One day one of the kids told us he needs to be home early to sit for a "placement exam" that's conducted over the Internet. Turns out he wants to enroll in some online college courses and hoping to "place" out of the introductory first-year courses and skip ahead to the second-year courses.

But why is that a surprise? We know what AP courses the kids take in high school. Had it been science or math or English the kids would just sit in the AP tests arranged by their high school, not one that takes place online.

Then we learnt that he wanted to take the placement test for some JAPANESE language courses. Turns out he has been learning Japanese online for about two years, and we parents had no clue this has been happening. His twin brother was aware but neither saw fit to mention it to us. Didn't even come to us for web tuition/subscription money, because their high school provides them with "free" Duo Lingo access, so the kid just uses that to learn an extra language. Apparently it worked well enough for him to pass the placement test.

It was surreal listening to your kid speaks a new foreign language for the first time, one you never knew he could, in the next room.

Where did the motivation or inspiration come from? None of us speak Japanese, we have never taken the kids to Japan, we do not stream Japanese movies or TV at home, the kids have never expressed any interest in Japanese anime. The kids like sushi no more than they like other ethnic cuisines. So now I am left to wonder if there is a secret virtual Japanese girlfriend on the Internet somewhere or if the kids have been streaming Japanese pr0n without us knowing.

Probably wants to watch Spirited Away in Japanese!

Maybe they're getting ready to study under renowned prof. Shiro!

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the kids have been streaming Japanese pr0n without us knowing

Probably that.

Have they been listening to this?
https://youtu.be/nGy9uomagO4

Mrs pj bought me a new iPad last December so that I could use DuoLingo. I wanted to polish up my Polish. It's been maddening. There is *no* instruction, just exercises. You only learn by making mistakes. Apparently, many languages have instruction, but only the popular languages. Polish isn't one of them. And it's not an easy language -- it's highly inflected, but the declensions and conjugations are not always regular. If I didn't already know Russian and some Polish, it would have been completely opaque and I would have quit a long time ago. Polish has a lot of double and triple negatives and subtle little pitfalls in the idiom.

I haven't given up quite yet, but I have been very close many times.


DD has been learning Chinese on DuoLingo for two years now. She's also been taking online classes from the local college. And she watches a lot of Chinese "wuxia" dramas.


Good on your kids for getting into this. It's very cool. I hope you encourage them. And pay their tuition.

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we parents had no clue this has been happening. His twin brother was aware but neither saw fit to mention it to us.

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Maybe they're getting ready to study under renowned prof. Shiro!

Send him my way!!

P.S. there is so much Japanese media contents right now, the motivation could have been anything.

Spirited Away of course is a great place to start, more recent draws are Your Name and Demon Slayer.... what else? Also most certainly a whole bunch of stuff I don't even know about!

Did they ever do Pokenmon Go?

Also, do they speak and read/write Chinese? That might have been another motivation, becoming trilingual is pretty cool after all, and learning Japanese writing is always pretty easy for students who can read Chinese.

BTW PJ, Mr. SK does DuoLingo for English, it's mostly pretty good but sometimes beyond random.

I don’t know what you’re feeding those kids, but it’s obvious you’re doing something right!

What Steve said.

This is so great! Good luck to him on his exam!

My Honduran friend has a hearing impaired daughter of 12. She is chatty as they come in both English and Spanish despite her impairment.

She decided to learn Korean! Was doing much the same online with classes.

Her motivation is Korean boy bands.

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Originally posted by aPic aDay:
… or if the kids have been streaming Japanese pr0n without us knowing.

Seems to me you don’t need to know the language to figure out what’s going on.