Books
Sunday, December 26th, 1999No links to interesting books here anymore. But read this story, anyway!
When I was six years old I was very worried. I thought I would never learn how to read. My reasoning went like this:
- Someone told me the average chinese must learn several thousands signs to be literate at all.
- Western languages have words, not signs
- AND… I thought every word was a code - that is, a completely random combination of letters.
So in order to read I would have to learn several thousand random codes in a few months. Most adults I knew seemed too stupid do this, of course… maybe they had become stupid later… hmmm?!?.
Anyway… my first day at school the teacher started teaching us nursey-rhymes: “Roger rows the rowingboat, Mother milks the milk”… stupid stuff like that. And I started laughing and couldn’t stop. Everyone thought I was crazy… and I never told them why.
But I’ll tell you. I suddenly realized how incredibly easy it was! No codes… just learn a handful of vowels and some rules of thumb and most words are pretty close to what they sound like.
I never stopped reading after that.