Is it hard for native speakers of languages that use 漢字 to learn ABC as it's different to their own?

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨SilentSparrow@multiverse.soulism.net⁩ to ⁨[deleted]⁩

I see the inverse of this, with native speakers of languages that use ABC (alphabet) to learn a language that’s logographic such as Japanese & Mandarin (since both have 漢字) as a single character is a word (difficult concept for them to grasp at first). However, even if let’s say a Mandarin speaker with zero exposure to English leans ABC for the first time, would the grammar be hard even if they’ve managed to master the alphabet?

There are sounds that don’t exist in both JP & ZH like words that start or end with “TH” (i.e. Thorough, Moth) as they don’t have that in their phonology. Don’t even mention the misleading pronunciations of certain words in ENG based on spelling that stump them like “Colonel” (大佐・上校) since most speakers of ENG say that as “Kernel”. Even if “alphabet” based languages are easy, the grammar can be hard for a non-native to learn.

As in, what would it be like for a Japanese & Mandarin speaker learning a Euro language (all alphabetical based) from 漢字 > ABC or Cyrillic as it’s alien to their own plus huge differences in vocab with zero similarity (like this: “Salida” from ES is equivalent to 出口 in JP & ZH) including common things most Euro languages have: gender cases (no such thing on JP & ZH), definite and indefinite articles for example to list a few.

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TootSweet@lemmy.world ⁨30⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
When I was last seriously studying Japanese, I remember finding a YouTube video of a Japanese person teaching English. And I remember one point he made (I understood enough Japanese to follow a certain amount of what he said) was that the name of a given letter in the English alphabet was not the same as the sound it makes.

(In case anyone reading this doesn’t know, Japanese has a couple of phonetic alphabets. (Honestly, hiragana and katakana are probably more “phonetic” than English letters in a way.) But for those characters, there’s no distinction between the character’s name and the sound it makes. For instance, the sound the hiragana character “す” makes is similar to the English name “Sue”, and the name of that character is exactly the same. There’s no need for any distinction between the name of a hiragana/katakana character and the sound it makes in Japanese.)

It just wasn’t something that had occurred to me that some learners of English would have to be explicitly taught the distinction between the name of a letter and the sound it made, so it was interesting to hear.

I really need to get back into studying Japanese.

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farmgineer@nord.pub ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
I’ve met plenty of Japanese who speak fantastic English. Everyone had to study it from Jr. High here and, starting a couple of years ago, starting in elementary school. Pronunciation is very hit or miss since many of the teachers in Japan can’t even hear the difference between l/r and the like sometimes and ALT (assistant language teachers, typically native speakers of English) are rarely allowed to drive things and push more from what I read.

Many Japanese who went to uni had to pass an English test section to do so from what I understand. You can look up sample questions on the web. As such, many can read English to a certain degree, but output and listening are often issues.

My wife hated English class and never paid much attention. She’s working her way through a textbook now and she finds various aspects difficult (looking at you do as in do you like potatoes – WTF is the do doing there? Why not like you potatoes?!) The alphabet portion, though, is not an issue in itself. Pronunciation requires a lot of work but I think that’s because English orthography sucks. However, if you grow up where a whole range of sounds just map to one in your language (l/r problem again), you don’t learn to differentiate between the various points in that range and can’t hear that difference without a lot of work. Definitely so for sounds that don’t exist at all. Many people going into Japanese have trouble differentiating germinate consonants and tsu vs su.

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- TootSweet@lemmy.world ⁨44⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
  
  Why not like you potatoes?!
  
  Actually… that’s a really good question. 🤔
  
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  - adespoton@lemmy.ca ⁨35⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
    The answer is: English has a Germanic grammar, not a Latin grammar.
    
    This can be confusing since we have so much Latin syntax layered on top of that.
    
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