Learning a new writing system (as a beginner)

[Monk]

Greetings all,

I'm not sure if this question is best suited for the General Language Discussion section or the Classical Languages Study Group? The topic is about learning writing systems as a beginner. In my case specifically for learning Hebrew, yet I welcome advice from anyone who has learned any other writing system in general.

Also, as I was about to post this, I saw this thread by german2k01 that shares some similar points, but not necessarily the same questions about writing systems, nor my specific questions about Hebrew.

Admins, if it make more sense for my post to be somewhere else, or merged with that one, feel free to move it, and apologies for the hassle.

I have recently decided I want to study Hebrew. The main language I am studying is Spanish, and that's what I'm spending most of my time on, but next on my list is Hebrew. This will be the first language I study that has a completely different writing system than my native language (which is English). I don't plan on delving too deeply into Hebrew at present. I want to wait until I have more proficiency with Spanish first, mostly because I am fairly new to language learning and feel it would be more beneficial for me to reach an intermediate level (loosely defined) in a second language before attempting to add a third. That said, I think knowing the writing system for Hebrew is important even at the very beginning, and while I am focusing the majority of my language learning time on Spanish, I am able to carve out a little time to start working on the very basics of learning Hebrew without negatively affecting my Spanish study/practice. To that end I am dedicating some of my study time to learning the Hebrew alphabet (aleph-bet) so I can get a head start on that. I am simply memorizing the letters at this stage. I'm going through one letter at a time. Learning the name of the letter and practicing writing it in my notebook. For example, one full page dedicated to writing the character for Aleph in print format, another page for Aleph in cursive, another page for Beth in print, another in cursive, and so on. I plan to work through all of the letters this way, including the final forms, as well as learning the vowel points (more on the latter below).

First question. Does this seem like a reasonable way to begin to learn a new writing system? For others who have learned (or are learning) a writing system, either for Hebrew or for a languages such as Chinese, Arabic, Korean, Russian, Japanese, etc., did you use a similar method to start (i.e. handwriting each letter/character in a notebook until you have them memorized), or did you use another method? What worked for you?

My initial thoughts are that there is *something* to physically writing with pen and paper that connects to areas of the brain that help with encoding the characters into long-term memory. But I am neither a linguist, nor a cognitive scientist/psychologist. In other words, I don't have any hard data about this. Yet it intuitively FEELS like there is something to this method. More so than, say, using flash cards.

The materials I have for Hebrew are all geared towards Modern Hebrew (not Classical/Biblical). Ultimately I would like to learn both, but for different reasons. My goal for Classical Hebrew is mostly limited to reading. For Modern Hebrew my goals include being able to read, write, listen, and speak. In short, my emphasis will be on Modern Hebrew, but without neglecting Classical Hebrew for some limited areas of interest. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but don't both (Classical and Modern) use the same writing system? If I memorize the letters using my Modern Hebrew textbooks, will this carry over to being able to read texts written in Classical Hebrew? I don't know enough about the differences to know if learning one will compliment learning the other, or perhaps somehow make it more challenging. I see some information in the Modern Hebrew materials I have about diacritical marks to aid in vowel pronunciation (i.e. the nikud). Is this same system used in both Modern and Classical? I read that sometimes nikud are used and sometimes they are not, but I'm not clear on why or when. Anyone have further insight on that?

Thanks in advance for any and all feedback.

[rdearman]

I have done this with Korean and Mandarin. Although Mandarin isn't an alphabet, so it was more for rote memorisation. However, for both of them, "stroke order" is important. I don't know if this is something you need to worry about for Hebrew. Anyway, one of the ways I practised was to open up a spreadsheet, libreoffice, excel, or google sheets, any of them will do. I typed in the alphabet in one column and then dragged it over to 10 more columns. Then I left column A in black and changed the font of B, C, D, etc, to greyscale. Then I printed it out. This gave me the letter I could read easily in black, and then 9-10 columns in greyscale, which I could trace over to improve my writing. This is probably more important with the Chinese characters than it was for Hangul, but it worked for Korean also. Below is a sample of the one I used in Mandarin. It is slightly different from what I used for the Hangul alphabet because Chinese characters are not letters they are words, which is why I put a definition beside them. But anyway, I think it is a good way to learn an alphabet, but I didn't see where you are going to practice the pronunciation of the letters?

