Japanese language learning has been part of my life for about a decade or so. It’s more of a hobby for me but over the last few years I’ve been more about studying for a few reasons. My son, who is ten, is on the spectrum, further on the spectrum. Most likely because I have been into it, he has seemed to pick up interest in the language as well.
I had watched Erin Ga Chosen some years back and he loves them. In fact, it’s probably been playing in the background for a few years now. Actually playing right now. He has picked up phrases and I have had his school teachers and therapists tell me that he was sometimes speak those phrases when he wants something. So to me, it is sticking and I would like to continue that as long as he has that interest.
But obviously traditional learning isn’t always the way. I do wonder if immersion would be best here? My Japanese friend had sent me yakuza 3 (completely in Japanese) and my son got pretty far in the game a few years back. He will voluntarily choose Japanese movies to watch (on repeat). Music wise, depending. I’ll pay for resources. that isn’t an issue. Perhaps more visual resources might be the key here.
If anyone can point me in a good direction I would be interested. Thank you.
4 comments
for learning kanji, i’d recommend
[https://smile.amazon.com/Kodansha-Kanji-Learners-Course-Step/dp/1568365268/](https://smile.amazon.com/Kodansha-Kanji-Learners-Course-Step/dp/1568365268/)
as it gives a visual set of concrete/quantitative things to look for in new kanji letters that help categorize them and make stories up to remember them, if you think that would be helpful
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I have level three autism and adhd. Here’s some stuff I use and works well for me, I am rather visual and have auditory struggles so most of these are visual. I seldom work on listening.
Drops app (has things like writing kana/kanji and dragging vocabulary to pictures.)
Video games (Doraemon games, Animal Crossing, Bokujou Monogatari, and Tomodachi Collection are some I do well playing and picking up vocabulary.)
Japanese Ammo with Misa is a good YouTube channel for grammar and she always has the example sentences on the screen and breaks them up well.
A children’s dictionary once he has a little grasp on the language. I find I like mine when I’m not at a computer. It goes well with graded readers.
Minna no Nihongo (textbook with a few illustrations, better for a teen than a child, age wasn’t mentioned here)
For a younger student Japanese from Zero has a lot more illustrations and English explanations to ease them in. Plus it’s all a workbook to be written in.
There’s a youtuber called [Cure Dolly](https://youtube.com/channel/UCkdmU8hGK4Fg3LghTVtKltQ) who is very peculiar. I did not like them at first, but I found their way of explaining the language to be very insightful. And now the videos don’t even seem that weird to me because I’ve become accustomed to it.
I don’t know if it will be tolerable for you or if maybe instead it will trigger some things, but I find their way of deconstructing the language and building up intuitions into how things “really work” to be a good match for the way I think about things. They have a series of videos that make up a course called Japanese From Scratch you should be able to find there which is meant to take someone through the language while building an intuition for how it works, rather than many resources which just teach the “weird” rules, exceptions, and mismatches, that an English speaker turning a Japanese sentence into English might encounter.
So I like them very much, but it’s definitely not for everyone.
They also have a book for starting out with Kanji called Alice in Kanji Land which is also very peculiar, and obviously plays off Alice in Wonderland, but is meant to teach Kanji narratively rather than with flash cards and rote copying. I liked that too, but I’d already done some Kanji before then, so I don’t know how it is to go in clean. I liked the narrative approach, but it isn’t very long and so it’ll really only cover the basics. Oh, and I believe it assumes you already read at least Hiragana IIRC, maybe even some Katakana, I don’t remember. The book isn’t in Japanese, but I believe there are phonetic Hiragana phrases written in it that you’re expected to be able to pronounce.
So if you already know some stuff, I’d recommend looking at one of the later Cure Dolly videos about a grammar point you already kinda know, to get a sense for how they describe stuff once they’re already going. You might be missing some fundamentals from their way of explaining things, but it may be a stronger litmus test than starting with the very beginner videos to try and judge fit. Good luck!