Andrew Dunbar wrote:

>
> --- Patrick Chew <patchew@...> wrote:
> > suzmccarth wrote:
> > > Is Thai taught as a syllabary - with a syllable
> > > chart? This may sound a bit mechanistic, but in
> > > the scripts that I am thinking of - Cree, Tamil,
> > > Hangul, Amharic, the script is usually taught as a
> > > syllabary. This is because the syllables have
> > > become indivisible or opaque or not linearily
> > > organized.
> >
> > IIRC, hangul isn't really taught as a
> > syllabary...
> > while there are charts and books that show the full
> > syllabic range, due to the non-use of the majority
> > of said syllables, it's relatively moot. The
> > Korea-educated Koreans that I've asked have
> > consistently said that they learned hangul
> > alphabetically (kiyeok, nieun, tigeut, rieul,
> > mieum....
> > a, ya, eo, yeo, o, yo, u, yu, eu, i, ...) and then
> > learned how to put them together to match semi-
> > syllabic/-morphologic orthographic "norms"... which
> > mimic syllabary styled teaching,
> > eg. ka, kya, keo, kyeo, ko, kyo, etc...
> > Hangul, is, however, divisable and transparent
> > and linearly (in a square) organized...
>
> I was taught hangul in Mexico and Guatemala by a
> Korean
> backpacker. She taught me the alphabet in order.
> First the consonants and then the vowels. Then she
> showed me how to arrange them into a square.
> She made no mention of syllabaries and showed me no
> syllable charts.
> I learned it in 1 or 2 days but never learned much
> vocabulary or spelling. It's only in the last year
> that I've discovered just how tricky Korean spelling
> is.

She was not a first-grade teacher instructing a child who already spoke
Korean.

We have the testimony of two disrespected authors, Taylor and Hannas,
that Korean first-graders are taught by syllables first and expected to
discover the internal patterning on their own.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...