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Languages with different writing systems? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| EricaRC Newbie United States Joined 4978 days ago 16 posts - 16 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 1 of 22 27 May 2011 at 1:44am | IP Logged |
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like arabic, chinese, thai, russian, etc
Is it better to learn how to speak the basics of a language and then learn how to write it (like little kids do) or the other way around? Is it harder or easier to learn to write in a language after you have learned how to speak it on a basic level? I'm thinking about doing this with Persian/Farsi: learning spoken and then written. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| galindo Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5207 days ago 142 posts - 248 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish*, Japanese Studies: Korean, Portuguese | Message 2 of 22 27 May 2011 at 2:30am | IP Logged |
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One thing to keep in mind is that it will take quite a long time before you feel as comfortable reading a new alphabet/writing system as you do with the Latin alphabet. You might as well give yourself a head start by learning both the written and spoken forms of the vocabulary you acquire.
It's also a lot easier to get a handle on grammar when you can see a complete sentence right in front of you, instead of hearing it one word at a time. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| nway Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/Vic Joined 5415 days ago 574 posts - 1707 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean | Message 3 of 22 27 May 2011 at 4:16am | IP Logged |
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Most of the time, it's better to learn how to speak it before you learn how to write it, because this is how one naturally learns a language (children effectively learn to speak their languages before any formal writing and reading instruction).
This is definitely the case with a language such as Chinese, where you'd be learning not only what idea the character represents ("speak", "person"), but simultaneously how to pronounce that idea in Chinese ("shuo", "ren"). Much easier to first learn how to pronounce these words, and then later associate them with their written forms, or otherwise learn written Chinese by associating it with the English words, and then later learn how to pronounce them in Mandarin (a novel idea, but worth a try). However, a particular exception I can think of is Korean, which has an extremely useful alphabet that helps to clarify the otherwise hard-to-hear phonetics of the language. I'm not sure if Farsi uses the Arabic alphabet the same way as Arabic, but in Arabic, it's extremely complicated, so you're better off learning the spoken language first. Edited by nway on 27 May 2011 at 4:17am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 22 27 May 2011 at 11:19am | IP Logged |
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Learning a foreign alphabet is in itself not a big thing. I have learnt at least seven alphabets, some of which I have forgotten again because I didn't know the language behind them (Old Norse futhark runes, Georgian, Armenian, Koran Hangul, Arabic). Those that I still use are the Roman, the Cyrillic and the Greek alphabet - and the first two of these in several variants. I have never felt that learning the alphabet was the mostdifficult part of learning a language - though the Armenian alphabet was slightly problematic and Thai could have been even worse if I had tried to learn it. And I dropped Arabic when I read that they don't write all wowels.
The problems arise when the letters don't really fit the language, and as as the example of English shows this can be a problem even with an alphabet you know well. If you want a language which can be written with two absolutely parallel alphabets then go for Serbian. Some other languages have dropped an alphabet in favour of another (Turkic, Azeri, Moldovan (Romanian)), but in these cases the old and the new alphabets are not parallel in the same way as the two Serbian ones are. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| smallwhite Pentaglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5308 days ago 537 posts - 1045 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin, French, Spanish | Message 5 of 22 27 May 2011 at 11:41am | IP Logged |
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My suggestion is to learn both the spoken and the written languages right from the start, at the same time, but learn them separately. That is, have 2 different syllabus for them. Eg., for the spoken language, start with learning your greetings and numbers, etc, while for the written language, start with something easy to write.
For example, with Cantonese, learn to say "years old" in your first month as usual, but leave the written form, "歲", until later because it's too complicated. You may have to do a little compromising, though. Or, as you learn the spoken language, LOOK at the written form, TRY SLIGHTLY to recognise it, but leave serious recognising and writing until later. And you can look at "separating the two forms" in two ways: 1. Spend 3 years learning the spoken, kind of graduate, THEN 2 years learning the written or 2. Just have the written lag behind by about a month. Eg. Start your textbook in January, concentrating on the spoken parts. Then in February, go back to chapter 1, and start learning the written parts. This way you ensure revision as well. > Is it harder or easier to learn to write in a language after you have learned how to speak it on a basic level? With alphabets it's easier. With things like Chinese I don't know. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| KSAKSA Groupie Australia Joined 5145 days ago 65 posts - 99 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Arabic (Gulf) | Message 6 of 22 27 May 2011 at 12:28pm | IP Logged |
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I think it is better to get the script under your belt first and I say that solely based on my Arabic studies.
When I started to learn Arabic I went to the 'learn to read and write' course first. It was a 6 or 8 week course once a week but, really, learning the alphabet and how to write doesn't take that long...it can be learnt quicker. It was easier to know the script and then learn the vocab simply because the language is pronounced as it is written (unlike English) so if I was at home studying and forgot how the teacher said something I could look at the word on paper and instantly know how to pronounce it. Very helpful. Also, building up my reading speed took a bit of time so I found it was very practical to practice this skill while I was learning the language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5766 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 7 of 22 27 May 2011 at 11:44pm | IP Logged |
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It depends on the language and script in question, on your ressources, and on your preferred methods.
I wouldn't advise you to learn the written form only after reaching a good conversational level because in most languages that means you will deprive yourself of learning opportunities. On the other hand, a slight delay of one skill in favour of another one might work out for you - that's something you have to try out. Based on my own experience I will probably first use an audio-based method for maybe two weeks (like pimsleur or shadowing), then cram the basics of the writing system (or for a logographic system I'd learn to write what I already can say), and after that I will try to keep spoken and written language at roughly the same level. (Why I delay the written form a bit is that I am so afraid of teaching myself a strong accent that I developed a mental block that stops me from imagining how a word I see written might sound when I haven't heard it before and can clearly remember how it sounds. Said mental block vanishes after a while, perhaps around half the way to A1 level.) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| The Real CZ Senior Member United States Joined 5649 days ago 1069 posts - 1495 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 8 of 22 28 May 2011 at 2:11am | IP Logged |
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Learning to read hangul in the beginning made Korean that much easier because a lot of things sound the same.
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