Learning to Read

How many times did you learn to read? Most of us who learn to read only learn to read once. My husband Keith learned to read in English, with the type of letters you are looking at right now. Then, later, he learned to read Cyrillic letters (right). He can read street signs in Moscow. He might not know what they say, but he can read them. When he lived in Korea, he learned to read the Korean alphabet. (See below. This, he says, is one of the easiest alphabets in the world to learn. It was created by King Sejong, around 1445.) Again, he does not always know what the Korean signs on the stores in urban New Jersey mean, but he can read them.
He does know what German means when he reads that (usually) as well as Dutch (more often than German) and some Romani languages. And this is not just because he is a linguist.
Dutch and German use the same alphabet, more or less, that English does. However, each of these languages has its own system for assigning sounds to those letters. For example, "nee" in Dutch is pronounced the same as "neigh" in English. Additionally, each language has its own unique system of sounds. There are sounds in English which do not occur in Dutch or German. The beginning of "the" is an excellent example. Keith could learn these other systems without too much trouble. After all, he already knew how to read.
Keith can read three different alphabets. He can read and understand newspaper articles in three different languages (English, German, Dutch). He only learned to read once.
My point? Learning to read is a big deal. Children shouldn't have to learn another language to learn to read. Studies show that people learn to read best in their own language. Then, like Keith, they can transfer that knowledge to other languages, sometimes even to other alphabets. I'm starting a Multilingual Education (MLE) on-line course to learn more about this. Let me know if you'd like to learn more about this, too.