#This is also why English speakers have a fairly okay time speaking Asian languages

[dark-raven-feathers]

Ok. I don't really know if this will make any sense but I have a bone to pick with how most Asian countries teach English.

Because here's the thing: English is an alphabet. Sounds obvious, right? Most Asian languages then, are written down in a logographic form, which just means characters representing entire concepts and words.

So with that information, tell me. How do you think people, specifically the native speakers, learn to write down these logographies? I'm a bilingual speaker (and a shoddy writer, there's a reason for this I'll get to) of Chinese and English. I know how you learn the logographies: rote memorization. You write each symbol down, over and over again, until it's seared into the flesh of your brain.

Now, remember how I said I'm a shoddy writer in Chinese? Because I learned how to write English first, I'm not used to having to memorize every single word, individually. English, as an alphabet, just means you have to memorize each of the different clauses and special cases that make up the words, and even then you can mostly sound out what you're writing.

So then we come back to my initial problem with teaching English in Asia. Because the native speakers are used to just memorizing all the words and leaving it that, they assume the same applies to English. It does not. You cannot apply the logic used for logographic systems to an alphabet, because it doesn't work. You can't just memorize that the letter A makes an /ah/ sound, because the letter A could also make an /Ae/ sound, or even a nasally /ah/ sound instead of a breathy one. You can't just memorize that 'I before E except after C' because this rule doesn't always apply. It does not work.

Yet this is how the majority of English is taught in Asian schools. Learn to say 'Hello, good morning', and then repeat the sentence five times over until you have it committed to memory. What will you do then, when someone says 'Hey! Morning!'? Do you know that it means the same thing? No, because you didn't memorize it.

Oh, some may tell you that 'noo I learned it perfectly in school! Look, I can write English and speak it fine now!'. But that's after repeated exposure to the language.

And this is in no way trying to make problems with accents or blooming creoles/pidgins like Singlish. This is trying to make a problem with how English, an alphabet language, is taught in a logographic-logic format.