I remember reading something somewhere (might have even been a Tofugu article) about why all these Japanese companies block Americans (and others) from watching YouTube.
Forget the specifics, but it was because of YouTube Red. YouTube Red allows you to download videos, which is in violation of some part of Japanese copyright laws. So, to be safe, these Japanese companies just block their videos from countries where YouTube Red is available (its not available in Japan for said reasons). Something like that.
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@pegasus thanks for sharing that link! I’d love to hear of any other favorite resources you use (whether your list is organized or not 
) Plus it’s also always nice to find other homeschoolers around, even though we’re finishing up our last year for the foreseeable future. (This was my oldest’s first year in school, and now the younger two also want to go.)
Actually, babies can hear before they are born; they begin to learn the sounds of their native language while still in the womb. So it might sound crazy, but if the mother is around spoken Japanese, it should help!
(Sorry, no reference for that, I must have read it in some random pregnancy/parenting book.)
Yeah that’s true. I’ve been reading “The Expectant Father”, and it had a whole thing on baby knowing the sound of the parents, etc. Which is (partly) why baby will know who I am after its born, though its never truly met me, I guess you could say. As well as developing a fondness for the types of music it hears a lot, being totally fine with barking dogs, etc.
And mother, not really around spoken Japanese so much. Wife couldn’t really care less, sadly. Once in a while I can get her to watch a movie with me, but not terribly often. Usually Japanese shows/movies are reserved for when shes busy with something else.
But, perhaps paternity leave will be a good time to catch up on my shows
I recommend this site which is for Japanese parents with kids in 幼稚園、小学生、中学生 etc.
Specifically I find the 幼児の簡単なぞなぞ cards are great (even for us adult learners) - link here… Here’s an example of one of the quiz cards, you can print them out and fold them in half, one side has the “riddle” (just a simple description of what the answer is) and the other side has the answer:
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Thank you!!
Oh, if only this was part of those first japanese classes in high schools and college here stateside. Things would be different
I’ve never heard of someone trying to make their child a native speaker of a language that isn’t one they are fluent in or of the place they live in. It seems like it would be pretty difficult to cultivate that without it going askew somehow, but I don’t have kids. I can imagine raising kids bilingually, but I have a Japanese girlfriend and live in Japan.
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Yeah, me either, or at least not recently. Don’t worry; I feel like a clown about the whole thing every day, but at least the voice in my head telling me I’m wasting hers and my time has quieted down somewhat for now. She seems genuinely happy so far, and my wife and all our other family members have seen that she is getting along in the English-speaking world just like any other North American little person her age would. This whole thing often feels crazy to me, but she’s never looked any more or less confused than any other infant or toddler would learning their first language(s), and she started speaking more words in English, not counting her Japanese productions, earlier than average. I’m definitely biased, but she really does seem like a natural. I hope that, at least for the next 4 years (by which point we should REALLY be in Japan) that if I keep it fun, engaging, loving, informative, and diverse things just might turn out.
I hope.
So in short, I admit wholly that I am putting all my eggs in one basket and betting on the likelihood that we will move to Japan for work soon and there she will encounter the real deal, which with my efforts and her young and supercharged language learning faculties, I assume/hope that she will be able to integrate comfortably.
As a side, and not that I feel that this gives any credence to what we are doing, but as I learned in my historical linguistics classes in Uni (I was a Ling major), waaaaaaaay back in the history of English, well before the language(s) that would end up becoming English had any great resemblance to what we speak today, there is record that the invading vikings who settled down and had families in the Scot and Briton territories did an odd thing; rather than teach their half-Scott/Briton half-Norse children Old Norse, a significant portion of them abandoned their mother tongue in their household and child rearing activities and instead raised their kids using their own non-fluent and malformed English. This phenomenon was widespread at the time and is considered to be partly responsible for English missing out several grammatical forms and other modes of expression never making it into Middle English. So, in a nutshell, it looks like lives weren’t ruined or that this phenomenon caused the dark ages to be any appreciably darker; Anglo and Scott kids of old just talked funny, got old, had their own kids, and everyone got used to the changes and largely forgot about the whole thing.
This fact doesn’t make me look good, I can tell. But that’s all I know about this curious subject at the moment. I’ll keep learning and sharing things with our daughter the best way I can.
