Japanese is difficult for a number of reasons. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. What surprised me, though, are the reasons why it’s difficult.

Japanese is difficult for me not because of any inherent feature but by the way its speakers use it. If you view language on a continuum, on one end you have a bunch of babbling while on the other you have a paragon of linguistic excellence. The former would be a baby babbling, the latter, a college educated native speaker. Most people fall in between. Skritter helps you learn to communicate with a small segment of the population. Let me explain a bit more.

I work as an English teacher. I teach children, mostly. In one class I had a little boy who always wanted my attention. He would speak at every possible moment. The problem? He couldn’t speak Japanese properly, much less English. He just made sounds. Cute sounds, though, but sounds that carried little meaning.

My favorite student was a little three-year-old girl. She’s super smart for her age and has a difficult voice for English than her normal voice. Sometimes, though, she would just start saying random things in Japanese. I wanted to know what she was saying as I didn’t understand the vocabulary she was using so I asked the Japanese teacher to translate. Her answer? She didn’t know; it was all gibberish.

Sadly, Skritter will not help you understand a child speaking gibberish. Unfortunately, at least for me, that’s what I need the most help with.

Having been there, ask your co-teachers everyday what the kids are saying. I have learned SO much Chinese from 2 year-olds it is somewhat unbalanced(not a bad thing necessarily). Just when you use words that are the equivalent to 'tummy' or boo-boo in public you learn fast from the looks or chuckles.

You should figure out what the student's parents do, as that might put it all in context. I had a student before, when I was still a teacher, that her dad was a doctor, mom a nurse. She spoke formally about health and used medical words often... Amazing way to learn really. I must have learned 50 animals just from those kids too...

When I finally have children who are bilingual, I will be prepared for the language they use, at least till 8, but I have years to catch up still...

When I was learning Spanish in Costa Rica, there were these two eight-year-olds that would always come try to talk to me, very emphatically. They really wanted me to understand. I couldn't get a single word. Eventually their cousin came over and told me that one was saying that he has a button on his shirt where if you press it, he grows wings like Buzz Lightyear, and when the other was pointing at his arm, he wanted me to know that he has blood under there, and what gymnastics moves do I know?

I think most kids in China are too scared to talk to me. Except the yelled, "Hello Lao Wai Hello", or "What's your name?" that all expats in China come to hate/love after spending time in China.

Whenever I try to go and actually talk to them they are too shy to speak to me in Chinese, it could also be because they can't speak putonghua very well.

Maybe I should try harder to talk to kids.

@Nick: So what gymnastics moves do you know?

Not very many: forward roll, handstand, headstand, frogstand, cartwheel, somersault, worm. There's no reason why the kids would think I actually knew gymnastics except that they hope that everyone can do tricks for their pleasure.

I can definitely see the issue with trying to catch on to kid-speak in a foreign tongue. Sounds fun though!