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Hey Bob, Gary left a comment under one of my YouTube videos: “Great advice, but very difficult if you are trying to learn a Cyrillic language.” Fair enough. I do drone on and on about reading. And that’s fine when your language uses the same alphabet as English. But what if you open a book in Russian or Korean and can’t make out a single letter? How do you read when you can’t actually read? See, I don’t think the script is really what’s stopping you. Most of these alphabets have somewhere between 25 and 35 letters. Not far off English. You took a while to learn yours, but you were four. As an adult, you can learn one in a week or two of evenings. It takes effort... but it isn’t that big a task. Mind you, even if you could read Cyrillic perfectly, a Russian book on day one would still leave you lost. That’s a different problem altogether. Japanese and Mandarin are another matter. Learning enough characters to read properly can take two to five years. So on the podcast this week I go through how I’d approach each kind of script, including what I’d do about characters if you’re in it for the long haul. Whichever language you’re learning, the answer is never to turn away from reading because it’s too much work. If you want to take the language seriously, that’s the job in front of you. Watch the episode here Chat soon, Olly |