This week, the students were busy working with the project "My family."
They wrote a script, edited and polish it, and tried to memorize it.
The outcomes are:
* sorry for the bad sound quality at the beginning.
Each student was telling his/her name, age, birthday month, what grade s/he is in the school, nationality, how many people are in his/her family and members of their family.
Also, s/he was telling about each family member's name, birthplace, birthday month, and nationality.
In Japanese, the terms of family
relationships differ according to whether you are talking about your own family
to someone else, or the other person's family.
Talking about your familyTalking about another's family
fatherCHICHIOTOO
SAN
motherHAHAOKAA
SAN
older brotherANI ONII
SAN
older sisterANE ONEE
SAN
younger brotherIMO OTOIMO
OTO SAN
younger sisterOTO OTO OTO OTO SAN
When Japanese address family members, OTOO
SAN or PAPA is used for father, OKAA SAN or MAMA for mother, ONII SAN for older
brothers, ONEE SAN for older sisters and the given names for younger
brothers and younger sisters.
PAPA and MAMA are generally used by
younger persons. Usually, Japanese do not use given names for family members
older than themselves. Even spouses who have child(ren) rarely use their given
names when addressing on another!!
In addition to these family terms, your child learned more hiragana.
This week's hiragana were:
は /HA/
ひ /HI/
ふ /FU/
へ /HE/
ほ /HO/
There
are some Japanese words used as English words today, such as "Mt.
Fuji," "tofu" or "futon". However, the
Japanese "f" is slightly different from the English "f".
The Japanese don't bite their lips when pronouncing it. It is more like blowing
out a candle with your voice.
Coming Monday (October 7th), the students will take an another hiragana written test. It will cover all hiragana they have learned so far:
This week, we covered how to say
"I am an 8th grader." “I am a middle school student.” “I am not a
high school student.” and "What grade are you in?" in Japanese, as
well as the Japanese words for “school”, “middle school”, “high school”, and
“student” etc.
Also, the students learned several
differences between Japanese and American middle /high schools:
Start of the School Year:
The Japanese school year begins in
April, not in September like in the United States. The first term runs to
around July 20, when summer vacation begins. Students return to school in early
September for the second term, which lasts until about December 25. The final
term begins in early January and continues to late March.
Most Japanese people think spring -
when life begins anew - is the perfect time to start new things. Kids get
excited and are full of expectations when the new school year approaches.
Early April is also the time when
cherry blossoms are in full bloom. So when people think about entrance to new
schools and the start of a career, they often conjure up images of these
beautiful blossoms. Many schools have cherry trees growing on their grounds, and
parents like taking pictures of their kids entering school for the first time under the light-pink
blossoms.
School Uniform:
A uniform is standard among most
schools in Japan. Uniforms are more common at the middle school and high school
levels than at the elementary. Some private schools now hire top fashion
designers to design their uniforms to satisfy the tastes of today’s highly
fashion-conscious teens. Generally, however, uniforms tend to remain
conservative in style, and are usually black, navy blue, or gray.
These come in several basic varieties:
for boys, it is usually the black pants and jacket with gold button down the
front and a white shirt inside, or sometimes it is a sort of suit like thing.
For girls, it is a dark blue or gray
skirt, with either a sailor top or a white shirt and matching vest. These vary
in detail from school to school, and so you can tell what school people you
meet on the street go to.
Most school students have two sets of
school uniforms: a summer uniform and a winter uniform.
However, you don't get to decide whether to wear the
summer uniform or winter one just by if you are cold
or not. All students switch from one uniform to the other on
pre-determined days, called “KOROMO-GAE”
(changing of the clothes), in May or June and October. On that day
every student changes uniform on the same day.
Inside Shoes:
GETA BAKO "shoes locker"
When you enter school building in
Japan, you have to change your shoes, just like when you
enter a house. You go to your shoe locker, called “GETA
BAKO”, and switch your
outside sneakers for "UWA BAKI"
or "inside shoes", which are bought at school and generally are
some form of slip on soft-soled sneaker.
