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Original script vs transliteration | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Przemek Hexaglot Senior Member Poland multigato.blogspot.c Joined 6286 days ago 107 posts - 174 votes  Speaks: Polish*, English, SpanishC2, Italian, Portuguese, French Studies: Turkish, Hindi, Arabic (Written) | Message 1 of 5 22 April 2012 at 11:39am | IP Logged |
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Some of us learn languages that use different alphabet than Roman. They include e.g.
Arabic, Hindi, Thai, Russian and many others. Writing systems of some of them are quite straightforward, as in Hindi, others are more difficult as in Arabic. Nonetheless, if you want to learn a language to be able to communicate not only in speech but also in writing, you'd rather learn to read and write too. However not all the textbooks help you with it. There are textbooks that use transliteration in texts. In my opinion it’s not a good idea. I think it may help to give the pronunciation of new words in the vocabulary under a reading passage or in the glossary at the end of the book. I wrote an article on my blog about my impressions regarding this topic. You can read it here What are your opinions? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Einarr Tetraglot Senior Member United Kingdom einarrslanguagelog.w Joined 4424 days ago 118 posts - 269 votes Speaks: English, Bulgarian*, French, Russian Studies: Swedish | Message 2 of 5 22 April 2012 at 12:38pm | IP Logged |
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It really depends. I do think that they would rather put the pronunciation of the words (when we talk about languages which don't use Latin script) somewhere in the lesson - even like in your example that place being the vocabulary summary by the end of the book, just for the sake of providing the user a sleeker experience with the manual, meaning that it would be time saving if you don't spend endless amount of time going back and forth till the end of the book and back to wherever you are.
I also think that there can be a psychological explanation to it all. For instance, if we have as an example a learner, that have never had an experience with a language with an alphabet different than the Latin (that being especially valid for languages like Arabic, Korean, Chinese, Armenian etc.), then it might be striking for the person to see the first lesson written in the original script without any transliteration at all. That being especially valid for self-teaching manuals. Yes, of course, it's presumed that you'll be able to at least read in a certain language after the first lessons, so the transliteration with pronunciation should be included then. Now to the part of the book where it should be included. Well I either think that another tiny book with transliteration or even together with a full translation of the text with the vocabulary summary can be slightly more practical than browsing till the end of the manual every single time. Yet, I'm not generalizing about that, cause everyone would find it different whether it would be easier to have a second tiny book or a summary by the end of the manual. Apart from that I think that if they construct the manuals like: original text with the vocabulary summary on the left page and the transliteration + translation & vocabulary summary on the right one, this would be an even more efficient way of learning for the user. We also shouldn't forget, that it can also be a good thing if in intermediate to advanced books transliteration is completely omitted, as I assume that by that time the learner will be able to recognize the pronunciation one one's own. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Cabaire Senior Member Germany Joined 5410 days ago 725 posts - 1352 votes | Message 3 of 5 22 April 2012 at 12:41pm | IP Logged |
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The only language I have worked with a fair amount of transliterating is Sanskrit. But there are whole text editions of Sanskrit in transliteration.
When I see words or sentences transliterated from Greek or Russian, I often need some time to recognise the words. I find it disturbing. I imagine a Korean reading German translitererated into Hangul... 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6514 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 5 22 April 2012 at 2:42pm | IP Logged |
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Different alphabets means that you have to do some transliteration followed by some guesswork to find out which places or persons the foreign texts refer to. And not least in the case of Greek I have seen cases where only the context and the pronunciation could give you an idea about the intended place/person. But the problem as such is not different from the current praxis of using homebrewed distorsions of foreign names in for instance English. When the Greeks write "Η Ουάσιγκτον" for Washington (= ouásigkton in a crude transliteration) then is only payback for calling Αθήναι(athēnai) Athens - or even worse: for calling Livorno in Italy "Leghorn". The problem goes both ways.
It would certainly be practical to have all such parallel forms listed for each relevant language combination. A few days ago I saw a list over Roman place names and their nearest equvalent in modern languages (see comments in my log), and here it is obvious that the truly 'comprehensible' names are a minority, and there are lots of false friends. Edited by Iversen on 22 April 2012 at 2:51pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Andrew C Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom naturalarabic.com Joined 5001 days ago 205 posts - 350 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written) | Message 5 of 5 22 April 2012 at 3:16pm | IP Logged |
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The ideal solution is to have both transliteration and original script. I don't think everyone wants to learn to read a new alphabet. Plus, reading a new script properly involves much more than just knowing the letters - you have to be able to recognise whole words and phrases at a glance and this takes years.
Besides, in the Arabic examples you showed, I find it depressingly familiar to see they have omitted the vowels in the text. In this case a transliteration would be much more useful than the Arabic. I know some people will say you should get used to reading Arabic without vowels,as this is how Arabic is usually written, but they forget that Arabs have the advantage of knowing the words before they read them. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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