5 ms·

Sorry but I disagree. Limit reading and limit learning grammar/spelling?

by el_cid 9y ago

WheelsAtLarge 9y ago
This is absolutely right. One of the biggest drawbacks of reading to learn a language is that it increases your accent simply because you will start to pronounce the words the way you learned to read in your native language. Also, it's harder to memorize information when you read it. Mimicking and speaking is the fastest way to fluency. It turns out that embarrassment or the feeling that you need to improve will help you learn.
FabHK 9y ago
That might be more apropos for learning Chinese (where premature focus on reading/writing can distract from actually learning the (spoken) language). I think in learning English, reading will help, because the sound/spelling correspondence is sufficient (even though English arguably has the worst orthography after the logographic ones).
- robocat 9y ago
  > because the sound/spelling correspondence is sufficient I strongly disagree. Firstly on listening to tourists, some of the worst pronunciation mistakes I hear are because they have learnt the spelling: you can hear mistakes that can only occur if you know the spelling (or are due to use a "general" voicing rule). This shows up clearly when you are in another country and you tell someone a word for something and they repeat it back to you perfectly. However they often then ask for the spelling, and after you tell them the spelling, their pronunciation changes to something incorrect. Ouch. Speakers with English as a mother tongue on seeing an unfamiliar word will ask how to pronounce it rather than making educated guesses at how to say it because any rule is often broken, and we learn not to trust our guesses. In fact someone who is well read but mispronounces words (intuited from spelling) is often laughed at. One further problem that well spoken English is a sign of a good education, and it is often used to judge social status. In a professional job, correct speech helps one a lot. On the flip side you hear tradesman avoid using "correct" speech because they don't want to associate themselves with "suits" (or it is a group identity thing: I am not a ethanographer!). The result of the above is that most people find it rude to have their speech or spelling corrected because of the implicit "I am better than you". Which means it is difficult to find anyone that will correct your mistakes because most people are polite. The exception is children: they love to correct adults and they often don't mind repeatably correcting pronunciation errors. Note I think that a child that speaks English learns "rules" for sounding words primely to help identify the spelling of words they already know how to say. A learner may guess at a spelling, but the spelling is then corrected by the teacher.
  - irq11 9y ago
    You are really overgeneralizing your personal experience. I’m a native English speaker too, and I guess pronunciations all the time. I’d argue that it’s part of the skill of English fluency. Stop discouraging people by telling them that your way is the only way.
  - stordoff 9y ago
    > Speakers with English as a mother tongue on seeing an unfamiliar word will ask how to pronounce it rather than making educated guesses at how to say it because any rule is often broken, and we learn not to trust our guesses. In fact someone who is well read but mispronounces words (intuited from spelling) is often laughed at. I disagree - I guess at pronunciations frequently (as a native speaker), and it is a useful skill to be able to do so. For a learner, it may be _helpful_ to ask how to pronounce (especially to avoid reinforcing misconceptions), but I don't think it's a universal rule of English that people ask how to pronounce words. I also find that many of the mispronunciations are regional variations or misconceptions (e.g. hearing Worchester as "War-chester" instead of "Wus-ter", or Yorkshire as "York-shy-er" instead of "York-sha"), so even if you ask, you might not learn the "true"/regionally appropriate pronunciation. I've also never come across the later -- I know plenty of well-read people (native and non-native) who have made mistakes in pronunciation (such as a friend who read "parser" as "pa-ray-ser"; native speaker) and they are simply corrected, not laughed at.
  - FabHK 8y ago
    Granted, it's easy to mispronounce an English word from the spelling alone (try to read aloud the poem "The Chaos" [links below], infamous among advanced English learners). However, the sound/spelling correspondence is good enough, as I said, and certainly better than in Chinese. Thus, I stand by my position that premature concentration on reading/writing is a bigger problem for Chinese learner than for English learners. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Ruize-rijmen/De_Chaos https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Ruize-rijmen/De_Chaos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chaos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chaos https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~clamen/misc/humour/TheChaos.html https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~clamen/misc/humour/TheChaos.html
robocat 9y ago
> Limit reading and limit learning grammar/spelling? From my comment: "Limit reading and limit learning grammar/spelling until after you have a good grasp of the language." You have misquoted me.