Teachers Move Around:
Another major difference between
Japanese and American middle /high school is that whereas in USA schools the
students change classes, in Japan you stay in one class all day long (or at
least most of the day) and instead the teachers move around from class to
class. So, you are with the same people all day long. Since students don't
change rooms and are in the same classroom all day long, the room is full of
stuff owned by the students like bags, and the walls are covered with
student-made props and posters for events and such.
Entrance Examinations:
Japanese students are required to
attend school for nine years: six years of elementary school and three of
middle school. There are some private schools where students can advance from
elementary school all the way to college without taking any exams to move on,
but most students have to take entrance examinations to earn their way into a
high school or a college.
Statistics show that 97.5% of all
Japanese students graduating from middle school go on to high school. Different
entrance exams are held for the three types of school: national, public, and
private. Take, for example, a ninth grader who wants to go on to a public
school. Based on the student's academic record in middle school, a shortened
list of high schools where the student will have more chance of being admitted
will be drawn up before he or she takes the entrance exam. Then the high
schools will decide whether or not to accept the student by looking at a
combination of his or her middle school record and entrance-exam scores.
In addition, your child learned more hiragana. This week's hiragana were:
な /NA/
に /NI/
ぬ /NU/
ね /NE/
の /NO/
Finally, the students will have a verbal test, Oral Pro-Achievement Interview (OPI) on Wednesday, October 2nd. It test the student's communication skills. Without this kind of test, I may produce a student who may not be able to communicate in Japanese, but will receive a good grade purely on his/her ability to do well on written tests.
The OPI will be conducted with two students at a time. First, I will gives one of the question sheets to one student. S/he will earn a maximum of 5 points for accuracy/vocabulary, speed/fluency, and pronunciation/intonation. If the student does not understand the question, s/he should request (in Japanese) that it be repeated. When the question was not asked properly, I will repeat the question for the student who will be answering the question. After five questions are asked by one student, switch roles.
I explained the evaluation process and the evaluation criteria to the students today. I encourage the students to speak often and interact as they would in a natural conversation. Then, the students practiced the questions with a partner. Hope they will do well for the test on Wednesday.
This week, your child learned how to say his/her nationality
and ask someone's nationality.
To say your nationality, put JIN, which means
person, after the name of your country.
For example, "I am an American citizen." would be
"WATASHI WA A ME RI KA JIN DESU.",
and “I am a Japanese
citizen.” would be “WATASHI WA NIHON ( = Japan) JIN DESU.”
However, please do not confuse NIHON JIN and NIKKEI JIN. In
Japanese NIHON JIN means a person who is a Japanese citizen. A person who is
ethnically Japanese, but a citizen of a country other than Japan (i.e.,
America, Brazil, etc.) is NIKKEI JIN. Therefore, Japanese Americans are called NIKKEI
JIN.
By the way, America ("A ME RI KA" in
Japanese) and Canada ("KA NA DA" in Japanese) fit the Japanese
syllabary very neatly but some countries have to be changed quite a bit.
Can you guess what these countries are?
1. CHUU GO KU
2. FU RA N SU
3. OO SU TO RA RI A
4. KA N KO KU
5. SU PE I N
6. DO I TSU
7. GI RI SHA
8. I GI RI SU
9. RO SHI A Answers: 1. China 2. France 3. Australia 4. Korea 5. Spain 6.
Germany 7. Greece 8. England 9. Russia
Also,
we covered more hiragana:
た /TA/
ち /CHI/
つ /TSU/
て /TE/
と /TO/
*つis pronounced like
“-ts” at the end of the word “cats.”It is then lengthened
with the /U/ sound.
Last, but not least, several students
and their parents have shown interest in the Japan trip during 2014 Spring
Break. The seats are limited, but we still have some openings waiting for your
child. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or comments.
In Japanese the months are simply
numbered from one to twelve. For example, January is the first month of the
year; therefore it is called "ichi-gatsu."
