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Rory is my grandson. He’s Greg’s boy, now about 5 1/2. He’s a really beautiful child - fair, red headed, cherubic.
He’s also on the autism spectrum. I need to tread with care here as there as there are any number of landmines these days when discussing such things. I’ve stepped on any number of them trying to figure him out with my daughter in law.
Rory was non-verbal up until about a month ago. He’s started talking now but it’s pretty limited. He communicates via iPad and he does a very good job.
The headphones started as a way to shield him from loud noises. He still has trouble with that but now the headphones connect to his iPad.
Here’s a picture of Rory in his preferred environment. Rory, IPad, plastic animals.
He has 100s of these animals, and knows the name of every one. He’ll type the name in to Google, then Getty Images. He can spell Pterodactyl, get the wiki, get the Getty images, form an opinion. Savant level, certainly
But there’s a new wrinkle. He’s started watching videos in Japanese. The closed caption stuff is in Kanji characters. I swear he’s learning Japanese here and why not? But what can he do with the kanji? He’s been coming up with words we can’t decipher.
Wow!
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Which brings me to - how do Japanese children learn to read? I’m clueless here. Rory is learning a second language at 5 1/2 that none of us speak!
Yikes!
Thoughts, please!
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Rory is going to be a productive, fascinating young man. You’re lucky to have him in your life.
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Wow, @Steve-Miller I can only imagine the challenges for your family, esp. if you feel like you have ideas that might clash with your daughter-in-law’s (which is the impression I got from your post, apologies if I’m wrong about that).
Re how Japanese children learn to read… first of all, it’s important to note that Japanese has three writing systems (technically four bc you can also write Japanese using the alphabet, but let’s not go there).
Two of those writing systems are hiragana and katakana, often described together as “kana.” Then there’s kanji. Kana are phonetic. They’re called a syllabary rather than an alphabet because individual kana symbols generally represent the combination of two sounds, whereas individual alphabet letters represent one sound. Kana on their own, like alphabet letters, do not have meaning. As you know, I imagine, kanji symbols (on their own or combinations) do have meaning, and also pronunciation.
So in English, we can write the sound “ka” using two letters, in Japanese you could write it か or カ (in other words, using on kana symbol). Neither of these symbols have meaning (in the same way that “ka” doesn’t have any meaning).
Or you could write a kanji that happens to have the pronunciation “ka” and as it happens, there are several. Each of these is pronounced (or read) “ka” 可 加 化 課 … and there are others.
Anyway, so to your question. Usually, Japanese children learn to read kana first. Although they probably are taught to recognize some limited (and easy) kanji very early on. The learning of kana by Japanese children happens very much like the way English-speaking children learn the alphabet, someone points to the letters, encourages them to say the sound, then they hear words with that sound etc. Because these children (we assume) are learning the writing system of their native language, a language they usually already speak by the time they start learning to read, they are learning the symbols for sounds and words they already know.
And again, a key part of the process is that usually there’s an adult guiding them through the process.
Almost all humans learn to speak (or sign if they’re deaf) without explicit instruction — with the important caveat that they have to be exposed to speakers (or signers). IOW human babies and children will learn to speak even if no one explicitly teaches them how to speak (as long as they are biological and neurological “typical,” and as long as they are exposed to other humans speaking and speaking to them).
But most babies and children cannot learn to read without being explicitly taught.
Also, neuro-typical babies and children generally don’t (can’t) learn language from audio-visual input alone (like tv or radio). They need real interaction.
But the research on language acquisition that I’m familiar with doesn’t address neuro-divergent children, and it doesn’t address video with subtitles.
So could Rory be learning (spoken) Japanese from anime? If he were neurotypical, I would say, no, not very much (beyond individual nouns). Could Rory be learning written Japanese from closed captioned anime? Again, if he were neurotypical, I would say no, not very much, beyond individual high frequency kanji, like the name of the main character or something.
But because you’re saying Rory is neurodivergent, I would say all bets are off. He very well could be learning to read Japanese, he might even learn to speak Japanese. I don’t know a lot about the research on language savants, but I believe they exist.
And since none of you speak or read Japanese, you’re not really able to assess whether he’s learning Japanese — or if what he’s learning is even Japanese.
Which brings me to another question. Where are these video coming from? Does his mother have some kind of paid account or are they getting the videos randomly from YouTube?
I ask because if it’s the latter, it’s possible he’s watching Japanese anime with subtitles written in Chinese. It’s also possible that he’s watching something where the audio isn’t even in Japanese.
If you have the chance, record something with your phone or take a photo and I can take a look at it.
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By the way, if I may be so bold as to offer two pieces of “advice.” (scare quotes because as advice goes, it’s not much).
First, try not to worry too much about there being a negative impact from all the Japanese (or other, non-English) input. His English language development is likely progressing internally. With neurotypical babies and children, they speak so much that it’s easy for the adults around them to see, hear, and evaluate their progress. But I have heard a lot about autistic children who don’t speak for years and then suddenly just start speaking, with fully developed language proficiency. It’s as if they go from totally silent to fluent in one day.
Second, regarding the headphones, and then connecting to audio on the iPad. I know that must seem hard to accept, like if the headphones are there because he can’t deal with sound, then why is he ok with sound from the iPad. I suspect it’s because he can’t control the sound in the environment, and so it may feel chaotic to him, making it harder to endure. But with the iPad, he can control it, and it’s probably more predictable etc. Also he can make it stop whenever he wants, whereas you can’t stop sounds in the environment. I would guess his parents have seen him meltdown and they use the headphones to prevent that. It’s probably not about sound per se but maybe more about predictability and control.
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Thank you so much for your detailed response!
If Rory really is learning Japanese I’m all for it, and in fact I would encourage him to watch videos in several different languages. I have no doubt he can learn several languages at once.
He finds his own videos on YouTube and Netflix. The ones he’s been watching lately are “Gudetama”.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gudetama
He turns on the Japanese subtitles and the English audio descriptions. He has also been Googling Gudetama merchandise - toys, tee shirts, sweatshirts and such. Greg and Tori keep track of his search history to make sure he doesn’t go too far off course.
It’s not just Gudetama, either. Last week he watched a dozen videos on making sushi, all in Japanese. I can only imagine what he’ll find next and I find it all fascinating.
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I just learned that it’s not always Japanese, either. He watches a lot of Russian videos as well as some in French.
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Wow, that's fascinating. There's so much we still don't understand about the language development of neurotypical children, the amount we don't know about neurodivergent children's language development is several orders of magnitude larger than that.
BTW you said he was non-verbal but now is not. So, he can speak a little? Do you have a sense of how much? Does he use phrases and sentences, or only individual words? Does he ever vocalize non-English words that you (or his parents) suspect are one of the languages he learns from videos?
And how does he use the iPad to communicate? Does he type letters or use some kind of picture system?
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Tori says he’s a “gestalt” learner, which comes through in his speech.
So far he speaks in short phrases that he’s learned from videos. Each phrase has a larger meaning which includes how he’s feeling. For example, he’ll say “boss baby” if he doesn’t get something he wants. The entire thought is that he’s the boss, deserves better, and is unhappy that he’s not getting what he wants.
If he doesn’t have a phrase he’ll type out what he wants to say on his iPad or a phone. He also does that if we can’t figure out what he’s saying. I think some of what we can’t understand is in another language, although he only types things out in English.
