I want to share a story I read in my school textbook a few years ago. It was about an old woman and it goes something like this:

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There lives an old woman in the South Indian state of Karnatka. The woman is very religious but she can't read. The local newspaper publishes a column on Hindu mythology on each Sunday. The old woman can recognise the photos but it's her granddaughter who reads out to her what's written beneath those images.

Then it happens that the granddaughter leaves the village for a month to attend a wedding. The old woman can't ask anyone in the village to read for her out of fear that she would be ridiculed. (No one likes curious adults!)

It's Sunday when the granddaughter returns. The old woman is in tears. Her eyes shimmer when she glances her granddaughter come back. Then later in the evening, still teary eyed, she goes to her granddaughter with a month's newspapers' in her hands. But instead of asking her to read, she asks her to teach her the Kannada alphabet.

A week later the old woman can read the newspaper.

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Kannada has a phonetic script and this makes me wonder what would happen if the story were set in London or Paris; English and French aren't famous for their regular spelling system. And what if the old woman were Chinese? Any thoughts?

The question that came to my mind was what the woman did before her granddaughter was born.

cFlat7:The question that came to my mind was what the woman did before her granddaughter was born.

Of course she was illiterate. She didn't get a chance to go school. Perhaps the men (for India is still very much a patriarchal society) decided household chores were more important for her than learning the ABC.

In modern-speak: they didn't see any profit in sending her to school.

In case you haven't never met an illiterate man or woman, grab yourself a Chinese text and then ask yourself what you were doing during all these years.

Demian:Kannada has a phonetic script and this makes me wonder what would happen if the story were set in London or Paris; English and French aren't famous for their regular spelling system. And what if the old woman were Chinese? Any thoughts?

If there's a will, there's a way. If this woman instead spoke English, French, or Chinese, she still would have learned how to read because she wanted it bad enough. If you want it bad enough, you'll make it happen regardless of the difficulty. Her language could have had the world's most difficult script, and it wouldn't have matter because based on that story she finally had her reason to want to learn it bad enough that nothing was going to stop her.

黄鸡蛋:In last century, China's government ran many literacy classes. If I remember right, a woman could become literate after about three months' learning in the class. So that would or would not be a problem, depending on the circumstances... Well I admit it is much longer than learning the Kannada alphabet.

You are right. Three months is indeed longer a period than a week. But I think similar results can be obtained in China or anywhere else in the world if a phonetic script is used alongside the regular script.

I read somewhere that a law in Japan mandates publishers to use Hiragana with all Kanji that is not a part of the official script.

My Chinese textbook uses Zhuyin Fuhao or Bopomofo. Thanks to it, I can read (but not understand) even advanced chapters.

By the way, I was curious to know what do you do when you can't remember a character while writing? It's on the tip of you tongue, so to speak, but it still proves elusive. What do you do in such a case?

lingvokapablo:If there's a will, there's a way. If this woman instead spoke English, French, or Chinese, she still would have learned how to read because she wanted it bad enough. If you want it bad enough, you'll make it happen regardless of the difficulty. Her language could have had the world's most difficult script, and it wouldn't have matter because based on that story she finally had her reason to want to learn it bad enough that nothing was going to stop her.

You are right. But just imagine! The old woman asking her granddaughter why is French "hout" pronounced "oo" and why does "read" not sound like "reyahd"?

And just imagine how would the young girl, who is by no means a professional teacher, make her learn Chinese characters?

I can't help imagining...