How common is this? (decoding difficulties in learning foreign languages that use different alphabets)

[forty-two]

This being difficulty in learning to read foreign languages that use a different alphabet, where the different alphabet itself is a the stumbling block.

 

I've been trying to learn Greek for awhile, and while I was able to learn the letters and the associated sounds in a few days, the transition to actually *using* that knowledge to read actual Greek words and sentences has been a frustrating years-long process that is still ongoing. So I've been stuck at lesson 2 in any number of beginning Greek texts for a mind-bogglingly long time, because the actual decoding process is so taxing - individual words are doable but tiring, but sentences are too much - just decoding takes all my brain, with none left over for comprehension.

 

It actually sounds a lot like the dyslexic experience, which is interesting because phonological processing difficulties (and difficulties learning foreign languages) runs in my family. In fact, as I've been investigating my dds' difficulties learning to read in English, I've realized they parallel my difficulty learning to decode Greek. (For example, a few years ago, as I was working to help dd8 learn to blend, I realized that *I* didn't know how to blend (I'd learned to read by straight whole word); so there I was, at age 30, learning a beginning reading skill *very* painfully - gave me a lot of empathy for dd6's trouble - blending is *hard* and mindnumbingly tiring.) I've been doing LiPS with my girls (both failed the Barton pre-screening), and honestly I think *I* need it, too.

 

Anyway, though it is true I've not put in the intensive sort of practice in learning to decode Greek that I've done with the girls in learning to decode English (though over the years I *have* put in dozens of hours, maybe hundreds, and I certainly have had the letters down and the letter-sound correlation down for *years*, and that's not remotely been enough) - is that really *necessary* for most people?

 

In discussions on learning Greek there's so many who just spend a day or two memorizing the new alphabet and then off they go - and that seems to be the general default expectation. (And I've done one of the more in-depth learn-to-decode-Greek programs, and all the Greek syllables were both hard and mindnumbing and not particularly effective compared to the misery involved (so I can sympathize with dd8's absolute *loathing* of Webster's Speller and syllables). I've dabbled with "writing English words using the Greek alphabet", but not as intensely as I'm doing the equivalent "write English words with the Dekodiphukan sound pictures" with the kids.)

 

(Although I did the very same in Latin when I learned it - learned the sound-letter correspondences in a day and off I went (more or less). And that coupled with the fact that I learned dd8 still couldn't blend when she tried to read English words (aka words in her oral vocabulary) that were written in the Dekodiphukan sound pictures (a new "alphabet", though she know all the picture-sound correspondences) is why I'm thinking there's something about the new *alphabet* that brings the underlying phonological processing deficits to light when they weren't an (obvious) issue in reading the Latin alphabet. Possibly because of all the exposure to the Latin alphabet that one gets?)

 

And with my *entire* family (my mom and dad, my sister and me, and my oldest two kids, with ds3 having all the same red flags) having the same sorts of difficulties, I'm having an extremely hard time getting perspective on how common this actually *is*. Although the introduction to LiPS said that approximately one-third of prospective LiPS teachers did not have themselves have the necessary phonological processing skills - that they needed to in effect *do* LiPS (to some extent) in order to *teach* LiPS. One-third - that's quite a lot, really. But I don't seem to hear about it - is that because people with these issues tend to just give up and move to another language? Or is it not that common, really?

[Tsuga]

I don't know how common it is because I haven't read any studies on it.

 

" blending is *hard* and mindnumbingly tiring."

 

Hm. Not for me. It took me way more than a few days to get fluent enough to really read (not just decode or sound out) languages that use a different alphabet, but it did click and though I have to read long books aloud--like, Dostoyevsky, Lermontov--no, I do not need to do that and did not need to do that for primer-level sentences.

 

So I do think that there is a visual processing or other issue there that you've identified.