Sorry but I disagree. Limit reading and limit learning grammar/spelling?

by el_cid 9y ago

Sorry but I disagree. Limit reading and limit learning grammar/spelling?

This is absolutely right. One of the biggest drawbacks of reading to learn a language is that it increases your accent simply because you will start to pronounce the words the way you learned to read in your native language. Also, it's harder to memorize information when you read it. Mimicking and speaking is the fastest way to fluency. It turns out that embarrassment or the feeling that you need to improve will help you learn.

FabHK 9y ago

That might be more apropos for learning Chinese (where premature focus on reading/writing can distract from actually learning the (spoken) language). I think in learning English, reading will help, because the sound/spelling correspondence is sufficient (even though English arguably has the worst orthography after the logographic ones).

robocat 9y ago
> because the sound/spelling correspondence is sufficient I strongly disagree. Firstly on listening to tourists, some of the worst pronunciation mistakes I hear are because they have learnt the spelling: you can hear mistakes that can only occur if you know the spelling (or are due to use a "general" voicing rule). This shows up clearly when you are in another country and you tell someone a word for something and they repeat it back to you perfectly. However they often then ask for the spelling, and after you tell them the spelling, their pronunciation changes to something incorrect. Ouch. Speakers with English as a mother tongue on seeing an unfamiliar word will ask how to pronounce it rather than making educated guesses at how to say it because any rule is often broken, and we learn not to trust our guesses. In fact someone who is well read but mispronounces words (intuited from spelling) is often laughed at. One further problem that well spoken English is a sign of a good education, and it is often used to judge social status. In a professional job, correct speech helps one a lot. On the flip side you hear tradesman avoid using "correct" speech because they don't want to associate themselves with "suits" (or it is a group identity thing: I am not a ethanographer!). The result of the above is that most people find it rude to have their speech or spelling corrected because of the implicit "I am better than you". Which means it is difficult to find anyone that will correct your mistakes because most people are polite. The exception is children: they love to correct adults and they often don't mind repeatably correcting pronunciation errors. Note I think that a child that speaks English learns "rules" for sounding words primely to help identify the spelling of words they already know how to say. A learner may guess at a spelling, but the spelling is then corrected by the teacher.
- irq11 9y ago
  You are really overgeneralizing your personal experience. I’m a native English speaker too, and I guess pronunciations all the time. I’d argue that it’s part of the skill of English fluency. Stop discouraging people by telling them that your way is the only way.
- stordoff 9y ago
  > Speakers with English as a mother tongue on seeing an unfamiliar word will ask how to pronounce it rather than making educated guesses at how to say it because any rule is often broken, and we learn not to trust our guesses. In fact someone who is well read but mispronounces words (intuited from spelling) is often laughed at. I disagree - I guess at pronunciations frequently (as a native speaker), and it is a useful skill to be able to do so. For a learner, it may be _helpful_ to ask how to pronounce (especially to avoid reinforcing misconceptions), but I don't think it's a universal rule of English that people ask how to pronounce words. I also find that many of the mispronunciations are regional variations or misconceptions (e.g. hearing Worchester as "War-chester" instead of "Wus-ter", or Yorkshire as "York-shy-er" instead of "York-sha"), so even if you ask, you might not learn the "true"/regionally appropriate pronunciation. I've also never come across the later -- I know plenty of well-read people (native and non-native) who have made mistakes in pronunciation (such as a friend who read "parser" as "pa-ray-ser"; native speaker) and they are simply corrected, not laughed at.
- FabHK 8y ago
  Granted, it's easy to mispronounce an English word from the spelling alone (try to read aloud the poem "The Chaos" [links below], infamous among advanced English learners). However, the sound/spelling correspondence is good enough, as I said, and certainly better than in Chinese. Thus, I stand by my position that premature concentration on reading/writing is a bigger problem for Chinese learner than for English learners. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Ruize-rijmen/De_Chaos https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Ruize-rijmen/De_Chaos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chaos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chaos https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~clamen/misc/humour/TheChaos.html https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~clamen/misc/humour/TheChaos.html

robocat 9y ago

> Limit reading and limit learning grammar/spelling? From my comment: "Limit reading and limit learning grammar/spelling until after you have a good grasp of the language." You have misquoted me.