Precerpt from My 20th Language: Alphabets

 

Foreign alphabets were never a real impediment to learning a language—and certainly no obstacle when navigating a new country. In the course of studying languages that used them, I worked with eight alphabets: Latin, Slavic, Hebrew, Arabic, Pashto, Greek, Malayalam, and Georgian. Along the way, I picked up the basics of two more—Korean (both the short version and the longer, Japanese-based version) and Thai—just by moving between metro stops, shopping, and eating in countries where those scripts are part of daily life.

Some alphabets came more easily than others. The Slavic alphabets, despite their variations in letter count and degree of reform, were relatively straightforward. Roughly one-third of the letters resemble Latin characters (though not always phonetically—CCCP, for instance, is pronounced SSSR), another third resemble Greek letters (familiar to most college graduates via fraternities and sororities), and the final third are entirely new. Thanks to this overlap, I can usually get students reading Russian within the first hour of the first day, using a Piaget-style approach: subordinating new information to what they already know.

Arabic and Hebrew pose a different challenge. Short vowels are typically unwritten, so learning to speak first makes reading easier. Arabic adds another layer of complexity: letter forms change depending on their position in a word. I found it more efficient to read syllables rather than parse individual letters, which slows comprehension. I’ve used this approach in teaching the alphabet in Arabic and Pashto programs (Pashto uses the Arabic script plus three unique letters), often beginning with recognizable country names—Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan—so that the -stan suffix becomes instantly familiar and automated.

Writing, of course, takes longer than reading. Over time, I developed a personal writing style in each language, just as I did in English. Arabic, in particular, invites individual flair. When I taught a course at the University of Jordan, I had to grade handwritten papers. I told my students that if they wrote their name at the top of their papers from right to left, they had a prayer of getting their grade recorded. But if they wrote bottom to top—as some of the more artistic ones liked to do—not even a prayer would help. Eventually, I learned to recognize their names in their own handwriting, regardless of direction. After all, I graded daily papers for months. Practice makes recognizable.

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