musicmann

I'm always fascinated and curious about language learning. We seem to just pick up our native language so easily as we're growing up, but it seems difficult to pick up a new language with the same ease later on.

I don't have kids, and can't remember what my reading ability was at 4 years old, but I thought when I started reading that I started out by identifying individual characters and trying to sound them out piece by piece? I can't imagine that I built my native language using the whole-word system, but at the same time, that may explain all the spelling tests that I used to do.

I have been learning a completely new language (Polish) for a while now, but I started with learning the sounds of the language first (and how to pronounce the written language) which set up the framework for learning words and phrases later on. I couldn't imagine starting off with learning whole-words. That being said, I think once you have the basic framework start up, you naturally move on to whole words, sentences, and eventually become free with expressing ideas.