JanuaryICHI-GATSU February NI-GATSU
March SAN-GATSU
April SHI-GATSU May GO-GATSU
June ROKU-GATSU July SHICHI-GATSU
August HACHI-GATSU
September KU-GATSU October JUU-GATSU November JUU ICHI-GATSU December JUU NI-GATSU
As you guess, "GATSU"
means 'month.' Quite simple, isn't it!
Please note that April is SHI-GATSU,
and September is KU-GATSU, even though 4 is pronounced the same as the word for
death (SHI) and 9 is pronounced the same as the word for suffering (KU).
However, SHI-GATSU does not mean “the month of death” or KU-GATSU does not mean
“the month of suffering”, of course.
Then, your child leaned how to say:
“I was born in <birth day
month>.” in Japanese.
Ask your child "ANATA WA NAN GATSU UMARE DESU KA (What month were you born in?)", he or she should be answer the question saying,
"WATASHI WA <birthday month in JPN> UMARE DESU."
I hope....
n addition, we covered more hiragana.
This week the students learned: さ /SA/, し /SHI/, す /SU/, せ /SE/,そ /SO/
Speaking of hiragana, the students will take their first hiragana written test on coming Monday. They are expected to be able to write hiragana, we have covered, which are: あ い う え お か き く け こ が ぎ ぐ げ ご さ し す せ そ ざ じ ず ぜ ぞ
In this week, your child learned how to
read and write the following hiraganas, one of Japanese phonetic characters.
かis pronounced /ka/
き is pronounced /ki/
く is pronounced /ku/
けis pronounced /ke/
こis pronounced /ko/
が is pronounced /ga/
ぎis pronounced /gi/
ぐis pronounced /gu/
げis pronounced /ge/
ごis pronounced /go/
The mark ゛, resembles a quotation mark placed at the top right corner of a hiragana character, (daku-ten
in Japanese, colloquially ten-ten "dot dot"), is a diacritic sign used
in the Japanese hiragana syllables to indicate that the consonant of a
syllable should be pronounced voiced; thus by adding a dakuten marker ゛,
an unvoiced consonant such as k is turned into a voiced consonant
such as /ka/→/ga/, /ki/→/gi/, /ku/→/gu/ and /ko/→/go/.
Also, we covered how to tell your age, and ask someone's age.
It’s actually pretty easy to tell people your age, especially if you already know how to count in Japanese.
In English, you simply add the phrase “year old or years old” to your numerical age and that’s all there is to it.
In Japanese, it works in much the same way, just add SAI to the number of years. SAI means "years old'. For example, if you’re 30 years old, you would say – Sanju sai desu.
Like this video clip...
By the way, age twenty is pronounced HATACHI. In Japan when you turn 20 you are considered an adult. Even though it has its own special pronunciation , you can also say NIYUU SAI for 20 years old.
SEI JIN NO HI (Coming of Age Day) is a Japanese holiday that is held on
the second Monday in January each year. This day is to congratulate
those who have turned 20 over the past year.
Special ceremonies are generally held in the morning at local city offices. Many women
celebrate this day by wearing special style of kimono, gorgeous hair and
make-up. Men sometimes wear a traditional mens' kimono, but nowadays
men often wear a western style suit.
I wanted to catch you all up on this week's topics in the Japanese class.
This week, your child learned Japanese greetings such as:
OHAYOO GOZAIMASU "Good morning", KON NICHI WA "Hello, Hi, or Good afternoon", KON BAN WA "Good evening" SAYOONARA "Good-bye"
In addition to these practical greetings, students have started to learn
how to read and write hiragana, one of Japanese phonetic characters.
In
this week, they learned 5 Japanese vowels: あ, い, う, え, お.
あ/a/ is pronounced like a in father. "ah"
い/i/ is pronounced like i in machine. "ee"
う/u/ is pronounced like ue in Sue. "oo"
え/e/ is pronounced like e in ledge. "eh"
お/o/ is pronounced like o in obey. "oh"
Please encourage your child to memorize hiragana!
In addition to hiragana, students learned how to say "This is XXX." in Japanese.
