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Click hereWelcome to lesson four - this should be a quick one.

The Japanese school system works a lot like the Canadian school system - You attend elementary school for grade 1 - 6, then three years of middle school and then three years of high school. Japanese kids are only legally required to complete middle school, but almost all of them go on to high school.

When talking about your grade, you don't typically refer to a grade from 1 - 12. Instead, you usually tell them what year of what school you are in.

To start:

School = Gakkou

Student = Sei

Elementary School = Shougaku

Middle School = Chuugaku

High School = Koukou

College = Daigaku

Grade marker = nen.

Now to put this all together!

Watashi wa (pick a school) (enter the number of years you have been there) nen sei desu.

So if you were a first year university student, you would say:

watashi wa daigaku ichi nen sei desu.

If you were in the second grade, you would say

watashi wa sougaku ni nen sei desu.

If you were in 11th grade (remember, that means second year to them), you would say:

watashi wa koukou ni nen sei desu.


Some added learning for you - "gakkou" refers to the physical school building, while "gaku" refers to the learning that takes place there. When you go to learn kanji, you will see this more clearly.

The word "chuu" means "middle"... so "middle school" is "chuu gaku"

Also, the word "dai" means big, so university (daigaku) is literally "big learning".

Questions or comments? You know what to do by now? And if you're such a smarty-pants that you understand it the first time through, give me a smug little post to let me know.

Click here to return to lesson three.

Boku wa koukou kyuu nen sei~ smile


Isn't Chuugaku how you say "China" as well?

You're in your ninth year of high school? Wow. xp

If you're in the ninth grade, then you would say:

boku wa chuugaku san nen sei desu. (In Japan, and where I live too, middle school is grade 7 -9. So if you were in the ninth grade, you'd be in your third year at middle school).

OR If you want to refer to yourself in an American context, you would say:

boku wa koukou ichi nen sei desu. You are in your first year of high school.

The word of China is "chuugoku". Very very similar. Chuugaku means middle school, and Chuugoku means middle country, or China.

♥Watashi wa Koukou ni nen sei desu♥

Oops sorry you already said that chuu means middle lol, my bad rofl

Yes, that's perfect!

Yes, a gakuen is an academy. When you are explaining what grade you are in, you use koukou, chuugaku, etc, because telling someone that you are in your first year at an academy is not useful - an academy refers to your specific school, and not what level your academy is.

You use gakuen when naming your school. Suppose you attend a school called Yamate. If it classifies itself as an academy (which it does, actually, Yamate Academy is in Tokyo, I have a friend there), it would be Yamate Gakuen. If the school is a regular high school, it would be Yamate Koukou.

It might be best, for privacy reasons, not to put the name of your school on the internet anyways. I will teach you how to say it in a later lesson, though.