I see the inverse of this, with native speakers of languages that use ABC (alphabet) to learn a language that’s logographic such as Japanese & Mandarin (since both have 漢字) as a single character is a word (difficult concept for them to grasp at first). However, even if let’s say a Mandarin speaker with zero exposure to English leans ABC for the first time, would the grammar be hard even if they’ve managed to master the alphabet?

There are sounds that don’t exist in both JP & ZH like words that start or end with “TH” (i.e. Thorough, Moth) as they don’t have that in their phonology. Don’t even mention the misleading pronunciations of certain words in ENG based on spelling that stump them like “Colonel” (大佐・上校) since most speakers of ENG say that as “Kernel”. Even if “alphabet” based languages are easy, the grammar can be hard for a non-native to learn.

As in, what would it be like for a Japanese & Mandarin speaker learning a Euro language (all alphabetical based) from 漢字 > ABC or Cyrillic as it’s alien to their own plus huge differences in vocab with zero similarity (like this: “Salida” from ES is equivalent to 出口 in JP & ZH) including common things most Euro languages have: gender cases (no such thing on JP & ZH), definite and indefinite articles for example to list a few.

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[–] 2 points 2 days ago*

Not really lol, both Japanese and Chinese heavily use standard 26-set alphabets nowadays

Japanese alphabets (Hiragana/Katakana) have their alphabet counterparts. Aside from L/R which is confusing (the R sound doesn't exist in Japanese, and L is written as R), almost everything else intuitively makes sense. Chinese is almost always spelled out in Pinyin (which is in standard alphabets) for really young kids, and ppl predominantly use alphabetic keyboards for typing. If anything, the reverse is kind-of true in China, where kids are having struggle remembering how to write proper Chinese characters...

The weird pronunciations and grammar rules are probably more difficult IMO. But then difficult pronunciations and grammar rules exist in other Germanic/Romance languages too (try pronouncing a G in standard Dutch or an R in French or German!)

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