Re: Optimum number of symbols

En réponse à Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...>:

>
> First off, you can start off by learning only the basic characters.
> To
> teach a child to read, you must first get the child to be able to
> understand how to connect abstractions like /k/ and /a/ to make a
> pronounceable syllable /ka/.  You do not need to do this with a
> syllabry, you already have /ka/ right there.  After they get the basic
> concept of reading, then you can go into the abstract diacritics.  For
> that matter, I'm not sure if you'd even need to teach the diacritics
> as
> characters.  Does anyone know if Japanese children learn the
> double-dots
> as an abstract diacritic, or do they simply learn _ka_ and _ga_ as if
> they were separate characters, the way English-speaking children
> aren't
> actually taught the relationship between s-sh and t-th?
>
I know French children used to learn to read and write using a "syllabaire",
i.e. words were cut in syllables, and each syllable was learnt separately. Only
at a latter stage children were taught to split the syllables into letters.
Something like 25 years ago the French Education Nationale decided to change
the learning method from the "syllabaire" to the "méthode globale" where
children were taught directly the letters separately, and the words without
breaking them into syllables. The level of literacy (i.e. the ability to read
and write without trouble) dropped dramatically in the whole country at once. I
can still see it with people of my level of education (I'm a Ph.D. student) who
have trouble reading a simple letter and cannot write without making one
spelling mistake every two words, even with the most simple words (That after
15 years of education you can still make spelling mistakes in words so common
and seen everywhere and everyday like "beurre": butter eludes me completely!! I
was in charge of the students' newspaper, so I have quite an experience in
that :)) ), while my mother who stopped school when she was 12 can read and
write without any problem, and hardly ever makes spelling mistakes.
Unfortunately the change in teaching method was an ideologic change, and the
ones who did it are still in charge of the Education Nationale, and never
admitted their mistake. So nowadays we're still at the "méthode globale", which
requires in my experience more than two years to learn (with very bad results)
what children got with the "syllabaire" within 6 months. I myself never had
trouble with the "méthode globale", but that's only because I already could
read before arriving in CP (the French equivalent of first grade).

So you can imagine how heartedly I agree with the statement that syllabaries
are easier to learn than alphabets :)) .

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

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