 

That said, I don't know if you read aloud or not, but could that work? I learned by reading aloud. Best of luck to you. Greek is beautiful but very hard no matter what anybody says. :)

[ElizabethB]

Some people take longer than others to be automatic. Interestingly, I read a study somewhere that said that ability to pronounce the letters of a foreign language was the thing most highly correlated with later progress in that language.

 

You need to overlearning the sound spelling correspondences of Greek.

 

You have a lifetime of practice with the Roman alphabet which is why a Romance language is easier.

[forty-two]

I don't know how common it is because I haven't read any studies on it.

 

 

 

blending is *hard* and mindnumbingly tiring."

Hm. Not for me. It took me way more than a few days to get fluent enough to really read (not just decode or sound out) languages that use a different alphabet, but it did click and though I have to read long books aloud--like, Dostoyevsky, Lermontov--no, I do not need to do that and did not need to do that for primer-level sentences.

 

So I do think that there is a visual processing or other issue there that you've identified.

 

That said, I don't know if you read aloud or not, but could that work? I learned by reading aloud. Best of luck to you. Greek is beautiful but very hard no matter what anybody says. :)

Thanks for the encouragement :). I don't know if there are *visual* processing issues, but there does seem to be *auditory* processing issues running in the family, which would fit the various things I've noticed.

 

WRT blending - thinking on it further, it's generally *hard* but it's not always *mindnumbing*. In fact, decoding individual words can be kind of fun - it's like doing a puzzle, or deciphering a secret code - it requires effort but the discovery factor rewards it. But it gets tiring after 7-10 words. It's lists of *syllables* that are both hard *and* mindnumbing, probably because it removes the fun discovery factor from the work, thus making it drudgery.

 

I do tend to read aloud, because it helps to hear it for real. You know, I just re-read what you said about not having issues with primer material - and I think that's one of the problems. From a phonetic perspective, there's no equivalent of primer reading practice for ancient Greek (minus the Bluedorn's syllabary, which is hard because it's *all* decoding with no meaning; straight drill alone, with nothing to offer beauty or interest is hard to deal with for more than a few minutes at a time) - the very first lessons in even grammar-translation programs introduce multi-syllable words right off the bat.

[ElizabethB]

You may need a resource that has vocab words with both Greek letters and the romanized versions, they exist. Then, you could work on decoding until the brain gets tired of that and then work vocab with Romanized Greek words, perhaps reading the Greek version afterwards, it might be easier if you saw the Romanized version first.

[forty-two]

 

Some people take longer than others to be automatic. Interestingly, I read a study somewhere that said that ability to pronounce the letters of a foreign language was the thing most highly correlated with later progress in that language.

 

You need to overlearning the sound spelling correspondences of Greek.

 

You have a lifetime of practice with the Roman alphabet which is why a Romance language is easier.

Interesting re: study.

 

My problem's not so much with not having overlearned the individual sound-spelling correspondences of Greek, because I really have done that after all this time. What I *haven't* done is overlearn Greek *syllables* - I mean, I've worked through the various syllable charts in Bluedorn's Greek syllabary a few times, but that was both painful and not overlearned by any means.

 

To give an example of what I mean, dd8 learned the basic sound-letter correspondences of the alphabet when she was 2 - knew them cold. (I sort of thought she might start spontaneously reading, but no.) Fast-forward *several* years to when she *finally* seemed to grasp the idea of blending, and I started on the usual CVC words. Only, even though she definitely knew each individual letter sound, very well (we'd been doing it for literally *years* by this point), she had the roughest time decoding any new CVC word. It wasn't until I started a program that had a separate lesson to introduce every new word family (-an words, then -at words, -ad words, and so on), and did all the short a words before introducing a new vowel (and so on and so forth through all the short vowels), and had quite a bit of cumulative decodable reading practice for each lesson that dd8 could start making some progress. She had to learn to apply her letter-sound knowledge to each new word individually and explicitly, in bite size chunks with lots of practice before adding a new chunk. She didn't start generalizing to new words until halfway through blends and some two-letter phonograms (at 6.5, after about a year of consistent lessons). (And as it turns out, she *still* can't blend and flunked the Barton pre-screening *after* she appeared to be reading fluently and reads far above grade level, for hours every day.)