When I did this exercise, I pronounced each letter as I was writing it. I didn't learn the names of the letters (like you are planning) and I wish I had because often times with my tutor I would want to ask questions about a specific letter, but didn't know the name.

I also installed a Korean keyboard on my computer and learned to touch type using it. (Albeit very slowly).

chinese_greyscale.png

korean_alphabet.png

[LupCenușiu]

With the exception of hanzi/kanji, any writing system can be learned pretty fast, but you will need practice to make it stick. For example, in my case, Cyrillic alphabet required half an hour or so because is heavily based on Latin and Greek ( maths/physics helped). Cursive writing required more practice though.

Kana took a few hours as it was completely alien, but learned it with mnemonics and then practiced it daily writing (5 hiragana +5 katakana, with each hand, I found writing with the non-dominant hand useful, as a general idea). Arabic was also quite simple, perhaps one hour but, easily learned, easily forget as I didn't use it further.

So, if I would want to learn Hebrew, I would learn all letters in one go ( with mnemonics if don't stick), and then practice daily writing all the alphabet once or twice. No need to write column after column unless you enjoy it, like a calligrapher in training. Also, would associate letters with sounds, and next logical step would be to write the words and work on pronunciation. But we are past alphabet stage then.

[Sae]

I am interested in the answers to this as well, because I will be learning Mongolic script/bichig, but I have learned Cyrillic, just I am slower when it comes to bigger words like: Танилцсандаа, but now I just practice writing the words by hand and reading them back later, because at the same time, I'm practicing the language.

For example, practicing different verb forms on new verbs also means I'm using a lot of repetition, like here:



I think when writing by hand I am more likely to retain what I've written better than typing.

Though I don't know if I am writing printed Cyrillic the right way and probably should also learn the cursive, so who knows, the above might make any Cyrillic users die a little inside.

However, I quite like rdearman's spreadsheet idea.

[Erisnimi]

Based on my own studies, I'd recommend this: pay attention to words from the very beginning just as much as on the characters themselves. It's easy to memorize the characters but because characters don't immediately give away the correct pronunciation (as they pretty much do in Spanish), it's useful to start connecting words and (correct) sounds from the get-go. http://www.pealim.com, http://www.wiktionary.org and http://www.forvo.com are all good resources, I find.

While studying Chinese characters, I came to the realization that words even in English can be thought of as images. For one, when I read, I rarely read them letter by letter. Rather I recognize their shape and that shape corresponds to a meaning and a sound. I find this idea especially useful with Hebrew. The more familiar I am with the shapes of Hebrew words, the easier it becomes to recall them as well as notice patterns that help figure out possible meanings and functions of new words.

Niqqud is rarely used beyond dictionaries, religious texts and books for children.

[Amandine]

I learnt Cyrillic for Russian but frankly, an English speaker can knock that over pretty quickly.

I am now dabbling in Yiddish which uses the Hebrew alphabet and am just using Duolingo. Even if you hate Duolingo (fair!), the "Learn the Letters" part of the app is a good to do just that …. learn the letters. I haven't used Hebrew on there but I looked and it looks the same as the Yiddish one so I can recommend as a useful resource. As I also want to focus 98% on my French, its a nice contained way to learn the alphabet without it taking a lot of time away from French.

[CDR]

First question. Does this seem like a reasonable way to begin to learn a new writing system? For others who have learned (or are learning) a writing system, either for Hebrew or for a languages such as Chinese, Arabic, Korean, Russian, Japanese, etc., did you use a similar method to start (i.e. handwriting each letter/character in a notebook until you have them memorized), or did you use another method? What worked for you?

