Where Are You Going? To See My Friend!
June 22nd, 2009 | View Comments
I basically abandoned both my Chinese and Japanese texts as of this post and its sleep-inducing adventures learning Chinese at Seton Hall University.
I’m seeing the wisdom in Khatzumoto‘s principle: if it’s not something you’d voluntarily read in your L1, why bother with it in L2? Read/watch the fun stuff first; it’ll help with the boring stuff later.
I did manage to acquire a whole mess of children’s books in Chinese to supplement my reading (including the dozen 奇先生，妙小姐 books I scored yesterday), but it’s been more of a struggle to get Japanese books that aren’t so far beyond me that reading them would just be an exercise in frustration. One of the books I did eventually buy is Where Are You Going? To See My Friend!
This book is co-authored by Eric Carle (エリッカ カール) of Very Hungry Caterpillar fame and Japanese illustrator Kazuo Iwamura (いわむら かずお). The English story, illustrated by Carle, reads from left to right; the (almost identical) Japanese story, illustrated by Iwamura, reads from right to left the way Japanese is traditionally written. The two stories meet in the middle of the book.
I totally want the puppy in Iwamura’s illustrations. Black shiba inu, maybe?
Like most children’s picture books, the text is pretty repetitive, which is good for language learning. The Japanese text is all written in hiragana, with the phonetic pronunciation written next to each character.
This is a decent introduction to Japanese, particularly if you are just learning hiragana. However, there are a couple drawbacks to this book for people farther along on the learning curve.
The word segmentation, in some cases, makes it more difficult to look words up in the dictionary. Granted, you should be glad there’s any word segmentation at all! But seeing どこへ いくの is a bit misleading when どこ and いく appear in the dictionary by themselves; へ and の are a preposition and a grammatical marker, respectively.
The other drawback is the lack of Kanji, which also makes it difficult to look up the meaning of the phrases. For example, what appears in the book as どこへ いくの would normally be どこへ行くの. The lack of Kanji in this phrase isn’t so confusing, but I had a hell of a time with ともだちに あいに, especially the あいに. There’s no dictionary entry for aini, and the only entry for ai is 愛, or love. But that doesn’t make any sense in context. Turns it’s supposed to be 会, or association, but thanks to Japanese’s multiple ways of pronouncing the same Kanji that appears in the dictionary under kai. Putting the Kanji in there would have helped resolve the phonetic ambiguity.
This is what the Japanese text in Where Are You Going? To See My Friend! would look like written in standard Japanese:
どこへ行くの？
友達に会いに！
どんな友達？
歌がうまいんだ。
歌なら私も大好き。
ニャオ ニャオ ニャオ [or other animal noises]
私も会いたいな。
いいとも。
僕の友達わ君の友達さ。
This repeats for a while, and then after the rabbit arrives you get this exchange:
どんな友達？
歌がうまいんだ。
ダンスも上手。
ダンスなら僕も大好き。
タッ タッ タッ
僕も会いたいな。
After some more animal noises, the dog introduces the girl with:
皆僕の友達だよ。
And the girl responds with:
わーい！
あなたの友達は私の友達よ。
皆歌がうまいし、ダンスも上手。
私の友達が来たよ。
さあ、歌お！
さあ、踊ろ！
Do a comparison if you own a copy of the book. It’s a big difference!
Yvonne posted this on June 22nd, 2009 @ 11:05pm in Children's Books, Japanese | Permalink to "Where Are You Going? To See My Friend!"
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