2026-08-07
10 分钟Today, I'm going to talk about reading.
Reading, which is so important in language learning.
It's a big part of learning things, learning about the world in general.
Even though for most of human history, we didn't have writing, people didn't read.
So people learned languages without making use of the ability to read.
And even today, many people learn without reading.
But to the extent that we use reading, there is a concept in reading.
Or in relating the written text to the spoken text, that is quite interesting.
And that is the concept of transparent languages and opaque languages.
And we've all experienced the fact that in Spanish, for example,
or in Turkish, or in other languages, Italian, Finnish...
Indonesian, there is a one-to-one relationship between how the word is written and how it's pronounced.
It's consistent.
Once you understand how those letters are used in that language, whenever you read,
you can sound out the words, even if you don't know the meaning of the words.
Those languages are called transparent.
Languages where the writing system is not consistent, for example, English,
where you can have the letter combination O-U-G-H, which can be...
Bow, through, rough, cough.
That's not consistent.