The Japanese word for "this" is KORE, and "is" is DESU. Also, in Japanese, "WA"
is placed after whatever is to be marked as the topic. (A topic marker
topic marker is a grammatical particle found in not only the Japanese
but Korean languages used to mark the topic of a sentence. )
Since Japanese word order is SUBJECT, OBJECT, and VERB order, "This is XXX." would be
"KORE WA XXX DESU."
Then, students learned how to form a question from a statement sentence.
Making a question in Japanese is quite simple. In Japanese, the word
order of a question is the same as for statements, except that KA is attached to the end of sentence. So, "Is this XXX?" would be "KORE WA XXX DESU KA." Easy, right?
Then, students learned how to say "What is this?" in Japanese. "What" is NAN in Japanese, so you just place NAN to OBJECT place. Now we have "KORE WA NAN DESU KA." which means "What is this?" Please note that there is no question mark "?" in Japanese because the sentence-ending particle KA indicates a question.
In addition to KORE "this", students learned SORE "that", and ARE "that one over there."
Like English, KORE "this" refers to something near the speaker, SORE "that" refers to something near the listener, and ARE "that on over there" refers to something distant from both speaker and listener. However, those KORE "this", SORE "that", and ARE "that one over there", cannot be used for people except for people in pictures and photos.
By the way, Japanese /ra/, /ri/, /ru/, /re/, /ro/ sounds are produced so
that the initial "r' sounds somewhat like a combination of the English
"l" and "r" sounds. Therefore, Japanese people have difficulty
distinguishing English "l" and "r" sounds like:
play and pray
lip and rip
light and right
lice and rice etc...
Ask your child the story about a Japanese tourist who went to a restaurant in US, and tried to order white rice at a restaurant.
Moreover, This week, we covered numbers.
1. Pronounced ‘ichi’ (rhymes with ‘peachy’).
2. Pronounced ‘ni’ (like ‘knee’).
3. Pronounced ‘san’ (like ‘sun’).
4. Pronounced ‘yon’ (more like ‘yong’ actually) or 'shi'.
5. Pronounced ‘go’ (a very short sound).
6. Pronounced ‘roku’ (pronouncing it as ‘loku’ is actually closer to native pronunciation).
7. Pronounced ‘nana’ or ‘shichi’ (“shee-chee”).
8. Pronounced ‘hachi'.
9. Pronounced ‘kyuu’ (just like the letter Q) or 'ku'.
10. Pronounced ‘juu'.
Above ten, you would say something to the effect of "10 and 2" to stand for "12."
For numbers from 20 through 99, you would say something like "3 tens and 6" to mean "36."
Therefore: 36 = "3 tens and 6" = "san juu roku"
43 = "4 tens and 3" = "yon juu san"
71 = "7 tens and 1" = "nana juu ichi"
99 = "9 tens and 9" = "kyu juu kyu"
Speaking of numbers, in the Japanese culture, certain numbers are
considered “bad luck” or “good luck,” much like the number 13 is
considered bad luck in Western culture.
The “bad luck” numbers in Japanese are 4 (SHI) and 9 (KU).
The
number four is considered inauspicious because it is pronounced the
same as the word for death (SHI). Therefore, one should not make
presents that consist of four pieces. In some hotels and hospitals the
room number four is skipped.
Also, 9 is bad luck number in Japanese culture because it is pronounced the same as the word for suffering (KU).
Eight
is considered good luck because of the mountain-like shape of the kanji
for eight 八. Mountains are regarded with reverence in Japan. Also, the
character 八 resembles a fan shape, which is considered lucky because it
suggests spreading out, growing and increasing, as in mounting good
fortune.
Also, in Japan there are certain things one does not do because they are thought to cause bad luck.
A few examples are:
Stick
chopsticks into the rice: Do not stick your chopsticks into your food
generally, but especially not into rice, because only at funerals,
chopsticks are stuck into the rice which is put onto the altar.
Give
food from chopstick to chopstick: This is only done with the bones of
the cremated body at funerals. Sleeping towards the North:
Do not sleep towards the North because bodies are laid down like that.
