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It also depends on your learning style when it comes to languages. For someone like me, who learns languages more aurally (listening and speaking) than visually

It also depends on your learning style when it comes to languages. For someone like me, who learns languages more aurally (listening and speaking) than visually (reading and writing), writing systems aren’t that hard to learn but they’re hard to master in terms of reading at normal speed. With any text in a Latin alphabet, in any language, show me the phonology of the language and I can read it aloud at normal speed with decent pronunciation within a few hours. If it’s in a different writing system, it’s going to take me days or longer to get up to even a moderate reading speed—and a lot of that would be cheating by just memorising the text and using the writing as a cue.

ithkuil 8y ago
I noticed that it's very hard for people to "remap" the sound of the letter to match phonology rules of a target language. I.e. the familiarity of the alphabet while helping a bit it also works against "listening" and "getting" the actual sounds. I remember an Irish guy who was speaking pretty fluent Italian mispronouncing the word "firma" making it sound like English "firm" instead of "feerma", and I'm pretty sure that wouldn't happen if he had to learn a new alphabet. As part of learning the new alphabet he would match that gliphy with the "ee" sound with less chances of associating it with the English sounds just because of similar spelling.
- evincarofautumn 8y ago
  Yeah, that is a common trap. When I was taking language classes in college, I noticed that some people were definitely reading text as though it were just “funny English”. However, the problem still happened (albeit less often) with different writing systems, including Russian, so I think the root of the problem was that they hadn’t practiced the skill of listening to sounds and reproducing them—instead, they made the mistake of mapping them onto the closest sound in their native language. Fortunately that was a minority—maybe 5–10% of students had that difficulty and couldn’t grow out of it. Part of the issue is also that people seem to hold back and don’t try to really imitate the accent of a language, which they may not get is really an essential part of the pronunciation. You’ve got to put on your best “French accent” if you want to properly speak French! Speaking of “closest sound in your native language”, my Polish coworkers and I a couple of jobs ago had a lot of fun one day when I transcribed their English speech using Polish spelling—lo and behold, it gave quite an accurate representation of their accents. (E.g., “It would be funny” = “it łód bi fany”.)
simias 8y ago
I see your point but it's not that clear cut in my experience because even if two languages share the same alphabet the way it maps to pronunciation can vary wildly. If you take random made up words like "tothon", "ylho", "sturcti" or "boqurkït" and ask English, German, French and Portuguese people to pronounce them as words in their native language you'll get wildly different results. So in a way you have to learn to override your native language and re-learn to read when you're switching to a foreign tongue, even if it uses the same alphabet. Latin alphabet might give you the illusion that you can read a text aloud but it's really just that, an illusion. Ask a French speaker with no knowledge of English to read this comment aloud "phonetically" and see if you can even recognize the words. It's even conceivable that using a different alphabet actually helps you getting the pronunciation right since you might be less tempted to read it in English.
- DonaldFisk 8y ago
  > Ask a French speaker with no knowledge of English to read this comment aloud "phonetically" and see if you can even recognize the words. As a practical joke, I once asked a French speaker (who spoke English well) to read this aloud: Un petit d'un petit S'étonne aux Halles Un petit d'un petit Ah! degrés te fallent Indolent qui ne sort cesse Indolent qui ne se mène Qu'importe un petit Tout gai de Reguennes. He was the only person in the room who didn't understand what he was saying.
  - simias 8y ago
    That's pretty great. I don't get the "indolent" part though, what is is supposed to be? Please answer quickly as my coworkers are starting to look at me weirdly as I repeat "indolent qui ne sort cesse" aloud again and again.
    - DonaldFisk 8y ago
      Indolent qui ne sort cesse indolent = and all 'e qui ne s- = king's -ort cesse = 'orses
  - 8y ago

ithkuil 8y ago

I noticed that it's very hard for people to "remap" the sound of the letter to match phonology rules of a target language. I.e. the familiarity of the alphabet while helping a bit it also works against "listening" and "getting" the actual sounds. I remember an Irish guy who was speaking pretty fluent Italian mispronouncing the word "firma" making it sound like English "firm" instead of "feerma", and I'm pretty sure that wouldn't happen if he had to learn a new alphabet. As part of learning the new alphabet he would match that gliphy with the "ee" sound with less chances of associating it with the English sounds just because of similar spelling.

evincarofautumn 8y ago
Yeah, that is a common trap. When I was taking language classes in college, I noticed that some people were definitely reading text as though it were just “funny English”. However, the problem still happened (albeit less often) with different writing systems, including Russian, so I think the root of the problem was that they hadn’t practiced the skill of listening to sounds and reproducing them—instead, they made the mistake of mapping them onto the closest sound in their native language. Fortunately that was a minority—maybe 5–10% of students had that difficulty and couldn’t grow out of it. Part of the issue is also that people seem to hold back and don’t try to really imitate the accent of a language, which they may not get is really an essential part of the pronunciation. You’ve got to put on your best “French accent” if you want to properly speak French! Speaking of “closest sound in your native language”, my Polish coworkers and I a couple of jobs ago had a lot of fun one day when I transcribed their English speech using Polish spelling—lo and behold, it gave quite an accurate representation of their accents. (E.g., “It would be funny” = “it łód bi fany”.)

simias 8y ago

I see your point but it's not that clear cut in my experience because even if two languages share the same alphabet the way it maps to pronunciation can vary wildly. If you take random made up words like "tothon", "ylho", "sturcti" or "boqurkït" and ask English, German, French and Portuguese people to pronounce them as words in their native language you'll get wildly different results. So in a way you have to learn to override your native language and re-learn to read when you're switching to a foreign tongue, even if it uses the same alphabet. Latin alphabet might give you the illusion that you can read a text aloud but it's really just that, an illusion. Ask a French speaker with no knowledge of English to read this comment aloud "phonetically" and see if you can even recognize the words. It's even conceivable that using a different alphabet actually helps you getting the pronunciation right since you might be less tempted to read it in English.

DonaldFisk 8y ago
> Ask a French speaker with no knowledge of English to read this comment aloud "phonetically" and see if you can even recognize the words. As a practical joke, I once asked a French speaker (who spoke English well) to read this aloud: Un petit d'un petit S'étonne aux Halles Un petit d'un petit Ah! degrés te fallent Indolent qui ne sort cesse Indolent qui ne se mène Qu'importe un petit Tout gai de Reguennes. He was the only person in the room who didn't understand what he was saying.
- simias 8y ago
  That's pretty great. I don't get the "indolent" part though, what is is supposed to be? Please answer quickly as my coworkers are starting to look at me weirdly as I repeat "indolent qui ne sort cesse" aloud again and again.
  - DonaldFisk 8y ago
    Indolent qui ne sort cesse indolent = and all 'e qui ne s- = king's -ort cesse = 'orses
- 8y ago