5 ms·

Agreed. When you don't know the language, knowing the alphabet is pretty useless. In Israel I recall being able to read signs.. and have no idea what I was actu

Agreed. When you don't know the language, knowing the alphabet is pretty useless. In Israel I recall being able to read signs.. and have no idea what I was actually reading. On the other hand you do have languages like Chinese where learning the written language actually is the majority of the work. Spoken Chinese is probably one of the easier languages out there for a person coming from a random language.

evmar 15y ago
While visiting Israel I picked up the alphabet from the street signs and found it useful for identifying which sherut went to Jerusalem (their signs were in Hebrew only).
- darklajid 15y ago
  That's interesting. I consider the street signs evil. Ignoring streets for which even the Israelis I know don't know how to pronounce the name (for example אבן גברויל which GMaps lists as Ibn Gabriol but ends up as something different, whenever you talk to anyone). Road signs in general wildy vary. The name 'Weizmann' (as in [1]) is generally butchered in latin script. The best form I found so far was in Acre and spelled 'Wiseman'. Often the signs just contain a transcript of the Hebrew word. I saw a couple of signs that spell out 'Nemal', which isn't particularly helpful unless you know that this is the Hebrew word for the port. Bottom line: The road signs here confuse the hell out of me. I'm amazed that they helped you learn the alphabet somehow. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaim_Weizmann https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaim_Weizmann
DanBC 15y ago
> When you don't know the language, knowing the alphabet is pretty useless. Knowing the Japanese hiragana and katakana means you can work out some menus in Japanese games - "startu"; "opshun"; etc. (This is not romaji, because they're using English words and a Japanese alphabet. So what's that called?)
- throwaway54-762 15y ago
  "Transliteration"
- pbhjpbhj 15y ago
  cf http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanization#Japanese http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanization#Japanese
- Natsu 15y ago
  Yeah, it's more useful than you might expect.
- alinajaf 15y ago
  Careful with gairaigo. Most of the time it doesn't mean what you think it means. Ever seen an ad for a mansion? In Japanese that refers to a type of apartment. I challenge anyone who has no prior knowledge to guess what 'Delivery Health' means.
  - shard 15y ago
    Transliterated English is actually very useful for learning Korean, even if the meaning is a little twisted sometimes. Fully 25% of my Korean knowledge is transliterated English. It helps that Korea is probably the country with the highest English-fever in Asia.
    - bane 15y ago
      It also helps with being able to read menus and direction signs and such as the transliteration into English can be spotty.
  - w1ntermute 15y ago
    > I challenge anyone who has no prior knowledge to guess what 'Delivery Health' means. デリヘルの意味が分からないはずなのに・・・ ಠ_ಠ
    - alinajaf 15y ago
kaptain 15y ago
> On the other hand you do have languages like Chinese where learning the written language actually is the majority of the work. Spoken Chinese is probably one of the easier languages out there for a person coming from a random language. As a student that is currently learning Chinese, the first sentence is true, from a Chinese perspective. The written language is extremely important for Chinese nationals; I've heard of all sorts of arguments from expats at my school, saying stuff like: "I just want to learn how to say X; when am I going to write it!?" Practically speaking, reading is much easier than writing (I can read way more than I can write) and once you hit a particular threshold of characters, you can read 90% of the text around you. As for the second sentence, for a person with no background in tonal languages, learning the tones in Mandarin is extremely challenging. I assuming that the parent is a native English speaker. According to the Foreign Service Institute, Mandarin and Cantonese (you didn't specify what kind of Chinese) are among the hardest languages to learn for a native English speaker.[0] I think Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese) is difficult. And this is coming from a native English speaker with a background in Cantonese (my parents are from Hong Kong). [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_difficult_language_to_learn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_difficult_language_to_lea...
- StavrosK 15y ago
  I will second this. A friend was trying to teach me the four different tones of the sh syllable, I had no clue what the hell was going on, they all sounded exactly the same. I'm not even a native English speaker, I'm Greek, which also isn't tonal.
  - codyrobbins 15y ago
    Interestingly enough, ancient Greek [1] did happen to be tonal even though modern Greek is not. More specifically, it had had pitch accent [2] which is somewhat different than fully tonal languages like Chinese but more involved than languages like English which have stress accent. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polytonic_Greek http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polytonic_Greek [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitch_accent http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitch_accent
seanmcdirmid 15y ago
Spoken Chinese is much easier to learn than Japanese or French, in my experience. Coming from English, I find that the grammar isn't that difficult while word order is very relaxed. Since most native speakers have an accent or dialect anyways, there is no pressure to speak in a standard way (I find I'm more understandable when I talk as casually and loosely as possible). I gave up on written Chinese a while ago. I can text well enough and do some simple IM conversations, basically my writing mirrors my oral skills fairly closely. But I can't read a sign, a notice, a newspaper, its almost another language and I'm not so interested in putting the effort in.
salvadors 15y ago
I learned Cyrillic when I spent some time in Macedonia. Being able to read the alphabet was actually very useful, even without any further language knowledge. Being able to read street names, shop names, destinations on buses, etc all made the city much more accessible than without that. Most languages also have a large number of words that an English speaker will recognise — and even more if they've ever learned any other language. Being able to transliterate at least lets you have a good chance of spotting some things you'll know. This is even more so in places where there'll be a large number of imported words, such as many restaurants, cafés, etc. It really helps in a coffee shop to be able to get as far as choosing between 'Espreso', 'Kapuchino', 'Nas so sladoled', 'Makiyato malo', 'Makiyato golemo', 'Fredo', 'Frape', 'Ladno chokoladno mleko', 'Klasic crno chokolado', 'Klasic belo chokolado', or 'Meksikansko chokolado', rather than a board full of gibberish.
- cema 15y ago
  You mean Эспрессо, Капучино and so on. :-)
  - salvadors 15y ago
    Well, my point was that simply learning the alphabet allows you to get as far as being able to turn that into Espresso, Kapuchino, etc which is hugely useful, even without knowing the language itself.