 

IDK, given the general talk about kids learning to reading here and how most "regular" programs seem to teach the alphabet and then go straight to blending CVC words of all varieties together - the whole "needing to explicitly learn to apply her overlearned letter-sound correspondences to each and every new word" seems to be more than most kids needed, kwim? (And it makes sense in retrospect, given that she couldn't blend and so had to apply her phonics knowledge indirectly and by analogy to words she could already read - using what she knows about the individual letters and phonetically similar words to intuit a pronunciation - but she had to get a big enough store of words she knew how to pronounce into her head before that worked. Fortunately for dd8 she only had to figure out a word once to know it. Dd6, otoh, seems to need to blend each word to read it, and I only just hit on a method of blending that actually works to teach her to blend. Or a close-enough facsimile that magically allows her to connect the printed letters with the oral word.)

 

And that's kind of where I am with Greek, that me and my mostly non-blending self need to explicitly (over)learn each and every syllable combination individually - in a way very comparable to how struggling readers learn to read in their first language. (Isn't blending supposed to be a developmental skill? How many people reach age 30 without being able to blend?) That's a sort of daunting amount of work, tbh. It actually seems to be partly an alphabet issue, but also a *language* issue - because anglicised Greek names are *much* harder to sound out than equivalent-length unfamiliar English words. That it's not just the familiarity of the alphabet, but the familiarity of the phonetic patterns of the language. I mean, I'm pretty sure I read the way dd8 does - some sort of phonetically informed intuitive guessing that's as good as my underlying sense of how the language sounds. Which is reasonably good but not perfect for English - my schema for syllable division, placing the accent, and choosing the right letter-sound correspondence when it's not the usual one is pretty inflexible (but it only affects words that *aren't* in my oral vocabulary, words that I learned solely through reading), but getting better as I've learned blending and explicit phonics rules.

 

But with Greek I not only have the new alphabet but also I'm trying to read without an internal sense of the language. That internal sense is what allowed me to read English, including deciphering new words, without being able to blend. But with Greek, I *need* to be able to blend - or work through and memorize each and every combination, which is basically what dd8 did to learn to read English. But every non-native speaker's got the same issue wrt no internal schema. But *not* everyone's got the no-blending issue.

 

I guess maybe my question boils down to: how many people don't learn to blend?

 

(And maybe the easiest way for me to learn is something with a ton of audio - read along while listening - which actually is suggested for dyslexics to improve fluency. (The auditory processing thing means pure audio with no accompanying words is extremely hard for me to understand - I have to have an underlying schema already in place to have a hope of understanding - which means learning something new through pure audio is pretty much impossible.) Or put myself together a Greek version of LiPS and learn to blend ;).

[forty-two]

You may need a resource that has vocab words with both Greek letters and the romanized versions, they exist. Then, you could work on decoding until the brain gets tired of that and then work vocab with Romanized Greek words, perhaps reading the Greek version afterwards, it might be easier if you saw the Romanized version first.

That sounds helpful :).

[Tsuga]

I have a question.

 

Have you ever tried to learn a living language? Learning Latin and Greek is very different to learning French and Russian, or German and Persian. When you hear a native speaker pronouncing those sounds and the entire words, it brings things together more.

 

You say this is not a visual processing thing, but... nobody speaks Greek, do they? I was aware of Latin radio and so on but I am not aware of any Greek resources though it's been years and years since I learned (was learning) Greek.

[forty-two]

I have a question.

 

Have you ever tried to learn a living language? Learning Latin and Greek is very different to learning French and Russian, or German and Persian. When you hear a native speaker pronouncing those sounds and the entire words, it brings things together more.

