|
 |
Languages with different writing systems? | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| gambi Newbie New Zealand Joined 5109 days ago 37 posts - 52 votes  Speaks: English Studies: Indonesian, Burmese | Message 9 of 22 28 May 2011 at 7:43am | IP Logged | ||
|
If it's a language that doesn't have a standard Latinised transliteration system (eg. Hindi, Thai, Khmer etc.), then it's much better to tackle the writing system first because different resources would use different transliteration systems, and you'll be left feeling confused about how certain consonants and vowels should be pronounced.
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 10 of 22 28 May 2011 at 8:12am | IP Logged | ||
They also look the same. :\ 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 11 of 22 28 May 2011 at 8:52am | IP Logged | ||
|
^ I hope you mean the romanization and not Hangul, because Hangul is mercifully convenient...
Though, I will concede that ㅐ, ㅔ, ㅘ, ㅙ, ㅚ, ㅝ, ㅞ, ㅟ, and ㅢ do trip me up. :\ 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 12 of 22 28 May 2011 at 11:59am | IP Logged | ||
|
It ... was a joke?
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Warp3 Senior Member United States forum_posts.asp?TID= Joined 5535 days ago 1419 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese | Message 13 of 22 28 May 2011 at 4:32pm | IP Logged | ||
For Korean, I completely concur with the others who suggested learning it early. Not only is Korean very phonetically regular (at least in the written-to-spoken direction; sounds shifts make the reverse direction a bit less regular), but the romanization systems for Korean simply don't work very well (and there are multiple systems in use). Moving away from romanization as quickly as possible has been very beneficial for me with Korean. Also, it will take quite a while to build up your reading speed in a foreign script, so the earlier you start, the faster your reading speed will be.
This is a big part of why I've been hesitant to move forward with my plans to tackle some other scripts (many of which are used with languages that I have no current plans to learn). I'm afraid I will simply forget them if I don't actually attach them to a language. While it would allow me to read loan words and place names in the foreign script (which would be the main point), I'm not sure that would be enough practice to keep remembering them without constant exposure to a language that uses them. Perhaps I could simply keep them floating in my head with an SRS until they finally stick. That probably isn't the ideal way, but that may be the only option to remember a script that I wouldn't be using often. Of course, the other reason I'm hesitating is the chance that doing so will prompt me to actually start learning the attached language and thus steal time from my current languages. If I haven't learned the script yet, the temptation isn't as great. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Tecktight Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member United States Joined 4976 days ago 227 posts - 327 votes Speaks: English*, Serbian Studies: German, Russian, Estonian | Message 14 of 22 30 May 2011 at 6:47am | IP Logged | ||
|
I'm currently learning Russian, and I don't think I would be able to learn anything at all had I not learned Cyrillic
first. This is because, as someone else mentioned, some sounds simply have no equivalent in English, or are simply a pain to write out in English. Some sounds, like the soft sound ь, are vital to pronunciation, and they can only be read in Cyrillic. Moreover, if, like me, you learn vocabulary and grammar best by writing and re-writing (i.e. through exercises), it will be necessary for you to consult a book, which will most likely be written in the alphabet native to the language. I'll concede, though, that it's kind of annoying when your choice alphabet has a handwritten form that differs from its typed form. 3 persons have 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 15 of 22 01 June 2011 at 12:41am | IP Logged | ||
|
Actually, letters only represent what we allow them to represent. Of course, once we're used to a certain sound-shape symbolism it's a bit difficult to assign other values, but by no means impossible. If the language one learns happens to have a different writing systems it doesn't change the fact that one has to learn its entire phonological inventory plus governing rules and on top of that the conventions used to represent those sounds in visual symbols.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lasciel Groupie United States Joined 5373 days ago 55 posts - 81 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Japanese | Message 16 of 22 02 June 2011 at 9:40pm | IP Logged | ||
|
I can't see that learning the script later gives any advantage. Learning it from early on gives you a longer period of time to normalize it and get used to reading it. I've found it's much easier to learn the native alphabet's pronunciations and apply them to written words instead of reading them in your own. So in that case it's not harder or easier to learn writing after speaking; but it is easier to learn speaking after writting.
With Mandarin and Japanese, there are so many characters to learn I don't think any time should be wasted in getting started on them.
Remembering the Kanji is what everyone swears by for learning them, and from what I've seen it uses the last idea (teaching the character's English meaning with the character, and utterly ignoring pronunciation and native readings) 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
