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1 comment
Hey everyone,
I didn’t know where else to post this, so I posted it here since it’s my first time posting. Sorry if it’s too long. So, I’ve been trying to learn Japanese for a couple years now, but mostly just on the side for fun. Nothing super serious. I’ve mainly been just playing around with Duolingo, the Jisho Dictionary, Kanji Study, and a couple of Hiragana and Katakana writing books. I’d say the furthest I’ve gotten is just being able to recognize a handful of the characters, a few numbers, and then a few phrases from doing Duolingo for a while.
I’m about to have my first child in a couple of months and I would love to use this opportunity to really dive into Japanese while raising them. One of the hardest parts of sticking with it has been finding people to communicate with on a regular basis. My wife joined along in the beginning for a little while and that was fun, but eventually she got bored of it and stopped. I’ve thought about joining a discord or one of those “pen pal” sites to get better at it, but with my work the past year I have had very little down time.
Now that work is finally settling down and with the kid on the way, I started looking at Japanese kids books and whatnot. I would love to try and really learn the language along with them! I think it’d be such a fun activity that my kid and I can hopefully bond with. I just don’t really know how to start. So far I’ve gotten a handful of books off Amazon. Guri and Gura; Let’s Learn Japanese: First Words for Everyone; The Toddler’s Handbook: Bilingual Numbers, Colors, Shapes, Sizes,…; Am I Small? Childrens Picture Book English-Japanese; Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?; and The Hungry Caterpillar.
I think that’d at least get me a little bit of a start while they’re still learning letters and words. I looked through the Starters guide and the Resource pages and while there was quite a bit for adults trying to jump into learning, there didn’t seem to be a lot for newborns. Maybe trying to teach them two languages at once would be too much? I don’t know. There’s always such a focus in the US to pair English with Spanish for newborns, but I don’t want to learn Spanish.
One thing we had got for my niece that was a huge help with her learning how to write English letters were these grooved magic erase writing books: https://www.amazon.ca/SFWNG-Grooved-Writing-Book-Three-Dimensional/dp/B0BQR6VF9M/ref=pd_day0_d_sccl_2_4/130-0747823-1871600?pd_rd_w=TL6ne&content-id=amzn1.sym.a0f07c06-3bfe-427e-9527-5be8cea27b66&pf_rd_p=a0f07c06-3bfe-427e-9527-5be8cea27b66&pf_rd_r=7CK3F14AYRTAAGY9CG7E&pd_rd_wg=4lllQ&pd_rd_r=6ee98d95-c64f-4a9a-8f2e-721f1e04feac&pd_rd_i=B0BQR6VF9M&th=1
She loved writing in them over and over. It helped her get way ahead of her class when she started kindergarten. I’ve been trying to find Japanese grooved writing books and I saw there were a few online, but they don’t ship to the US: https://www.amazon.ca/Japanese-Practice-Copybook-Calligraphy-Handwriting/dp/B0C2NCHCQW/ref=sr_1_1?m=A32Y47CVE4RPH7&marketplaceID=A2EUQ1WTGCTBG2&qid=1704150704&rnid=5264023011&s=office&sr=1-1
Does anybody know of anything similar to these that are available in the US? I’ve looked all over. I feel like these would be a huge help for both a child and an adult trying to learn all the different calligraphy of both Hiragana and Katakana. Yea, there are writing books that you can just trace with a thin sheet of paper, but I feel like the grooved effect is really helpful for creating good writing habits and getting used to how it feels writing a good looking character. I can find a bunch for other languages, but for some reason I can’t find anything for Japanese.
Any other tips and tricks for children would be greatly appreciated as well! I’m really excited and am hoping my kid and I can really stick to it. I feel like it’d be such a great benefit to them and would be really fun for me too. When I was in Japan a few years ago I picked up both a Famicom and Super Famicom with a ton of original Japanese versions of my favorite games from when I was a kid. I’d love to be able to play them with my child in their original Japanese format as they grow up! I’d love to get them into Anime and Manga when they get a little older as well, but we’ll get there when the time comes. So yea, thanks for any help! I really appreciate it!