KON NICHI WA ("Hello" in Japanese) from Japanese class: How to tell age...

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.