Nihonjin to Romaji
 

(Holy crud, one of my ranting threads is on the top page! So embarassing!!)

Nihon-jin ha romaji wo (ga?) yomemasuka?

Can Japanese people read romaji like the sentence above? I'm asking because I'm teaching elementary kids Japanese. I cant teach them hiragana in the 18weeks (18 hours of class) I have with them while trying to teach them to speak it, and I play games with them for memorizing vocab. On the last day I see them, I want to have had them write little letters with the Japanese they know, tie them on balloons and let them go outside. I want to know if the letters that mae it to Japan will be readable by the Japanese?

Help/opinion s much appreciated!! :pinkbow:

Are you sure you can't teach them hiragana with mnemonics?? I mean if you are using games, you could... just a thought anyway...

Surely as a "Japanese teacher" you should know the answer to this already. Plus I'd be surprised if any of the balloons even make it out of your area code.

Umm, unless they are under 9-10 years old. Yes, they can.

Do Japanese elementary school students learn romaji before hiragana?

They learn hiragana in first grade, if not kindergarten. I believe romaji is taught in 3-4th grade.

That would require learning a completely new alphabet as well. Wouldn't that be a bit too much? Or is that preparation for when they learn English?

:confused: By 9 or 10 they`re already well into kanji - hiragana is learned during kindergarten, and most kids have katakana out of the way by the time they enter 1st grade too.

Romaji is learned in 4th grade. The main reasoning for it isn`t English, but for the ability to read and write in situations where romaji is used. Building names, plane tickets, product names, etc etc.

Most kids learn the alphabet a bit after hiragana and katakana. It`s on the back burner, but there is enough exposure that while they can`t read, they can usually recognize most letters.

Then I don't understand this statement:

Kids that age have the ability to learn hiragana. You have -just- enough time to introduce 3 hiragana per session, and do a quick recap of the previous ones, but expect them to forget them easily if you don't give them full words to practice writing (maybe set 'homework'?). A quick flashcard recap at the start of every lesson can help. I've got 7 y.o's who can write their numbers in kanji (albeit wonkily, but hey, it's there.) and read the days of the week so it's not impossible, but it will eat into your time. Also if you only do hiragana, they can't really write their names accurately. You can combine it too- show them the vocab your teaching written down (after the verbal drill) and get them to point out the characters they know :) Ours love stuff like that.

Second; and this might be my personal opinion but I loathe the idea of the balloon release. Love the idea of letters but really, why not get them to write on old coke cans and sling them out on the street? I know it's cute and fun sounding, but those balloons end up somewhere and someone else is going to have to clean up your mess. They might even end up in areas with livestock. Animals die eating balloons and chinese lanterns. Not something you want to be teaching your kids IMO.

Also, it's highly unlikely they'd ever get to Japan. Go online, find somewhere to do an exchange with; another school in your area/country that also has a japanese class would do! High schools; community clubs, look around and ask around. Plus that means the added excitement that then everyone can get a response, hopefully, not just one, or nobody. They'll love that theres a real purpose and a reward to all their hard work.

Japanese elementary school by age;

1st grade - 6 to 7
2nd grade - 7 to 8
3rd grade - 8 to 9
4th grade - 9 to 10

9 to 10 year olds learn romaji as part of the 4th grade curriculum. Children who are under 9 or 10 are far less likely to be able to read it. Anyone above that are is pretty much guaranteed to be able to read it.

I`m going to agree with this. Most balloon releases end up falling within 50km of the release point. It`s very very rare for a single balloon to make it more than that (Happens in very rare circumstances, where air currents keep the balloon low while strong winds keep it moving.) Once the balloon is so high in the sky, it expands and pops because of the low atmospheric pressure.

Multiple balloon clusters, all partially filled to counteract the expansion (the numbers are so that if some do pop all will not be lost) still have trouble getting over 250 km. Unless you`re already in Japan, the chance that they`ll be picked up in Japan is pretty much nonexistent.

I guess I misread that Japanese kids would be likely to be able to read romaji before hiragana, and I knew that couldn't be right.

OK, Thank you everyone for your imformation! I think I will just look up a group. I havent been teaching them the kanas and I'm 3 weeks in already, since I've taught them alot so far I think I can spend a week or two on just hiragana! Thank you all so much!! :pinkbow:

Not at all. This is not the alphabet that you are thinking of.. .i think. This is romaji.. the romanized version of Japanese letters, so honestly when you take English phonetics out of the picture it is really just about learning 26 new characters and their associated sound in Japanese.. not too much to ask of kids who are learning tons of new kanji all the time anyway, I would think.

I guess you are right. After all, if they watch any television in Japan or go outside to play, they see the English alphabet every day. As Nyororin explained, and I totally blanked out on that one, they must learn romaji to "translate" those words.

As far as romaji, yes, I do know what it is. I am taking the basic Japanese course at a Japanese cultural society here and the text we use is the Romanized version.

It often amazes me how kids here learn romaji, hiragana, katakana, a slew of kanji with all their on and kun readings and stroke orders etc, and the usual subjects math, science, etc.

I've heard that this kind of training for the brain opens up communication within the brain that is somewhat dormant in westerners. It makes sense, but I'm no neuroscientist.

communication that is dormant with westerners.. i wish you knew more, this sounds like an interesting topic.

I meant neural pathways, the phrase didn't come to mind while I was writing the last post.

I should check it out more, maybe after dinner!

I think to compare one small of that aspect of what you're talking about James, to English might give some insight on what (I think) you're getting at.

With kanji, you usually see them in pairs to make up a word... so a lot of words consist of at least two concepts to give them their meaning. The other day I had a funny conversation where I was talking about 'karate chops' with someone... and that person jokingly said "shutou". I probably did the 'huh' face for a second, to which they replied "shu" as in "te"(手)... and then I concluded it with, "tou" as in "katana" (刀). So by hearing a word you can kind of imagine the kanji. And by understanding the kanji you can imagine (sometimes it can be quite a leap) the meaning. In this case, I perceived 手 as hand and 刀 as like a sword or a blade or whatever. Of course it's like one way of saying 'karate chop'... or like one of those James Bond-esque karate chops.

I think while understanding the roots of English words, a lot of the time that root/modern meaning connection seldom comes into play. You have words that are similar which you can connect, like 'commercial, commerce, commence, communicate, computer, compare, etc.' They all have that 'com' thing going for them so you know they're (or may be) related. I think most English speakers might not give a damn though and don't think about it like Japanese people do with Kanji. However, I've noticed that other European languages share some similar words/word roots (it's a bit late, so excuse my lack of the proper words)... so I think that maybe multilingual Europeans might exercise a similar part of their brain in that respect.

Even though I tried to think about the true meanings of words when all I could speak was English, I never felt my brain work the way it does when I think about kanji (it could just be me though!).

And James, about kids having to learn a whole bunch... I think it comes natural a lot of the time. I think you could almost think of it completely differently... maybe NOT having kanji is harder. I mean, thinking of the real meanings of some English words will get you no where fast. If you think about English from a native Japanese speaker's perspective... all those different pronunciations (word stresses etc) must seem impossible. (think about 'photograph, photography, photon, etc'.) I mean, sure you sometimes get a native speaker who will say a word kind of funny... or maybe a region that says things differently than another... but I think as a native learning that kind of stuff (like all kinds of pronunciation/stresses) is not too different from learning kanji/stroke order/Chinese or Japanese readings. It's one of those things that once you have the basics down, you get that snowball effect going. That's my take on the kanji aspect of what you were talking about is anyways.