 

You say this is not a visual processing thing, but... nobody speaks Greek, do they? I was aware of Latin radio and so on but I am not aware of any Greek resources though it's been years and years since I learned (was learning) Greek.

 

I actually deliberately avoided languages that required speaking in school because of the auditory processing thing :tongue_smilie: (although at the time I thought I was "just bad at languages") - that was why I chose Latin ;).  But a language program that had a ton of auditory input with complete transcripts of everything said - that might work.  Because, yeah, hearing a native speaker pronounce it would help a lot - but I still need that visual component to make up for the auditory issues.  (I mean, I always watch TV and movies with the captioning on - without it I have to concentrate so much more, and if the room's really noisy I feel like I "can't hear", no matter how loud the sound.)

[Tsuga]

Hmmmm... I can see how blending would be hard in that case, because you're not really looking at the sounds. When I read--not saying this to put you down, just to give perspective--I literally hear the words in my head. I have other auditory issues which are bizarre, like I process things so quickly the sometimes I think people are done and I've got a response but they were just breathing! I really have to tame this because obviously interrupting is very rude. So it sounds like we are on opposite ends of that spectrum.

 

Deaf people can read English, though. Have you considered looking into methods used to teach the deaf to read? I would assume they are also learning to read without using sound as a basis for the letters, for obvious reasons.

[ElizabethB]

Don Potter has some interesting Greek links, including audio, they are for Biblical Greek.

 

http://www.donpotter.net/biblical-greek.html

[ElizabethB]

Hmmmm... I can see how blending would be hard in that case, because you're not really looking at the sounds. When I read--not saying this to put you down, just to give perspective--I literally hear the words in my head. I have other auditory issues which are bizarre, like I process things so quickly the sometimes I think people are done and I've got a response but they were just breathing! I really have to tame this because obviously interrupting is very rude. So it sounds like we are on opposite ends of that spectrum.

 

Deaf people can read English, though. Have you considered looking into methods used to teach the deaf to read? I would assume they are also learning to read without using sound as a basis for the letters, for obvious reasons.

Actually, the best deaf readers that ever progress beyond the basic grade levels or high WPM rates are those taught phonetically. The brain figures it out somehow, I guess. Those taught with whole word methods never progress to being fluent readers, although they are the one group I can see it being a good method for, but the data actually shows that even the deaf do better with phonics!

[forty-two]

Hmmmm... I can see how blending would be hard in that case, because you're not really looking at the sounds. When I read--not saying this to put you down, just to give perspective--I literally hear the words in my head. I have other auditory issues which are bizarre, like I process things so quickly the sometimes I think people are done and I've got a response but they were just breathing! I really have to tame this because obviously interrupting is very rude. So it sounds like we are on opposite ends of that spectrum.

 

Deaf people can read English, though. Have you considered looking into methods used to teach the deaf to read? I would assume they are also learning to read without using sound as a basis for the letters, for obvious reasons.

 

Interestingly, I *do* hear the words in my head as I read.  In fact, I *cannot* read a word unless I can somehow figure out a pronunciation for it - otherwise it's just a bunch of meaningless squiggles (this is true in English, too).  Which is one reason why I keep hammering away at learning to decode Greek phonetically instead of just trying to read it by sight (which is what my dh does).

 

It's weird - I'm so intensely visual and have such glaring auditory weaknesses that for the longest time I thought I was a "visual learner".  But I'm starting to wonder if I'm more of an auditory learner, just one who's had to adapt to using visual input to get around the auditory weaknesses.

[momacacia]

This does sound unusual to me, I find languages fairly easy to pick up, so I may not be the best comment. I haven't done much with Greek (just a tad ages ago), but when learning what Hebrew I know, once the sounds/letters (let's call it "the code") was down, blending was pretty easy. Just like I blended in English, it worked that way in Hebrew--only backwards and slower as I only reached a certain level of fluency.

