Comments for Japan: Life and Religion

Comment on Raising bilingual children, one year later by Doug

Doug — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 22:56:57 +0000

Thanks Jonathan! I’d be curious to know how you learned Chinese characters and such, since Japanese has them too, and Baby will learn them one of these days.

Comment on Raising bilingual children, one year later by Jonathan

Jonathan — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 22:40:13 +0000

Another fascinating posting – so nice to get an insight into “Baby’s” language acquisition and all the cultural ramifications that come along with it. I’m especially intrigued by your observations about her grasp of writing systems … I was raised speaking English and Taiwanese at growing up. I of course learned English in school and only later in life did I start to gain some basic understanding of Mandarin Chinese characters. I can only wonder what it is like trying to acquire two writing systems at once. I certainly admire that you two are raising your daughter bilingually, from an early age.

Comment on Japanese Pizza: Okonomiyaki by Jonathan

Jonathan — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 22:28:38 +0000

Y U M

Comment on Passed the RHCE, onto the JLPT! by Doug

Doug — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 17:44:03 +0000

Thanks very much. Yeah, Anki is very good for cramming-type scenarios and customizable enough to add all kinds of factoids. I once even used it to memorize quotations from the Analects of Confucius briefly. Yes, I am a huge nerd. :-p

Comment on Passed the RHCE, onto the JLPT! by Kendall

Kendall — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 01:41:56 +0000

Big congrats on the RHCE. I’ve been getting some experience with RH5 at work lately, but not doing a ton with it. I do enjoy the command line at times, including on my Mac. I had wondered if you were making use of Anki for this. I haven’t used it for much else than Japanese, but was briefly using it for adding in the Word of the Day for a while to improve my English vocabulary. I got a little bored entering the data though and kept forgetting to review what I had entered so simply wasn’t working out very well.

Good luck with the JLPT studies, I’m sure you’ll be on top of it.

Comment on The Trouble with Superstition by Doug

Doug — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 18:43:40 +0000

Hi Shinyo, I left a note on your blog. You’ve given me some ideas about how to be more reachable for queries, thank you.

Comment on Raising bilingual children, one year later by Doug

Doug — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 18:41:08 +0000

Ha ha ha, hello C and welcome to the JLR! I deserve no credit for this. We tried originally to teach 50-50 English and Japanese, but it became clear real quick (in related older post) that she was learning Japanese much faster by virtue of being around Mommy so much. My ham-fisted efforts teach English didn’t really work, especially after she stayed at the Grandparents house in Japan for a few months and really took off. I was worried for a time until talking with co-workers above, and realized that if I let things take theri course, she’d pick up both without too much stress. So, I talk to her in English, but I also try not to force the issue either. Due to her interest in English things now, that’s helping a lot too.

Comment on Raising bilingual children, one year later by C

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 01:21:27 +0000

I applaud the fact that you are immersing your child in both languages. Too often have I see bi-racial parents raising their children on only one language, due to the ignorant notion that learning languages has to be compartmentalized. Not just bi-racial parents, more often so in the case of immigrants moving to another country. I know most of those kids will probably regret not being raised in a more multi-language environment, just as you are, I suppose Just like I am. There are at least another 2 languages I could probably be fluent in if only my parents speak them to me more often.

That’s why I shoot my monolingual nephews furtive, pitiful glances while I try talking to their parents about uncompartmentalized language learning (the usual argument is that their English will suffer if they don’t speak English at home, even though they go to an international school or live in Australia or have an English dad) while I try to juggle between eating and feeling smug inside. Because, y’know, the whole Chinese culture revolves around eating on a round table while exchanging banters.

Comment on Raising bilingual children, one year later by Doug

Doug — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 21:08:45 +0000

Hi Yazmin and welcome to the JLR! Best wishes on your first child and thank you for the input. It’s good to get a wider audience on the subject beyond the East-Asian one, as I think it affects a lot of people/parents.

Comment on Raising bilingual children, one year later by Yazmin

Yazmin — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 20:44:23 +0000

I was raised speaking Spanish until 4, at which point I was immersed in an English only day care as my mom moved to the states from Puerto Rico. I will have to admit that there was a lot of pointing to get what I needed back then, but my love of languages never wavered.

In the process, my capabilities with Spanish fell behind those of English. Even now in my 30′s, I’m more self-conscious about speaking Spanish than English at any given time, assuming the other person may be having some difficulty with what I am saying or being embarrassed at my lack of general vocabulary. I would go as far to admit that when I was actively speaking them, my French and my Arabic skills were much better than that of my Spanish skills.

It’s made me think one of the keys to truly ensuring that a child retains and feels comfortable switching between languages is regular exposure. We easily fell into English at home once we moved to the states and were it not for the necessity to speak to my grandmother during my summers in Puerto Rico, I may never have learned as much as I did. We’re expecting our 1st child this year as well and will be trying the 1 parent/1 language method ourselves.