|
 |
Fastest language to read? | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5793 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes  Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 18 of 25 07 June 2011 at 7:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
It has been suggested by several studies that even in languages with alphabets, we do read effectively logographically, in that we recognise the shapes of common words and word elements quicker than we can sound out words letter by letter. However, less common words are read truly alphabetically.
We therefore have two complementary strategies. That's not to say that we don't subvocalise when we read by word-shape recognition -- I think it's fairly well established that we always subvocalise. In fact, without subvocalisation, we wouldn't be able to distinguish meanings. Consider the word "orange" in the following two sentences: I want an orange and an apple. I want an orange balloon. The grammatical role of the word orange is realised by a difference in pronunciation, and so you cannot separate meaning from sound. As I understand it, something similar happens in Chinese - in certain situations words or word elements lose their tone. (But I don't speak Chinese so feel free to correct me on this.) 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Dragonsheep Groupie United States Joined 5052 days ago 46 posts - 63 votes Studies: Tagalog, English* Studies: Japanese, Latin | Message 19 of 25 07 June 2011 at 9:21pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
Has anyone tried out Spreeder? It's a program that supposedly allows you to read more
than one word at a time. Link: http://www.spreeder.com/ I would think that, by simple nature of how fast the eye can scan (and regardless of the rates of regular reading, which the study dealt with), Chinese would be faster to speed read. It is somewhat possible to read faster than the brain can process information; there's just lag. If you were given, say, a 3 square inch index card to write something in English or Chinese and showed it to someone else for a split second and instructed them to speed read, (which will be defined for the sake of discussion as reading faster than the brain can process), more information could be conveyed with Chinese, there would just be more processing lag with Chinese. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sandman Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5190 days ago 168 posts - 389 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Japanese | Message 20 of 25 08 June 2011 at 12:05am | IP Logged | |||||
|
#1: 523,974,823
#2: Five-hundred twenty-three million, nine-hundred seventy-four thousand, eight-hundred and twenty-three. In English we're looking at #2, in Chinese they're looking at #1 (as an example, obviously an English speaker understands #1). I don't think we need to subvocalize either fully, but there's probably a lot more of it going on in #2. I suspect there might just be a "speed limit" for our brains to understand things, regardless of how they're presented as well. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Gon-no-suke Triglot Senior Member Japan Joined 6216 days ago 156 posts - 191 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Japanese, EnglishC2 Studies: Korean, Malay, Swahili | Message 21 of 25 12 June 2011 at 12:44am | IP Logged | |||||
Do you mean that there are scientific studies that has established this? If that is the case I'm a bit surprised, since I clearly felt that I read Swedish without subvocalization when I was younger and used to spend hours every day reading novels. Since books about speed reading describes the same thing I never thought it to be a disputed concept. If you know any scientific articles about this topic I'd like to read them. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6221 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 22 of 25 12 June 2011 at 1:56am | IP Logged | |||||
Wikipedia's article on subvocalization seems to agree with Cainntear. The articles cited by it don't appear to be online, sadly. Like you, I read without subvocalization that I can detect. I can't rule out subvocalization which is only detectable by instruments. Links to reputable research which is actually online on this topic would be quite interesting. I looked it up because I was quite surprised by his assertion. I think speed-reading material is correct that excessively subvocalizing slows you down - but it doesn't seem to address subvocalization below the conscious perception threshold of the reader, and I'd like more information about the existence and side-effects of such subvocalization. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Jinx Triglot Senior Member Germany reverbnation.co Joined 5475 days ago 1085 posts - 1879 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Catalan, Dutch, Esperanto, Croatian, Serbian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Yiddish | Message 23 of 25 12 June 2011 at 6:31am | IP Logged | |||||
I don't agree with this at all, personally. First of all, I always pronounce the word "orange" the same, whether it's a noun or an adjective. Second of all, it makes no sense to me to imagine a situation in which I could read those two sentences silently and not know which "orange" was which... until I'd thought of the sound of the word?! For instance, take the following two sentences: Can you present the introduction? This is your birthday present. I would, frankly, find it extremely odd if any native English speakers told me they couldn't distinguish the meaning of the verb and the noun "present" in their heads without subvocalization. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cabaire Senior Member Germany Joined 5381 days ago 725 posts - 1352 votes | Message 24 of 25 12 June 2011 at 8:44am | IP Logged | |||||
|
What is the difference in pronunciation between the fruit and the colour? I know only of ['ɔrindʒ]
I personally always subvocalise in the mind when reading. But I do this in a speed impossible for my mouth, so I do not think it slows me down much. But speed reading is not possible in this way. 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. |