My initial thoughts are that there is *something* to physically writing with pen and paper that connects to areas of the brain that help with encoding the characters into long-term memory. But I am neither a linguist, nor a cognitive scientist/psychologist. In other words, I don't have any hard data about this. Yet it intuitively FEELS like there is something to this method. More so than, say, using flash cards.

I can only comment as a Japanese learner. I'll start with what I did and then recommend something based on reflection.

When I first learned the Kana many moons ago, I spent over 3 months drilling them in Memrise and match games on the web. I went through multiple courses on Memrise, learning the same Kana over and over... Then I took an 8 year break from Japanese.

When I returned to studying, I remembered almost all the Kana. I spent about 1 month doing something similar to readerman's method, so +1 for that.

It can be quick to learn a writing system (excluding Kanji, etc), but I think the key is training for "automacticity". Being able to look at a glyph and know exactly what sound it is without thinking about it. After all the work I have put in, I would say many kana were "near automatic" and reading has continued to improve recall speed. There remains stubborn ones however.

I would recommend doing both writing and some sort of SRS at the same time.

I think attempting to improve recall speed using SRS would be smart, but I have never tried it myself. I would SRS all the characters until I could answer them at any speed (in Anki, maybe once the next interval is 1 month), then I would reset them and do them over again, but this time with a time limit. I would set the time limit so it is just a little too fast. Once I got it down, I would reset again at a faster speed.

I never tried this technique, so mostly just speculation.

[Monk]

I have done this with Korean and Mandarin. Although Mandarin isn't an alphabet, so it was more for rote memorisation. However, for both of them, "stroke order" is important. I don't know if this is something you need to worry about for Hebrew.

That's a good question. I'm not sure how important stroke order is with Hebrew. One of the books I have does include instructional notation about this, including numbered arrows for the order and direction of each stroke. It might just be a standardized way taught to children who are first learning the letters (I don't see the same thing in other books I have), but I'm following it as I practice writing them.

Anyway, one of the ways I practised was to open up a spreadsheet [...]

This is fantastic. Thanks for sharing the method you've used, along with the attachments.

[...] but I didn't see where you are going to practice the pronunciation of the letters?

When I did this exercise, I pronounced each letter as I was writing it. I didn't learn the names of the letters (like you are planning) and I wish I had because often times with my tutor I would want to ask questions about a specific letter, but didn't know the name.

Great point! I am going to start pronouncing the letters as I write them. I have been saying the name of the letter out loud when I write it. I believe Hebrew is (mostly) phonetic so that the name of the letter generally contains the sound it makes, but I will double check. I have access to audio files from two of my books and they both have a section on the alphabet. There are also written pronunciation guides in my books I can reference.

Thank you for the feedback and recommendations.

[Monk]

For example, practicing different verb forms on new verbs also means I'm using a lot of repetition, like here:

Thank you, Sae. I think for me I want to learn the letters first (print and script), and then move on to writing words and phrases. I love getting a glimpse of people's language notebooks. I use computerized resources for some things, but I am also a fan of pen and paper. I know next to nothing about Cyrillic, but I like your handwriting!

[Monk]

Based on my own studies, I'd recommend this: pay attention to words from the very beginning just as much as on the characters themselves. It's easy to memorize the characters but because characters don't immediately give away the correct pronunciation (as they pretty much do in Spanish), it's useful to start connecting words and (correct) sounds from the get-go. http://www.pealim.com, http://www.wiktionary.org and http://www.forvo.com are all good resources, I find.

Thank you for the resources, Erisnimi. I've bookmarked them for future use. What you say about paying attention to words and pronunciation from the beginning makes logical sense. I'll definitely take that into consideration. I don't anticipate it will take me too long to memorize the individual letters. I am planning on memorizing both print and script. After I have those down, I will likely move on to writing individual words and then short sentences for writing practice. But as you (and others) have mentioned, learning correct pronunciation early on makes good sense to me.

What you say about pattern recognition is helpful as well. It's true, like you say, even with English. We don't read letter-by-letter. For example, "cat" is "cat," not "c - a - t."