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How hard can it be to learn an alphabet?

  Tags: Alphabets | Difficulty
 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages Post Reply
43 messages over 6 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6  Next >>
Ogrim
Heptaglot
Senior Member
France
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Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian
Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian

 
 Message 33 of 43
10 September 2013 at 5:04pm | IP Logged 
prz, cheer up. Yes, unfortunately there are intolerant people everywhere, but on the other hand not everyone is filled with hate because of this or the other, at least not here on HTLAL. Let's look on the bright side and cherish the good things and the fact that most people seem to be getting on pretty well with each other (if not the human race would probably not have existed for long.)

Anyway, let's not get into politics. Turning to the OP question, I have mixed experiences with learning other alphabets. I found the Greek alphabet rather easy, after all it is not that different to the Latin. Cyrillic required some more work, and I would say it was only after a couple of months that i could read and understand a new word easily. Like someone mentioned earlier, it is about seeing the whole word, not reading like a six-year old, spelling out letter by letter.

I once made the effort to learn both Hebrew and Arabic script, and found the latter more difficult than the other. I have certainly forgotten how to read Arabic script, but can still recognise most Hebrew letters.

Finally, I once made a feeble attempt to learn the Armenian alphabet, but that I found really difficult. There was something about those vertical strokes that put me off... However, it is a challenge I would like to take up one day.
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Solfrid Cristin
Heptaglot
Winner TAC 2011 & 2012
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Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian
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 Message 34 of 43
10 September 2013 at 11:10pm | IP Logged 
prz_ wrote:
Solfrid, forgive me those extremely strong words. I just have enough of all of these
animosities. People fighting with each other, killing each other, hating each other, presuming in advance that
EVERYONE who's [Russian, Polish, Serbian, Croatian, Azeri, Armenian, black, white, muslim, catholic,
atheist...] is EVIL. I have enough of being overcareful to say something about Serbians to Croatians and
something about Croatians to Serbians, etc. etc. I hate the fact that I'm afraid of going to Lithuania [well, I will
anyway, but still], because some people can act badly to me because of some stupid historical events, which
happened almost a century ago! I also hate monolingual or bilingual people who say that "why I have to learn
any other language if there's English?" and discriminating everything what's not Anglo-Saxon [and especially
UK/USA made]. Or, on the other hand, disliking it, because it's not FRENCH. And even the stupid alphabets
can become problems - gosh. Sometimes I hate this world.


No forgiveness needed :-) We all have days when we just want to lash out, but fortunately, I think things are
not as bad as they seem. I cannot say that there is any nation or group of people who I could say I hate, and
hardly any individuals. I may hate certain behaviour, but not the people, and I suspect that is the case for
most other people too. Generally, people are better than we think. And people on this forum is generally
particularly nice. So there is still hope for humanity :-)
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montmorency
Diglot
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United Kingdom
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 Message 35 of 43
10 September 2013 at 11:31pm | IP Logged 
Individual orneryness trumps national orneryness by a country mile!

Having had my day ruined by a particularly irritating individual (not here, and not
online, this was a real person! :-) ), I'm not filled with Cristina's sweetness and
light at the moment, but tomorrow will be another day.


I've been "making allowances" for this particular person for about 2 years, but after a
certain time, a last straw was laid, and a fuse was blown. I thought I had managed to
arrange things so that I could simply avoid them almost 100% of the time, and I
realised today that I hadn't been quite successful in that respect. hey-ho....onwards
and sideways.... :-]


Tomorrow I'm going to get (only ever so slightly) drunk I think. :-)


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Solfrid Cristin
Heptaglot
Winner TAC 2011 & 2012
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Norway
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Studies: Russian

 
 Message 36 of 43
11 September 2013 at 10:21am | IP Logged 
montmorency wrote:
I'm not filled with Cristina's sweetness and
light at the moment, but tomorrow will be another day.



Oh trust me, I am not all filled with sweetness at all times either. This spring, when I was going through a really tough time, someone here on the forum sent me a snarky remark by PM. I replied in kind, and received a new mail asking "where the kindness and sweetness I was so famous for had gone". My response was brutal. I try to be kind at all times, but when I have gone out publicly and said that I am going through a difficult time, I expect people to understand that it is not the time to push me.

Through the last half century I have seen atrocities happen on the world scene, but also some wonderful things. South Africa did not drown in a sea of blood when apartheid ended, Roumania got rid of its dictator, most of the countries behind the iron curtain have had a new chance, some of the African dictators have been removed. The members of the EU have not had any war between themselves since WW2, and even in Burma there seems to be rays of hope. And then there are lots of bad things that still happen - but since we want to avoid politics here, I will not name those. My point is, there is always hope, and I strongly believe that the more we learn about other peoples's language and culture, the less likely we are to hate anyone or to go to war with anyone.

I grew up fearing Russia, but now that I have several Russian friends, and am learning the language, my views have changed, and I absolutely adore Russians. I still have strong views regarding the actions of certain politicians,not only in Russia, but in a range of other countries as well, but that is another matter entirely.

As far as I am concerned we are doing an important job right here. And anyone who has observed, like I did this summer, the expression on the face of an American officer who just received a kiss on his head from his Russian teacher because she was so happy that he had just mastered the Russian accusative, has got to believe in world peace:-)
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Darklight1216
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United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name
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 Message 37 of 43
11 September 2013 at 10:52am | IP Logged 
Learning the Ancient Greek alphabet was pretty easy for me, but that's about the only other script I've really tried to master. Hebrew pretty much scares me though.
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tarvos
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 Message 38 of 43
11 September 2013 at 11:43am | IP Logged 
Hebrew script's difficulty is overrated - you get used to the letters quickly - it's more
the absent vowels which are killing.

