I was doing a quiz on national flags with my niece and discovered that if I hear the name of a country, it’s easier for me to remember what the flag is than to see a flag and associate it with a country. I can go from a word to an image a lot more easily than I can from an image to a word.
For instance, I didn’t recognize the Mexican flag. But right now, I say “Mexican flag” and I can see it perfectly in my mind’s eye.
That’s very odd to me, I’m definitely the other way around (though when it comes to flags specifically, I’m pretty clueless in either direction.)
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When you read (in any language) do you hear the words in your mind’s ear?
I do, which is one reason why I could never get into french, I kind of hear the entire written word and it’s too hard to remember what isn’t pronounced… (and my mind’s speech aparatus does kind of pronounce them).
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English is the same when you learn it. In the first few years I used to learn the spoken and written version by heart as the pronunciation rules didn’t make any sense. Of course French is even worse. I don’t know why they put all the letters into the words if they don’t pronounce half of them.
German is the greatest languages of all when you learn it. Everything makes sense in that language.
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“English is the same when you learn it”
I would assume, but to read and write your first language is very different from connecting speech and writing in a foreign language so I don’t notice the mismatch quite as much in English. And I was fortunate enough to be taught to read with phonics rather than…. (shudder)… any kind of whole language methodology.
In terms of matching speech to letter Polish is actually very user friendly for foreign learners. Polish people like to complain about pairs like rz and ż but when you learn most words in writing first it’s very easy to remember.
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This was the ONE thing I liked about Spanish.
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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