Memorization is NOT learning
If you are learning a language that uses a writing system other than Latin, you are in for a challenge. In addition to having to learn the new language, you need to learn an entirely different writing system. What you may not realize is that the human brain is actually hardwired to learn languages. It is not hardwired to learn writing systems. So, if you think that learning Korean is difficult, learning the Korean alphabet is, pound for pound, a tougher task.
The wrong way to learn an alphabet
If someone told you “ryzobskeevij”, it would mean nothing to you. You probably would forget the word itself pretty quickly, because it is useless.
However, if someone told you “ryzobskeevij is the intense sense of satisfaction gained from squishing a bug that has been menacing you for hours,” then ryzobskeevij would suddenly become meaningful to you and you would probably remember it.
The reason for this context. Everything you know, you understand in relation to other things. Information is only as good as the number of connections it has to other information. The more connections a piece of information has, the more neurons are involved. The more neurons that are involved, the stronger your recall of that information is. You can see this same process in action when you experience “confirmation bias”, that tendency to only notice observations that fit in with your preconceived notions.
Learning a new alphabet for a language you barely understand is a bad idea because the new alphabet has so little context to you. Your brain will have to work extra hard to retain knowledge that it doesn’t see any use for. This is why the conventional methods of alphabet learning in foreign languages are no good.
Hypercontextual Learning
If you want to learn a new alphabet quickly and actually retain it, you need to anchor it in something that you already know very well. Something that has so many neural connections that is practically part of you. That is hypercontextual learning, the use of deeply understood knowledge as a context for new knowledge to speed up and improve the quality of learning.
Alphaliterate uses the English language as that context. It teaches you how to read English in a foreign writing system, allowing your brain to throw its full weight against the writing system instead of having to spend half its energy parsing a new language. The new writing system will adhere to your English knowledge much better than it would to your shaky knowledge of Korean, or Japanese, or Arabic, languages that take years to master completely apart from the written component. If you think you can pick up the basic grammar and vocabulary, and expect that will be good enough to base your alphabet learning on, you’re sorely mistaken.
Alphaliterate gets you reading faster
Alphaliterate lets you practice your knowledge of different writing systems on English instead of foreign languages until your knowledge of both the writing systems and the new language are strong enough to pair the two together. Once you have learned all the characters, you will read interesting articles and stories in English, but written in a different alphabet.
The best part of Alphaliterate is that it breaks down new information into tiny, easily digested parcels. You learn a few characters at once as a foundation, and then from there it’s just one at a time, with a mini-quiz after each new letter. You’ll never feel as though you have strayed too far out of your comfort zone.
You can and should use Alphaliterate alongside a language learning program, preferably one that teaches you the new language written in the Latin alphabet.