By comparison, Russian is a walk in the park. And I love the Russians. I don't
understand how the politics of a country can be the entire opposite of the behaviour of
the people.

Edited by tarvos on 11 September 2013 at 11:44am
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Chung
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 Message 39 of 43
11 September 2013 at 4:49pm | IP Logged 
Solfrid Cristin wrote:
Now I admit to feeling irritation when hearing someone say, oh Cyrillic is not hard, you can learn it in a couple
of hours. It is not quite that simple. But I have at different periods of time in my life learnt (and sometimes
forgotten) the Arabic, the Hebrew, the Cyrillic, the Greek and obviously the Latin alphabets. I would say that
you can get a fairly good grasp of it in a week. The alphabet. Not the language. But for me it often works to
write words from my own language in the new alphabet to help me read easier.

I was therefore a bit surprised when I read an article about Azerbaijani, where they have evidently changed
alphabets three times over the last century, (Arabic, Latin, Cyrillic, new Latin) and where the argument was
that adults could not read street signs or newspapers, and students could not read literature because they did
not know the other alphabet.

Now, I have struggled enough with the Cyrillic alphabet to know that it is no walk in the park, but it still shares
a number of letters with the Latin alphabet. I would think that if Cyrillic street names turned up in Oslo I would
have been able to recognise the names fairly fast.

The librarian said that young people could not read the literature from the last 60 years because of the Cyrillic
spelling, or the traditional literature because of the Arabic spelling. I talked to my daughter about this, and she
said, "Why don't they just learn the two other alphabets? How difficult can that be if you know the language
the texts are written in?

I would also think that some people would know foreign languages with Latin alphabets, which would help
them in the task. What is it I am not seeing here? The thumb rule is that you learn what you need to learn,
and here most of the population needs to learn at least one extra alphabet to have full functionality in their
own language. Why would that be so hard?


I admit to having a bit of trouble getting the thrust of this post. If a language uses only the Cyrillic script, then being irritated by having to learn it is pointless. For languages that use more than one script, on the surface it would be up to the learner to figure out which script to use, but if the frequencies of the scripts are not grossly skewed, then any reasonable learner will find out in a hurry that he/she is needlessly limiting his/her grasp of the language by avoiding learning one of the scripts just because he/she thinks that it's too hard or useless.

Uzbekistan has a similar story of changing alphabets. Uzbek went from Arabic-based to Latin-based to Cyrillic-based and now Latin-based and Cyrillic-based texts/signs coexist. In general the newer the text, the more likely it is to be in the Latinic script. On the other hand, my copies of "Elementary Azerbaijani" (2003) and "Uzbek: An Elementary Textbook" (2010) teach mainly how to use and understand the Latinic script of these languages but because the Cyrillic conventions are still widely known encountered, they each have short sections that give the learner a chance to gain at least some passive ability with those scripts.

A scholar of Sinitic philology would almost certainly need to master the traditional and simplified scripts in order to do his/her job properly, no matter what one's views are on the practicality of the arrangement. A somewhat similar aspect would be true for that crazy soul who's interested in Northern Saami philology. Although its orthography has been based on some Latinic script, it has gone through so many changes in its conventions that texts from the 1950s and earlier can be difficult to read if one is used to only the convention from 1979 that is taught up to this day.
1 person has voted this message useful



Solfrid Cristin
Heptaglot
Winner TAC 2011 & 2012
Senior Member
Norway
Joined 5332 days ago
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Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian
Studies: Russian

 
 Message 40 of 43
11 September 2013 at 5:00pm | IP Logged 
Chung wrote:
Solfrid Cristin wrote:
Now I admit to feeling irritation when hearing someone say, oh Cyrillic is not hard, you can learn it in a couple
of hours. It is not quite that simple. But I have at different periods of time in my life learnt (and sometimes
forgotten) the Arabic, the Hebrew, the Cyrillic, the Greek and obviously the Latin alphabets. I would say that
you can get a fairly good grasp of it in a week. The alphabet. Not the language. But for me it often works to
write words from my own language in the new alphabet to help me read easier.

I was therefore a bit surprised when I read an article about Azerbaijani, where they have evidently changed
alphabets three times over the last century, (Arabic, Latin, Cyrillic, new Latin) and where the argument was
that adults could not read street signs or newspapers, and students could not read literature because they did
not know the other alphabet.

Now, I have struggled enough with the Cyrillic alphabet to know that it is no walk in the park, but it still shares
a number of letters with the Latin alphabet. I would think that if Cyrillic street names turned up in Oslo I would
have been able to recognise the names fairly fast.

The librarian said that young people could not read the literature from the last 60 years because of the Cyrillic
spelling, or the traditional literature because of the Arabic spelling. I talked to my daughter about this, and she
said, "Why don't they just learn the two other alphabets? How difficult can that be if you know the language
the texts are written in?

I would also think that some people would know foreign languages with Latin alphabets, which would help
them in the task. What is it I am not seeing here? The thumb rule is that you learn what you need to learn,
and here most of the population needs to learn at least one extra alphabet to have full functionality in their
own language. Why would that be so hard?


I admit to having a bit of trouble getting the thrust of this post.


Oh Lord, am I that unclear?

I was trying to show as much understanding as I possibly could for people who have had their alphabets changed on them several times, while at the same time thinking that learning the extra alphabet would give enormous benefits. I then asked if anyone else understood why that would seem so hard for the Azerbajanis since a lot of them chose not to learn the extra alphabet. I got some helpful answers, so I believe some managed to wade through :-)

I must start to write in a simpler language. When you write in a foreign language, it is easy to stumble and mess things up.


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