[forty-two]

This does sound unusual to me, I find languages fairly easy to pick up, so I may not be the best comment. I haven't done much with Greek (just a tad ages ago), but when learning what Hebrew I know, once the sounds/letters (let's call it "the code") was down, blending was pretty easy. Just like I blended in English, it worked that way in Hebrew--only backwards and slower as I only reached a certain level of fluency.

 

Part of the problem for me is that I *didn't* blend in English, so I couldn't apply my non-existent English blending skills to Greek ;).  I just didn't *realize* I couldn't blend in English, as I had (mostly) enough workarounds to make up for it.  Which actually is the story of my schooling career - I didn't realize how not-normal my "not an auditory learner" stuff was, because I had enough workarounds to compensate.  And the places where I didn't I was able to avoid, or didn't realize it had an auditory connection.  (I was reading about auditory processing disorders - I had no idea that difficulties interpreting social cues can be a consequence of APD, and that's been a real trouble area of mine.)

[Bree]

I struggled more when I took Greek. The language and writing are too similar to english for me and caused me issues. I had a great time with Hebrew though. The characters were totally different and reading right to left. There is something with Greek that had a harder time clicking. We have another friend who had the same problem. His Hebrew was great and even got to work on the dead sea scrolls, but with Greek he still struggles some.

[Mabelen]

I didn't have any difficulties when learning classical Greek in High School and neither did the majority of my classmates. Same story when learning Classical Arabic in College.

[Mabelen]

I have a question.

 

Have you ever tried to learn a living language? Learning Latin and Greek is very different to learning French and Russian, or German and Persian. When you hear a native speaker pronouncing those sounds and the entire words, it brings things together more.

 

You say this is not a visual processing thing, but... nobody speaks Greek, do they? I was aware of Latin radio and so on but I am not aware of any Greek resources though it's been years and years since I learned (was learning) Greek.

Ok, I am sure you meant to say Ancient or Classical Greek, because there are around 11 million people in Greece, speaking Modern Greek.

[lewelma]

I'm learning mandarin, which of course has 1000s of characters.  Could you not just memorize each word as a sight word, like I do with chinese characters?  Maybe just the top 300 words and then you could focus your decoding skills on more uncommon words.  In English, the top 100 account for half of all written material.

 

Just an idea.

 

Ruth in NZ

[composr]

I think you've really hit on some stuff when you say you've learned reading (in general) without learning to recognise the sign and immediately produce the phone (the sound) associated with it.

 

I would definitely stress learning without any reference to Romanisation whatever, as this will only distract you (since you'll also have to overcome the previous association you have with English and Roman letters). Be certain that you studiously pronounce everything out loud. This is a pretty crucial step. It is certainly a good approach to work through letters, digraphs, short syllables, etc., as long as you have audio recordings for everything and no Romanisation in sight. It's very beneficial to use flash cards for this.

 

I also recommend short, frequent sessions of focussed study on the letters and combinations, strategically working your way through sound combinations. Seeing the letters, hearing them, repeating them and writing them down as well should engage more of your sensory input and mechanics - strong and weak - to provide reinforcement (and likewise assist in strengthening your weak points).

 

With Greek, if you're looking at Koine, I prefer a reconstructed Koine pronunciation (rather than the one most books teach). The best resource I know of for that is: http://www.biblicallanguagecenter.com/ . If you're doing Classical or Attic Greek, whatever your pronunciation, you can also find audiobooks to listen through at LibriVox.

 

For flashcards, I would certainly recommend using Anki to build your cards, with audio recording and image capability.

 

As for learning vocab and grammar, unfortunately I don't like most of the Greek texts since they use a parsing-translation method which is overly burdensome on the student. My opinion is, if you have to memorise declension tables for nouns, the author didn't do a good job teaching you. They just did a good job documenting the language.

 

Finally, don't get discouraged!! Be reasonable in your expectations (if you have difficulty processing certain inputs, be patient and try working regularly to push just a little bit more), and don't be put off by some of the effort.