So my almost-six daughter, nearly half way done with kindergarten, has perfectly acceptable English linguistic progress; reading, writing, speaking, listening...only one minor issue: she has the tiniest (and most adorable) of lisps with 'th' sounds, which is apparently quite normal for kids her age, and likely not an issue.
Her Japanese is also fine, though she makes some slightly odd grammatical mistakes (in addition to the typical mistakes you would expect from a five year-old.)
My lovely wife, mother to My Awesome Kids, met with the Japanese teacher and was given a specific example of incorrect Japanese grammar that my daughter uses all the time: incorrect adjective conjugations.
She sticks a 'no' on the end of 'i' adjectives where it is unnecessary. For example: tanoshii-no.
She also sticks a 'no' on the end of 'na' adjectives where it DOES belong...she just doesn't do it correctly. Instead of dropping the 'na' and replacing it with 'no', she just slaps the 'no' after the 'na'.
In other words, she makes non-native mistakes...mistakes that I make. All. The. Time.
Because I speak Japanese to her too much, and my Japanese is not native.
Besides which, in a couple more years I won't be able to help her with her kanji homework either.
So, I am basically ruining my children and I need to stop communicating with them in Japanese.
Like, immediately.
2 comments:
We're having the opposite problem where our daughter refuses to speak English at home, even though I ONLY speak to her in English. Her Japanese is perfect though... I guess that's because my wife is native and her friends are mostly Japanese. The way I see it, though, is that they will eventually smooth out. I remember having a hard time with Engrish growing up and getting teased a lot in public school. Interestingly I had a huge culture shock coming to Japan, even though I only spoke Japanese at home.
My boy's Japanese teacher is encouraging him to take the KanKen in a few years...with me. I'll be damned if I let that little punk get a higher score than me...;p
Post a Comment