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comment by caeli
caeli  ·  3408 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The Test That Can Look Into A Child's (Reading) Future : NPR Ed : NPR

    /'naɪf/

You know IPA?! Marry me.

Anyhow, this would be interesting to look into, although I'm not totally convinced that there would be a qualitative difference between Chinese and English. Most models of reading in dyslexia assume, implicitly or explicitly, that reading involves converting symbols into speech sounds internally, then processing those speech sounds, so that when . English doesn't have a one-to-one mapping between letters and sounds anyway (i.e., "th" is one sound, not two, and can be realized as either [θ] or [ð]). So in that sense Chinese is just an extreme case of such symbolism. But it would be fascinating to see if degree of symbolism in orthography affects reading in some way.





edricarica  ·  3407 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I LOVE IPA!

I only really know the characters that correspond to European languages - I'd have problems trying to write down what this guy's saying, for example.

I only know it because I somewhat arbitrarily took some linguistics modules at university, but it is so useful. I use it almost daily - and it has saved me some embarrassing pronunciation errors. I wonder why it isn't something we teach in schools? I feel like it would come in more useful than learning phonics (the standard teaching method for reading in the UK), in the long run.

    Marry me.
OK cool, does that mean I get a green card? I trade a UK passport which is useful for being protected by the Queen wherever you go :)
caeli  ·  3407 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    OK cool, does that mean I get a green card?

Yes! It doesn't even matter what gender you are anymore either :D