Just that. Written English is phonetic, so I can easily read an unfamiliar word by sounding it out. Even though I don’t always get it right, usually I’m close enough to be understood.
How does this work in Chinese, or Japanese?
Edit – OK, yes I get it! English isn’t really phonetic. It’s just that when I was learning to read and write, our school used a method they called phonics. It must have confused the heck out of most kids, because they abandoned the method soon after, but it worked for me. We had a lot of practice in recognizing the various patterns words can take, and the many exceptions. So for me, who always did very well in English class, words tend to be easy to spell out.
I’m really glad not to have to figure it out as an adult, because I’m sure I’d be just as frustrated as some of you friends are! And I promise you that you are much better at English than I am at your language.
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It’s kind of like doing a cryptogram that you find in the newspaper. Basically you look for patterns in language, and because most of us use frequent communication for the same things, no matter what the culture, food, clothing, housing, family, so those can be Clues to figure things out. For language like Mandarin, we have had the fortune of cultures meeting and exchanging explanation. And in fact different cultures mixing their languages, can also help you find the root of whatever language you’re looking for. You can work backwards through Modern languages or ancient language is to figure out how they’ve changed over time, and kind of work backwards. It’s extremely complicated. You could also work for words from an ancient language that you understand. Anyone studying a new language and trying to figure it out, would also have all of the linguistic information that we have now and whatever was available at the time of study.
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