Outside of being born in a cult, I'm sure the average kid is aware of Japanese as a language by 10, and that's if they weren't already being taught the language from 4
You can carry white lies, that you were told at a very young age, with you for many years. There's loads of stories of people being told some fairytale incorrect information at a young age and then just believing that for years until they suddenly have an epiphany as an adult.
My mum was convinced that going to sleep with wet hair would give you a fever lol, even told me. It's a lie. She believed it because her mum told her.
One from my mum: My mum learned gardening from her grandfather and her nomenclature for the local weeds and plants was all in her grandfather's dialect (thing like swapping the sound u with e etc), which was different from the dialect she grew up in (because she grew up in basically the town nextdoor). She was in her fifties when we discovered that if you replaced certain vowels etc within her garden vocabulary, that you would often get dutch words that actually existed and could be looked up on the internet. It really made discussing weeds a lot easier all of the sudden.
Edit to add: I was in my twenties when I discovered that the words I used for some weeds, were in a dialect from a man I had never met, from a village I had only visited once in my life :)
I knew a woman who thought pecan trees just naturally grew in a perfect grid pattern because that's what she was told as a little girl and had no reason to believe it wasn't just a cool fact of nature.
Even if they weren't aware, they'd remember the fact that their dad taught them this??? This is why I don't get it, if you literally remember learning it then why'd you think you were "born with it"
The story is told with hindsight after talking to the dad. Could be that the memory of being taught the secret language had faded and OP was genuinely curious why everything he was learning in Japanese class was so intuitive, like it was knowledge they already had, but could not remember where from (because they don't think they've been exposed to Japanese before and don't have enough conscious memory of the secret language lessons to make the connection, just enough in the subconscious to provide deja vu)
Ooooh. That reminds me of a funny coincidence. When I did my woodworking I only used japanese tools because they always felt natural to me. The maintenance and sharpening to me was easier than western tools (of which are generally said to be easier).
Even complicated procedures came naturally with little practice, and basic maintenance on western tools rarely "clicked". I talked to my mother about this and i learned my great grandfather in japan was a carpenter, and would have used the same exact tools i was "familiar" with.
Ms. Cardinal, grade 3. If it was messy we got a dot on the homework. 10 dots and you had to do your multiplication tables instead of watching a movie.
Where is anon that they have Japanese schools but they weren't exposed to any Japanese prior to that?
How did they not think "how do they all know my dad's secret language?" And then make the connection?
