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In another top-level response, Cyberdog asks, “Why is an article like this on the front page of HN?” That’s a very reasonable question. But now that the articl

In another top-level response, Cyberdog asks, “Why is an article like this on the front page of HN?” That’s a very reasonable question. But now that the article is there, let me make a few comments about dakuten, handakuten, and hiragana in general. I grew up in the U.S., but I have been living in Japan, and mostly in Japanese, for nearly forty years. Thirty years ago, I watched my two daughters acquire Japanese as their first language, and now I am enjoying watching my two-year-old grandson grow up with the language as well. (He is also picking up some English from me.) What has struck me both times is how beneficial hiragana is to the acquisition of first-language literacy. Because there is nearly a one-to-one correspondence between symbol and pronunciation, many children learn to recognize hiragana words that they know very early—before age three, in the case of both my daughters and my grandson. I suspect that is much less common with English, because of the poor correspondence between symbols and phonemes. The full written Japanese language, especially kanji, is much more complex and irregular, of course. But that head-start in reading hiragana may help many children get interested in reading at an earlier age than with English. In the last week or so, my daughter and I have noticed that my grandson has started to read dakuten characters correctly. He now (usually) recognizes that since た is ta then だ is da and that since き is ki then ぎ is gi, that is, the cases in which the ゛(dakuten) indicates that the initial consonant becomes voiced. He doesn’t yet understand, though, how はひふへほ ha hi hu (fu) he ho becomes ばびぶべぼ ba bi bu be bo and ぱぴぷぺぽ pa pi pu pe po, because the difference between h and b/p is not just a simple voiceless-to-voiced change. According to a Japanese book on children’s language acquisition [1], many children learning Japanese as a first language have the same problem with the は series hiragana. [1] https://www.iwanami.co.jp/book/b281696.html https://www.iwanami.co.jp/book/b281696.html

morninglight 4y ago
Around 40 years ago Texas Instruments created the Speak & Spell as an English language educational toy [1]. I couldn't find anything quite like it in Japan. However, General Instrument produced a chip that could generate allophones for speech synthesis around the same time [2]. Much to my delight, the SP0256 could generate just about all the phonemes found in Japanese speech. I wrote a program to display hiragana text on an EGA monitor while generating corresponding speech from the SP0256. It worked very well, but unfortunately had a terribly robotic quality. I wisely decided to put it aside and instead accepted Chibi Maruko-chan as my instructor. I haven't been to Japan for a few years, but I imagine there must now be toys like the Speak & Spell to accelerate children's basic reading skills. Have you seen any? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speak_%26_Spell_(toy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speak_%26_Spell_(toy) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Instrument_SP0256 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Instrument_SP0256
- tkgally 4y ago
  > I imagine there must now be toys like the Speak & Spell to accelerate children's basic reading skills. Have you seen any? My daughter is trying limit my grandson’s exposure to electronic devices, including tablets and smartphones, for the time being. Also, he lives with three doting adults who are happy to play the role of such gadgets. So I haven’t been paying attention to what’s available in that area these days. But a quick search in the Apple app store found many Japanese education apps for children. The sites of a couple of developers are at [1] and [2]. A search for toys for learning kana at Yodobashi Camera turns up only nondigital items [3]. I suspect the market for stand-alone devices in that category has disappeared because of smartphones and tablets. [1] https://waochi.wao.ne.jp https://waochi.wao.ne.jp [2] https://www.beatnix.co.jp https://www.beatnix.co.jp [3] https://www.yodobashi.com/category/141001/141336/141337/141358/141360/?discontinued=false&sorttyp=SELL_PRICE_DESC https://www.yodobashi.com/category/141001/141336/141337/1413...
Cyberdog 4y ago
I agree that the finite-ness to Japanese syllabics is to its benefit, but I think the idea that that's a massive benefit to children is a bit… patriotic, perhaps? Children are language learning machines and your grandson would be making the same sort of progress were he being raised in a primarily English household, just as you (presumably) did. In my opinion, the cool thing here isn't how kana works; it's how our brains work.

morninglight 4y ago

Around 40 years ago Texas Instruments created the Speak & Spell as an English language educational toy [1]. I couldn't find anything quite like it in Japan. However, General Instrument produced a chip that could generate allophones for speech synthesis around the same time [2]. Much to my delight, the SP0256 could generate just about all the phonemes found in Japanese speech. I wrote a program to display hiragana text on an EGA monitor while generating corresponding speech from the SP0256. It worked very well, but unfortunately had a terribly robotic quality. I wisely decided to put it aside and instead accepted Chibi Maruko-chan as my instructor. I haven't been to Japan for a few years, but I imagine there must now be toys like the Speak & Spell to accelerate children's basic reading skills. Have you seen any? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speak_%26_Spell_(toy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speak_%26_Spell_(toy) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Instrument_SP0256 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Instrument_SP0256

tkgally 4y ago
> I imagine there must now be toys like the Speak & Spell to accelerate children's basic reading skills. Have you seen any? My daughter is trying limit my grandson’s exposure to electronic devices, including tablets and smartphones, for the time being. Also, he lives with three doting adults who are happy to play the role of such gadgets. So I haven’t been paying attention to what’s available in that area these days. But a quick search in the Apple app store found many Japanese education apps for children. The sites of a couple of developers are at [1] and [2]. A search for toys for learning kana at Yodobashi Camera turns up only nondigital items [3]. I suspect the market for stand-alone devices in that category has disappeared because of smartphones and tablets. [1] https://waochi.wao.ne.jp https://waochi.wao.ne.jp [2] https://www.beatnix.co.jp https://www.beatnix.co.jp [3] https://www.yodobashi.com/category/141001/141336/141337/141358/141360/?discontinued=false&sorttyp=SELL_PRICE_DESC https://www.yodobashi.com/category/141001/141336/141337/1413...

Cyberdog 4y ago

I agree that the finite-ness to Japanese syllabics is to its benefit, but I think the idea that that's a massive benefit to children is a bit… patriotic, perhaps? Children are language learning machines and your grandson would be making the same sort of progress were he being raised in a primarily English household, just as you (presumably) did. In my opinion, the cool thing here isn't how kana works; it's how our brains work.