- If you are Brazilian and have children studying at a Japanese school, you may already have this question: What do my children study in the Kokugo subject? Is there a difference between Nihongo and Kokugo?
- Thousands of foreign children and teenagers, studying in Japanese schools, have problems mainly because they don't master the language of the country where they live. Perhaps the explanation given by the teacher has not been properly understood by the student due to language issues.
- In Japan, there are a lot of children of Brazilians who have recently moved from Brazil to Japan and entered Japanese schools without knowing enough Japanese to be able to follow the lessons. Many parents think it's only a matter of time before their children learn Japanese, as they think they'll have Nihongo (Japanese language) lessons all day long. But therein lies the problem: in Japanese schools there is no "Nihongo" subject (Japanese Language). Instead, there's a subject called "Kokugo", which means "language of the country". Which means they are two completely different things.
- Nihongo is aimed at teaching Japanese to foreigners (non-native speakers). In this case the methodology used compares languages. It is taught how to make sentences, join phrases, learn new words and grammatical structures.
- Kokugo, on the other hand, is aimed at native speakers who already know how to speak, form sentences, express themselves, etc. So what is the focus of Kokugo? Reading and interpretation. From an early age, Japanese learn to read and understand (interpret) what they are reading. In addition to writing (Hiragana, Katakana, Romaji and Kanji), they have to learn to read and interpret correctly.