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Is it hard for native speakers of languages that use 漢字 to learn ABC as it's different to their own? (multiverse.soulism.net)

submitted 1 week ago by SilentSparrow@multiverse.soulism.net to c/nostupidquestions@lemmy.world

14 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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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[–] Infrapink@thebrainbin.org 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Writing system has nothing to do with grammar, and languages are not "based on" writing systems. Languages are systems of sounds which encode meaning. Writing systems are met visual representations of those sounds

For example, Persian is written with the same alphabet as Arabic, but its grammar is more similar to that of Hindi, which is written with an entirely different system. Arabic, meanwhile, is more closely related to Hebrew, which has yet another writing system.

Languages can be written with multiple systems, such as Hindustani, Mongolian, Romanian, and K'iche. Languages have switched from one writing system to another, such as Persian, Turkish, and Scandinavian. Notably, Korean and Vietnamese both switched from Chinese characters to alphabets. Vietnamese uses the same writing system as French, but their grammars and sounds are very different.

[–] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 1 points 1 week ago

Grammar is probably the wrong word, but it seems like the question is about word identification, which relates to how spoken and written language interacts.

For instance, a local dialect may choose a different set of sounds for a word but maintain the same logogram as other dialects, so there is greater mutual intelligibly across the written language over the spoken language. In contrast, an alphabet written language encodes the sounds into the written text, so the written word looks different across different dialects reflecting the spoken language.