evmar 15y ago

While visiting Israel I picked up the alphabet from the street signs and found it useful for identifying which sherut went to Jerusalem (their signs were in Hebrew only).

darklajid 15y ago
That's interesting. I consider the street signs evil. Ignoring streets for which even the Israelis I know don't know how to pronounce the name (for example אבן גברויל which GMaps lists as Ibn Gabriol but ends up as something different, whenever you talk to anyone). Road signs in general wildy vary. The name 'Weizmann' (as in [1]) is generally butchered in latin script. The best form I found so far was in Acre and spelled 'Wiseman'. Often the signs just contain a transcript of the Hebrew word. I saw a couple of signs that spell out 'Nemal', which isn't particularly helpful unless you know that this is the Hebrew word for the port. Bottom line: The road signs here confuse the hell out of me. I'm amazed that they helped you learn the alphabet somehow. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaim_Weizmann https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaim_Weizmann

DanBC 15y ago

> When you don't know the language, knowing the alphabet is pretty useless. Knowing the Japanese hiragana and katakana means you can work out some menus in Japanese games - "startu"; "opshun"; etc. (This is not romaji, because they're using English words and a Japanese alphabet. So what's that called?)

throwaway54-762 15y ago
"Transliteration"
pbhjpbhj 15y ago
cf http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanization#Japanese http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanization#Japanese
Natsu 15y ago
Yeah, it's more useful than you might expect.
alinajaf 15y ago
Careful with gairaigo. Most of the time it doesn't mean what you think it means. Ever seen an ad for a mansion? In Japanese that refers to a type of apartment. I challenge anyone who has no prior knowledge to guess what 'Delivery Health' means.
- shard 15y ago
  Transliterated English is actually very useful for learning Korean, even if the meaning is a little twisted sometimes. Fully 25% of my Korean knowledge is transliterated English. It helps that Korea is probably the country with the highest English-fever in Asia.
  - bane 15y ago
    It also helps with being able to read menus and direction signs and such as the transliteration into English can be spotty.
- w1ntermute 15y ago
  > I challenge anyone who has no prior knowledge to guess what 'Delivery Health' means. デリヘルの意味が分からないはずなのに・・・ ಠ_ಠ
  - alinajaf 15y ago

kaptain 15y ago

> On the other hand you do have languages like Chinese where learning the written language actually is the majority of the work. Spoken Chinese is probably one of the easier languages out there for a person coming from a random language. As a student that is currently learning Chinese, the first sentence is true, from a Chinese perspective. The written language is extremely important for Chinese nationals; I've heard of all sorts of arguments from expats at my school, saying stuff like: "I just want to learn how to say X; when am I going to write it!?" Practically speaking, reading is much easier than writing (I can read way more than I can write) and once you hit a particular threshold of characters, you can read 90% of the text around you. As for the second sentence, for a person with no background in tonal languages, learning the tones in Mandarin is extremely challenging. I assuming that the parent is a native English speaker. According to the Foreign Service Institute, Mandarin and Cantonese (you didn't specify what kind of Chinese) are among the hardest languages to learn for a native English speaker.[0] I think Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese) is difficult. And this is coming from a native English speaker with a background in Cantonese (my parents are from Hong Kong). [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_difficult_language_to_learn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_difficult_language_to_lea...

StavrosK 15y ago
I will second this. A friend was trying to teach me the four different tones of the sh syllable, I had no clue what the hell was going on, they all sounded exactly the same. I'm not even a native English speaker, I'm Greek, which also isn't tonal.
- codyrobbins 15y ago
  Interestingly enough, ancient Greek [1] did happen to be tonal even though modern Greek is not. More specifically, it had had pitch accent [2] which is somewhat different than fully tonal languages like Chinese but more involved than languages like English which have stress accent. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polytonic_Greek http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polytonic_Greek [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitch_accent http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitch_accent

seanmcdirmid 15y ago

Spoken Chinese is much easier to learn than Japanese or French, in my experience. Coming from English, I find that the grammar isn't that difficult while word order is very relaxed. Since most native speakers have an accent or dialect anyways, there is no pressure to speak in a standard way (I find I'm more understandable when I talk as casually and loosely as possible). I gave up on written Chinese a while ago. I can text well enough and do some simple IM conversations, basically my writing mirrors my oral skills fairly closely. But I can't read a sign, a notice, a newspaper, its almost another language and I'm not so interested in putting the effort in.

salvadors 15y ago

I learned Cyrillic when I spent some time in Macedonia. Being able to read the alphabet was actually very useful, even without any further language knowledge. Being able to read street names, shop names, destinations on buses, etc all made the city much more accessible than without that. Most languages also have a large number of words that an English speaker will recognise — and even more if they've ever learned any other language. Being able to transliterate at least lets you have a good chance of spotting some things you'll know. This is even more so in places where there'll be a large number of imported words, such as many restaurants, cafés, etc. It really helps in a coffee shop to be able to get as far as choosing between 'Espreso', 'Kapuchino', 'Nas so sladoled', 'Makiyato malo', 'Makiyato golemo', 'Fredo', 'Frape', 'Ladno chokoladno mleko', 'Klasic crno chokolado', 'Klasic belo chokolado', or 'Meksikansko chokolado', rather than a board full of gibberish.

cema 15y ago
You mean Эспрессо, Капучино and so on. :-)
- salvadors 15y ago
  Well, my point was that simply learning the alphabet allows you to get as far as being able to turn that into Espresso, Kapuchino, etc which is hugely useful, even without knowing the language itself.