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When to learn alternative alphabets | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| JCF Diglot Newbie United States Joined 6224 days ago 18 posts - 18 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Russian, German | Message 1 of 13 01 February 2010 at 11:29pm | IP Logged |
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Quick question: If you are learning a language that uses a different alphabet (For example: Russian, Hebrew, Arabic, Thai, etc.), is it best to learn the language first (phonetically, for example with IPA) and then learn the alphabet to go with it, or to learn the alphabet and the spoken language at the same time?
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 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6720 days ago 4250 posts - 5710 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 13 02 February 2010 at 12:57am | IP Logged |
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At the same time. Anyone should be able to learn how to read Russian in just a few hours (at most). There is no point in delaying that, in my opinion.
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| Gusutafu Senior Member Sweden Joined 5332 days ago 655 posts - 1039 votes Speaks: Swedish* | Message 3 of 13 02 February 2010 at 4:22pm | IP Logged |
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Exactly, phonetic writing systems can usually be negotiated within hours (with the exception of syllabaries like Amharic/Ge'ez) and should really be learnt as early as possible. Chinese characters is a different story, since it takes several months or years to learn enough of them.
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| Warp3 Senior Member United States forum_posts.asp?TID= Joined 5346 days ago 1419 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese | Message 4 of 13 02 February 2010 at 5:01pm | IP Logged |
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I agree with both posters above. With Korean, I learned Hangul very early on (including learning to type Hangul using the Windows IME) and I don't regret it in the least. One of the big advantages of doing this is that it increases transparency in languages which contain a large number of English loan words, so you can often pick out those loan words simply by sounding them out.
For example, my browser home page is Google.com, which I have set to Korean. Simply knowing how to pronounce Hangul characters shows that 7 of the words on that very text-sparse page are direct English loan words (images, news, shopping, login, web, program, and center). Edited by Warp3 on 02 February 2010 at 5:10pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Raincrowlee Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 6513 days ago 621 posts - 808 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Indonesian, Japanese | Message 5 of 13 02 February 2010 at 8:46pm | IP Logged |
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There's no benefit to putting off learning a new alphabet, and lots of benefit to getting it down in as the first lesson. Practicing it from the beginning lets you internalize the quirks of the new alphabet as you go instead of trying to pick it up later. Not only that, it would stop you from testing yourself on native language material to see how much you understand. And since that's likely a goal of learning the language, why not do it from the beginning?
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| zhiguli Senior Member Canada Joined 6252 days ago 176 posts - 221 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian, Mandarin | Message 6 of 13 03 February 2010 at 5:05am | IP Logged |
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If you have audio to go with your text then there should be no problem. This is especially important because many (I dare say, most) writing systems are not completely phonetic, so it's useful to see how the written form diverges from the pronunciation from the very beginning.
Russian is a good example. A word that is spelled счастливо (schastlivo) gets pronounced щислива (sshisliva) but you'd have to know a whole bunch of rules (and the stress) to figure out the correct pronunciation. You could learn the rules explicitly but it's far more productive to learn a ton of example words/sentences with pronunciation and eventually it will become second nature. Scripts like Khmer or Thai are a good deal more difficult (I've never seen anyone learn them in "a few short hours") because you need to learn whole syllabic blocks but the solution is the same - lots of examples with audio. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| rostocpj Pentaglot Newbie United States Joined 5302 days ago 21 posts - 33 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, French, Toki Pona Studies: Esperanto, Indonesian, Shanghainese, Cantonese | Message 7 of 13 04 February 2010 at 4:29am | IP Logged |
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Usually learning the alphabet of a language is the first thing I do, even before learning words. By doing this, I've been able (as others have stated) to re-enforce my knowledge and comfort level with the alphabet as I've moved on to learning words/phrases/etc.
I spent the first week of independent Thai study learning to read and write it, tones and all. It was very difficult but has absolutely been helpful and the better choice in the long-run. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5192 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 8 of 13 03 March 2010 at 6:35pm | IP Logged |
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Can you give us a single reason why it would be advantageous to delay learning the alphabet?
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