Thursday, December 27, 2007

The Order of Writing Alphabets

If you're writing English and somebody says "You've mistaken A's writing order!", you would probably feel weird. But if you were a Japanese 7th-year boy, that's your teacher might say to you while studying English.



Japanese students learn "the order of writing Alphabets" when they are 7th or 1st year in junior high school. That's when Japanese first start learning English at school. I also learned it and I got stunned that I found it might be only in Japan.

I looked around the internet and found that the Ministry of Education(now called the Ministry of Education and Science) made it when Japan started teaching Engilsh after the WW2. But also found the order was based on textbooks from U.K. and U.S.A or their traditional way.

Anyway, this tells us what's important to Japan: an order and a form. We learn how to use chopsticks, how to hold a rice bowl, the order of writing letters, what to eat on the New Year's Day....so on and on.
Maybe I write more about this some day soon.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hello - I found your alphabet chart and LOVE it. Did you make this yourself? I would really love to use it to show my son. Do you have a version with the upper case and lower case letters together? Thank you!
carlen

About this blog

In this blog, I tell you what Japanese workers do while they are working. I believe it's very mysterious to other country's people, especially Europians, because it is said that Japanese work style is different from other areas, and it is not easy for other country's people to come into the Japanese worker's territory, as not so many of them work in Japan. You have little chances to learn it from Japanese workers, because they're pretty busy working all the time. Even if luckily you meet some of them, unluckily they probably don't speak English. Remember that most of Japanese can't speak English.

Shortly, I reveal 'the real world of Japanese workers' in this blog. I also tell you something different about Japan and Japanese: life, culture, customs, etc. I hope you enjoy reading my blog.