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0 points_samihasan_9y ago0 comments

Well, I must say that I fail to see the rationale of this argument as I speak other European languages and I haven't encountered this problem before.

The mental process goes like this; I identify the language of text let's say Spanish and then like a switch in my brain is turned on for the Spanish pronunciation and then I proceed to read the text using the rules of the Spanish language while English is totally disabled.

This is not like unique to me as I observed other students with the same process. I can't really say that the issue you described is a universal issue for all language learners worldwide.

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ue_9y ago

I think the case is different for languages that use the same script, such as a European language learner learning another European language. The learner must learn to switch "modes" and this is reinforced all the time by any kind of reading, because the learner has no choice but to switch modes.

However this mode switching is not reinforced in the case where the script (in this case the Japanese script) is not latin-based.

I think I'm trying to say that native speakers of latin-based languages who are learning latin-based languages have to learn to change their mode of pronunciation, whereas if they were to learn a non-latin-based language they don't (and shouldn't) learn this at all, because in the long run it isn't useful.

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