Simple alphabet, a good thing ??!!

Xatufan   Saturday, November 13, 2004, 21:26 GMT
Tom and Michal say that English is easy to learn because it doesn't have any weird lette like é. I think it is exactly the opposite. As English doesn't have any special letter or accent, you don't how to pronounce a letter.

By the way, why doesn't Michal appear in this forum. Is he dead?

Confiésalo, Tom, creo que ya todos pensamos (o incluso sabemos) que SuperMemo les paga. Y no puedo creer que hayan denigrado a ETeacher, eso es terrible. Sorry por insultarlos, pero tengo un deber de Anna Frank larguísimo y estoy muy enojado.
Easterner   Saturday, November 13, 2004, 21:57 GMT
>>As English doesn't have any special letter or accent, you don't how to pronounce a letter.<<

As I see it, this has historical reasons. The first scribes who were to work out an orthography for English had to make use of the original Latin script which had no accents, because it was perfectly sufficient to represent the sounds of Latin. Actually it was largely sufficient to represent the sounds of Old English (with extra characters like thorn and ash added) and even of Middle English as well, but no longer for the new sounds of Modern English. On the other hand, you learn and prononce words, not letters, so I think learning English spelling in no more difficult than for languages with a phonemic spelling, because you learn the spelling along with the word, it does not take any extra effort. This is why I think any complaint about the "illogical" English spelling is without any justification, because even if the spelling is not very "regular", it doesn't make learning the language a whit more difficult.
Easterner   Sunday, November 14, 2004, 10:35 GMT
Sorry, "pronounced" and "is no more".
Daddy   Sunday, November 14, 2004, 15:25 GMT
Thorn, eth and ash belong in our alphabet.
Paul   Monday, November 15, 2004, 02:03 GMT
I beg to differ.
Although you may be factually correct that an illogical alphabet doesn't make learning the Language more difficult.
The reason you are right is that You have the cart before the horse.
Most people who successfully learnt a Language (i.e. Native speaker, Bilinguals) learn the Language first as a child and then go to school to learn literacy. The learn to recognise the written form of the spoken word which they already know.

It is incredibly more difficult to learn a language in the written form and then re-engineer it in your mind into some approximation of a correct pronunciation that you can reliably recognize and repeat back. If the Alphabet is not Phonemic, you may be literate, but never able to carry on a conversation. You will have better luck starting over from scratch.

Regards, Paul V.

P.S. Take a look at www.shawalphabet.com and you will see what a real phonemic English Alphabet would look like. There are a number of good Shavian Alphabet sites on the internet.
Mxsmanic   Monday, November 15, 2004, 04:03 GMT
Students who waste time complaining about a language never become fluent in the language. If's hard to see which is cause and which is effect sometimes, though.
Sanja   Tuesday, November 16, 2004, 17:33 GMT
I agree with Easterner that English spelling is not harder to learn than any language with the phonetic spelling, because we non-native speakers learn spelling and pronunciation at the same time. Native speakers learn to speak before learning to read and write, but that still shouldn't be an obstacle if they use written language often enough, because they should learn the correct spelling from experience. I think that most of them just don't pay attention.
Paul   Monday, November 22, 2004, 16:31 GMT
You have to have an ear for phonetic spelling.
Most people just have a stronger visual memory.

If you have trouble learning spelling visually, then we give our kids, instruction in Phonics and Phonetics.

People learn in different ways.
Sanja   Monday, November 22, 2004, 17:01 GMT
I think I use a combination of visual memory and listening when I learn how to spell something. Actually when I see a new English word, I just remember it by pronouncing it the way it would be pronounced in my native language which is 100% phonetic, so basically I can't be a bad speller. LOL :) It helps a lot, but of course I learn the correct pronunciation too as well as possible.
Steve K   Monday, November 22, 2004, 17:08 GMT
Mxsmanic Monday, November 15, 2004, 04:03 GMT
Students who waste time complaining about a language never become fluent in the language. If's hard to see which is cause and which is effect sometimes, though.

As usual I agree with Mxsmanic. I find that all the time. People complain about the language and complain when they get poor marks in writing. The feel proudest about their knowledge of grammar rather than their ability to use words correctly.

Learn words they way they are spelled and the way they are used, in context, from reading and listening. If you do not resist the language you will improve, more or less in proportion to the time you spend.