|
 |
Reading: Latin vs Other Alphabets | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Kounotori Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 5345 days ago 136 posts - 264 votes  Speaks: Finnish*, English, Russian Studies: Mandarin | Message 25 of 28 24 December 2010 at 3:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
I'm afraid stopping at the dictionary frequently is unavoidable if you want to develop your language skills. It certainly is what I've had to do, but that effort has given me many a gratifying moment with reading Japanese. Your Latin alphabet/kanji analogy doesn't really work with Japanese, as kanji have one advantage: meaning. If you know what 魚 (fish) and 村 (village) mean, then seeing a word that you've never seen before such as 漁村 and guessing that it means "fishing village" is not at all unreasonable. This even works with kanji with abstract meanings, so if you use a little bit of imagination, you can at least get the gist of the meaning which will help your reading comprehension greatly even if you're not bothered to look up the word itself from a dictionary (you can go wrong pretty often with these kinds of words, though, so in the end checking them from a dictionary is very much advised). Again, I'm speaking from my own experience. Of course, it can never come close to what other people are experiencing with Japanese. Anyhow, kanji allowing you to make such educated guesses is exactly why reading Japanese isn't as formidable as people might think (understanding the long and convoluted sentences that some Japanese are fond of is a whole other thing!). 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| maurelio1234 Triglot Groupie BrazilRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6081 days ago 61 posts - 92 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishC2, French Studies: German, Mandarin | Message 26 of 28 27 March 2011 at 12:46pm | IP Logged | |||||
Hey, this is not a feature of "the latin alphabet", but a feature of the English language, or of the words you chose. In portuguese, that uses the latin alphabet, these words are written "autor/escritor", "escreveu", "livros/escritos", " escritorio". We have the same system of roots/derived words, but we just use a different derivation method. Irregularities come from the mixing between "pure" and "foreign" words. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| egill Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5697 days ago 418 posts - 791 votes Speaks: Mandarin, English* Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 27 of 28 27 March 2011 at 10:39pm | IP Logged | |||||
I think that the advantage of Kanji in guessing new meanings is often overstated. To use the previous example being able to get fishing village from 漁村 is exactly the same as it is in English. The word fishing is like the word 漁, likewise with village and 村. The word fishing and village both clearly have an independent meaning a priori, and at least in this example Kanji isn't any more "meaningful". 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Raye Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5155 days ago 37 posts - 51 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: DutchB1 | Message 28 of 28 28 March 2011 at 2:08am | IP Logged | |||||
|
From the point of view of a child learning to read, all scripts are about the same, aren’t they? At least that’s how Stanislas Dehaene, the cognitive scientist, summarizes the current science of reading in “Reading in the Brain.” (address for a book review is http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/03/books/review/Gopnik-t.html ?_r=1).
The idea is that all writing systems evolved to fit the abilities and limits of the human brain, which is why they generally end up being a mix of sound units and meaning units, why they only take up so much space on a page (we can only scan so much at a time), why, in short, they’re at bottom so alike. In terms of cognition, the difference between written Italian (“simple”) and written Chinese (“hard”) isn’t really that great for children. I guess adults have to struggle with reading just as with every other aspect of L2 acquisition. 1 person has voted this message useful |
If you wish to post a reply to this topic you must first login. If you are not already registered you must first register
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
