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Tips for learning a new alphabet? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| svenfran Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5347 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Russian | Message 1 of 8 27 January 2010 at 10:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hi everyone, I just started learning Russian and I'm having a very hard time learning the alphabet and reading in Russian. I am fairly used to learning the words of languages in general since I have already learned French to a high level. Except this is my first time attempting to learn a completely new alphabet. Do any of you have any tips or suggestions for the most efficient way to remember a new alphabet? If nothing else, there is always just repetition over and over like flashcards but I've always hated learning like that. Thanks in advance for any helpful suggestions or tips you may have. :)
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| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6402 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes  Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 2 of 8 27 January 2010 at 10:49pm | IP Logged | ||
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I devised a method involving step-by-step introduction of new letters and exercises based
on international words and names. You can see the idea in practise here (the first few lessons) or here. However, I have not created something similar for Cyrillic yet. You could start by working with this page, it has a somewhat similar idea but not enough practise words. Then, if my method suits you, just use Wikipedia or a dictionary to find more Russian words that should be recognizable and that you can practise with. Write them down somewhere now and then see if you can still read them a few days later. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6841 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 8 28 January 2010 at 12:50am | IP Logged | ||
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I should only take a couple of hours (at most) to memorize the alphabet.
Most textbooks I've seen cover the letters in groups of four or five, starting with the least confusing and gradually progressing to the more exotic ones. I re-learned/reviewed it the last time by copying an entire textbook. Naturally the most common letters were introduced first, then the false friends, then the even less common ones, and finally the strangely looking letters. I learned to type at the same time. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| ChristopherB Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 6248 days ago 851 posts - 1074 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, German, French | Message 4 of 8 28 January 2010 at 3:06am | IP Logged | ||
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If possible, I'd recommend using mnemonics to associate the shapes in some way with the sound, as a way to retain the information long enough to associate the sounds with the letters naturally and to avoid constant review. You should be able to memorize an alphabet in a couple of hours this way (maybe a bit longer for Thai or Hindi, but I haven't tried them myself).
An example of a site that uses mnemonics to teach Cyrillic is http://langintro.com/rintro/ An example for the Russian letter "H" which has an "n" sound: 
At the right is a picture of a barricade. Whenever you see a barricade, you naturally think of no entry. I know a lot of people find mnemonics silly and childish, but they work extremely well if you can come up with visual stories that associate the shape with the sound. Then, in time, they fall away leaving you with a full knowledge of the alphabet, including how to write it. There's a user on here, I think his name is Maklik, who devised such a method for Arabic. Here's an example (taken from his site www.arabicgenie.com): On the left you see the Arabic letter for “n” again, on the right you see a person with a big belly and a visible navel.  
Now, close your eyes and visualize the image in your mind for a few seconds. Whenever you will see the Arabic “n” you will immediately think back to the big belly with the navel, which in turn reminds you that the shape you see before you is the Arabic “n” sound. I think the greatest benefit of using mnemonics is that they allow you to bypass the hassle of constantly reviewing them until you have them down. Especially with more complex alphabets. The creation of them need not take longer than reviewing (if it did, obviously the method would be pointless), rather I find it's much quicker to create a "silly" story and have the shape and pronunciation immediately spring to mind. Sprachprofi's idea is excellent also, and I would recommend that as the next step: reading already familiar words and phrases transliterated into the new alphabet to further reinforce your knowledge. I must admit though, I'm not sure how feasible that would be for an alphabet like Korean or Thai which might not have all the necessary sounds. When I get around to either of those languages, I'll be sure to check that out. Hope that helps. Edited by ChristopherB on 28 January 2010 at 3:10am 8 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| maaku Senior Member United States Joined 5506 days ago 359 posts - 562 votes Speaks: English* | Message 5 of 8 28 January 2010 at 4:21am | IP Logged | ||
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ChristopherB's method works VERY well. It's also more or less the method of Heisig's Remembering the Kana, which I used to learn the roughly 100 Japanese syllable characters (hiragana + katakana) way back in the day. After that success I devised my own system using the same methodology for Cryllic, and was able to learn that in a day, and with practice fully internalize it by the end of the week. Sadly I didn't write that system down, so I can't share it with you :(
Honestly, I'll come out and say that anyone who has studied a Chinese-based writing system (including Japanese and Korean) laughs a little inside each time he or she sees a thread like this. My first reaction is to say "you think learning 30 characters is hard? i could do that in a day! try learning 3,000!" But that's not very helpful, so my second reaction is to tell you to look at how the Chinese character learners do it--they've built a system that is efficient out of necessity. It uses visual and story-based mnemonics to remember the components and order of the writing, and wordplay within that story to remember the sound (when there is an associated sound). ChristopherB has given some good examples of this method in action. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| goosefrabbas Triglot Pro Member United States Joined 6300 days ago 393 posts - 475 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: German, Italian Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 8 28 January 2010 at 6:13am | IP Logged | ||
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This video series on Youtube might help you. The author is a pretty good teacher, a great singer, and is funny, which always helps when learning a language!
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| fanatic Octoglot Senior Member Australia speedmathematics.com Joined 7078 days ago 1152 posts - 1818 votes Speaks: English*, German, French, Afrikaans, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Dutch Studies: Swedish, Norwegian, Polish, Modern Hebrew, Malay, Mandarin, Esperanto | Message 7 of 8 28 January 2010 at 7:36am | IP Logged | ||
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I learnt the Russian alphabet a few letters at a time as they were introduced in My First Russian Book. They began with easy sentences using mainly letters that were familiar and introduced only two or three different letters.
It began (in Russian) this is Tom, this is Nina, this is mama. It was all very easy. I had long-play records to go with the book and I was very pleased with both the course and the price. I was excited because it was a real foreign language course. I think it took about a dozen lessons to introduce all the letters. I don't remember doing any conscious memorisation. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| svenfran Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5347 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Russian | Message 8 of 8 28 January 2010 at 8:11am | IP Logged | ||
Thanks so much for all the helpful information, I checked out the site you provided and it is very helpful! That is a very interesting method, i never thought about using a method like that for learning an alphabet. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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