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Oh, and I meant to say this before:
初めまして、リーボさん！よろしくお願い！
I’ve been seeing you around on the forums for a bit now and enjoyed what you’ve contributed on other threads in the past. It’s cool to actually get to talk with you. Thanks for taking the time.
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I have to wonder, how long have you studied Japanese @takeshitakeda? You sure are doing something quite extraordinary.
I speak fluent English but never thought of speaking to my kids only in English. I’ve tried to speak some with my older son now that he’s studying English in school but he gets really irritated. Teaching some Japanese every now and then while I study myself has been a bigger success.
We also aim to move to Japan in a few years time. By then both of them will know some English which should help while studying yet another language.
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Is it a pretty common in Europe tho? Idk myself.
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Mine are both fluent. We’ve never lived in Japan other than short trips. It’s mostly my wife and her social circle, plus originally dropping them at a daycare for Japanese kids. The kids actually spoke Japanese before they spoke English. Once they were old enough it was into Japanese private school to keep up with reading and writing. My son (13) now goes to a Saturday school since the Japanese private school only runs through 6th grade and he’s in 7th grade in a public school. My daughter (15) kind of half-way self-studies since her extra curriculars don’t allow Saturday school.
The preschools and private schools we used will take non-Japanese kids! They will come out speaking Japanese!! If you are blessed to have such resources in your area and can afford to use them it is one route. My son’s class had two students who had parents were were non-Japanese and didn’t have any Japanese language skills at all! The kids started from kindergarten and went all the way through 6th grade. However, I realize it is rare to have access to this as well as the ability to pay for it.
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Oh, thanks for mentioning these sorts of schools! I had forgotten about them since there aren’t any in my area for Japanese. But if there were, it sounds like a really great option!
I can’t really imagine it’s common anywhere, since it seems so difficult. Having someone else teach your kids is something different. Taking on the task of trying to do it when you yourself aren’t a native speaker is what I haven’t heard of.
Pocoyo has episodes in Japanese and it’s great for pre-schoolers! ポコヨ - 雨の日 (Pocoyo - Umbrella, umbrella / S01E01) - YouTube
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print-kids.net is another free website that I have been using more for myself than for the kids. I like their kanji charts because they have different ones organized in different ways.
Also, I had forgotten that we also sometimes play with the Usborne First Thousand Words in Japanese book. The pictures are generic throughout their whole series for different languages, so you don’t get words for things that are very Japanese. But it is fun to find the items in the big picture on each page and we can get in some basic conversation (in Japanese) about what things are called and where they are located.
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I think we’re talking about two sort of different things in this thread, and it might be helpful to name them out:
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Helping your child(ren) make some progress in a second (or third, etc.) language after they have already learned one in early childhood. (Seems to me anyone could do this; even if they aren’t fluent in the target language, they can share what they do know with their children.)
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Raising your child(ren) to be multilingual from birth. (I agree this sounds really challenging, but if the parents are committed it could also lead to some really amazing growth on both sides.)
I haven’t read the wikipedia article on multilingualism past the intro, but it looks like it might be interesting.
I’m excited to hear more about these “eclectic methods” of which you speak (^^)
AND I’m more than happy to help you in your efforts to gather, compile, organize, and make accessible resources! Particularly if any web development or database design skills may be needed/desired; I could use a little challenge.
We used to homeschool from PreK to 3rd grade and now afterschool a bit, so I’ve been following this thread. I taught her Spanish while homeschooling. I briefly considered learning Japanese together back then, but never got past learning kana. I wish we got a bit further! She hears me practicing my Japanese all the time and knows quite a bit just from that.
I did use the Irasshai site myself! I listened to a few lessons last night and reminisced a bit, hehe.
Now she’s in a foreign language focused school learning Mandarin Chinese. Next year she will also add Spanish. I asked her tonight if she wanted to learn a little Japanese with me, and she said learning two languages is probably good enough for her. Aw…
We used secular homeschooling resources, I had so much fun with it. It’s been about four years, but if you want to see what we used, you can check out my blog.
Love seeing you all talk about homeschooling, I sure do miss it.
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Hello
Have you checked on any Japanese pre-schools/schools in your current area? It depends so much on where you live in US (i.e. West Coast/SFO/LA), big city or if you have a presence of Japanese companies in your area.
Before we moved to Japan from Texas, we found a Japanese pre-school at an International church. My son went for 1.5 years before we moved. It was a huge help before we got here.
If you have a Japanese association in your area, I would check with them.
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