Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteres are at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a tatol mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by istlef but the wrod as a wlohe.
we were shown this interesting little piece while at training prior to coming to Taiwan. when i wrote in theupdate that Chinese folks have to learn something like 3,000 characters to be considered literate, i realized that it would seem like a lot to most English speakers. while it is nice to have a phonetic system in which unfamiliar words can be "attacked", or figured out, we appear to end up memorizing the look of most words, hence our ability to read the above paragraph with ease.
things are, as you might expect, not that simple, however, and there are some scientific issues that interfere with the simple teaching and amusement value of the paragraph. they're worth a look though, and they're done by an actual Cambridge researcher! his site even has the paragraph in several foreign languages.
(just in case you are having trouble with it, the above paragraph states: According to research at Cambridge University, it doesn't matter what order the letters in a word are, the only important thing is that the first and last letters are at the right place. The rest can be a total mess and you can still read it without a problem. This is because we do not read every letter by itself but the word as a whole.)
we were shown this interesting little piece while at training prior to coming to Taiwan. when i wrote in theupdate that Chinese folks have to learn something like 3,000 characters to be considered literate, i realized that it would seem like a lot to most English speakers. while it is nice to have a phonetic system in which unfamiliar words can be "attacked", or figured out, we appear to end up memorizing the look of most words, hence our ability to read the above paragraph with ease.
things are, as you might expect, not that simple, however, and there are some scientific issues that interfere with the simple teaching and amusement value of the paragraph. they're worth a look though, and they're done by an actual Cambridge researcher! his site even has the paragraph in several foreign languages.
(just in case you are having trouble with it, the above paragraph states: According to research at Cambridge University, it doesn't matter what order the letters in a word are, the only important thing is that the first and last letters are at the right place. The rest can be a total mess and you can still read it without a problem. This is because we do not read every letter by itself but the word as a whole.)
3 comments:
oocl
Waht teh hcek!!
GEEZ!!
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