And I now get their Japanese version of down by the bay where the watermelons grow in my head all the time. :musical_note: 水のほとりのスイカ畑の…:musical_note:

Anyway, if you ever want to chat about parenting and learning another language at the same time, I’m around :slight_smile:

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I’m older than you??

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How old did you think I was? :rofl:

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I don’t know, I didn’t think about it :crazy_face:

I’m a newly 27-year-old kid as of the beginning of this month

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I agree and disagree with this- yes, if one speaks only a broken grammatical mishmash to your kid- it is definitely not a good idea and they’ll pick it up wrong because if you speak wrong their going to mimic you and then will be unable to correct. And language learning especially in the beginning stages of speaking is TONS of correction, over and over and over which language learners just can’t do for their children.

BUT I do think language exposure especially different language sounds that aren’t from the native language which become harder to hear as you get older IS important. In that respect hearing all kinds of sounds and words is a good thing. Of course babies tend to start selectively hearing native language very early.

Honestly, I don’t expect my child to be fluent or even use any of the Japanese I speak to her, and I do use primarily English in the home with some song media mixed in and some books, and basic sentence structure. I don’t have any idealization that that would lead to her communicating with ME or other people in that language OR successful integration. But, if she decides its something she wants to do at some point, early exposure doesn’t hurt. She may pick up a few words or phrases, and that would be nice- but not helpful because learning a non native language takes work and practice that she’ll have to do on her own. If we up and move to Japan, it would be useful for some exposure…but the likeliness of that happening for a variety of reasons is very low.

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Imo as long as you keep doing it, she’ll be motivated to do so. Its always good to have something specific that you share a bond in. That way even as she gets older and becomes busier with other interests, theres always something that connect the two of you. A language is great too since its not something that you would naturally just grow out of.

Edit: on the topic of speaking, it may be fun to get an online tutor on say CafeTalk, iTalki, etc. and take classes together at some point (maybe after level 10 or so?). Kids pick up speaking really fast and you’ll have someone to practice wifh daily. You can tell her to do chores in Japanese.

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Sounds aren’t the issue. You’d be surprised how many sounds a native English speaker does use when speaking English. The issue is assigning a phonemic value to sounds, which you can’t achieve without regular exposure that will end up in teaching syntax and vocabulary as well. (I regularly heard Serbian and Russian as a kid; it doesn’t mean I can distinguish between broad and narrow consonants. It wasn’t until I tried learning Polish in university that I discovered that these are actual things.)

testicals, tasty cals, tasty cows…

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I have a 3 year old that speaks Catalan, English, Spanish and some Flemish… we read fairy tales in Japanese (PIVO) but I think it’s f*** ing him up :stuck_out_tongue:

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You must be age 13 or older. While we are thrilled to see brilliant young people excited to learn Japanese, we must comply with United States law. WaniKani does not target our Service to children under 13, and we do not permit any Users under 13 on our Service. If we learn of any User under the age of 13, we will terminate that User’s account immediately. If you are a resident of a country outside the United States, your country’s minimum age may be older; in such a case, you are responsible for complying with your country’s laws. (WaniKani Terms of Service)

Maybe wait two years before letting your daughter use WaniKani? I wouldn’t want her account to be terminated after you pay for it.
@anon20839864/@koichi/other pink police officers please provide more insight into this!

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HAPPY LATE BIRTHDAY!

I thought we were around the same age. Pfffff…

Also, @croosa, I think @YoungAdam provided a valid point. While your daughter can still probably use WaniKani, are there any other Japanese programs you plan on using together? I am aware that your post is asking about WK, I am just curious. :3

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He probably just mistyped 13 as 11. The “1” key and “3” key are pretty close to each other…

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Further to this, I’ll add:

@croosa The vast majority of the time, the forums are clean and safe place for someone of any age, however there are (rarely) times when mature discussions take place, either of history, politics, sexuality, or less savory topics. While the forums are kept to a relatively clean standard thanks to the diligent WK team and flags by most of us users, I wouldn’t say this is enforced to the point of being a steadfast guarantee. There are always grey areas, and not everything can be noticed. Others may disagree with me when I say this, but if I had an 11 year old child I wouldn’t allow her on these forums. I know, this is a controversial thing to say. But that’s my opinion. I’ve certainly seen my fair share of things that I think were questionable or in a grey area.

I happen to know of quite a few minors on the forums, though none as young as your daughter. I’ve personally been uncomfortable with some of the topics brought up in their presence. But what I consider uncomfortable/unsuitable, another person may not. And don’t get me wrong, the forums are a fantastic place of shared learning and friendship building, but at the young age of 11…

As a kanji tool, WaniKani is absolutely fantastic, however it may be worth considering supervising or limiting her access to the forums. Of course, it’s your decision to make ultimately. With regard to the kanji side of things, I can’t think of a reason not to encourage her to learn Japanese. Knowledge is never a burden.

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えとー … WaniKani is 13+ :sweat_smile: Don’t wanna sound bossy or anything like “Get out!” but I turned 13 only a few months before that rule was put into place so I was cutting it close.
Stories about children … yeah, little kids are basically sponges for knowledge. I’m not a little kid no psshh whaddyou mean very old My parents took full advantage of that fact and stuffed Urdu, Hindi, Punjabi and Arabic into me before I turned 4. Then I started going to school in Canada and had no idea what anyone was saying to me in this strange foreign “English” but I picked it up pretty quickly.
In Canada you have to learn French too, but my school isn’t immersion where they start teaching it young so we had French class starting in grade 4. Everyone HATES that class, and thinking about it, maybe it’s because the teachers just throw worksheets and conjugation charts at us without teaching us the alphabet first.

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It could but my sister and I turned out okay :woman_shrugging: My mom spoke to me in Urdu, my dad in Punjabi, all the shows we watched and some books were in Hindi, my mom also taught me Arabic and had me read the Quran in it, then I get to school at the age of 4 what the hell is English 9 years old great now there’s French 10 years old teach myself Ojibwe why not 11 years old JAPANESE IS A GOOD IDEA RIGHT-
…ya know maybe I am confused :thinking: lol

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I never got that… I have been living in the US for 28 years but perhaps my ear is not good enough. In which accent does かく sounds like cock ?

I’m in California. The o in cock sounds like ah as in Bach, sock, knock, rock, lock, dock, talk, walk.

Is there another way to say it?

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Not really. You’d have to pronounce かく without emphasizing the う at the end. Sometimes native speakers can sound like that when they say things like 書くこと where the う nearly silent as they rush onto the next “kk” sound.

Maybe Koichi is thinking of the sound roosters make which is カックドゥードゥルドゥー (cockadoodledoo? cockoodoodledoo?)

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Channels pretty cute. I’ve watched (although forgot all about, until you mentioned it) that and Pocoyo myself a few times. My daughter (18 months) though has zero interest in TV. Suppose I could just play the audio for her, but accompanying animations help. Associate what they hear to what they see and all.
We do often have J1 going through Alexa. Not nearly as easy to follow along to though, and surely does nothing for a baby.