random poll

[rm]

Super busy. Am suddenly curious about this. Apparently most kids entering college in the US this year don't know how to write in cursive. I suspect this is less a sign of the apocalypse than it feels like to me.

So, tell me things (as usual, poll is un-scientific and reflects my biases and experiences (and 49-year-olds can choose which age category they like better!) -- if the boxes don't work, my apologies and comments super welcome.):

[Poll #1607173]

Comments

[ellen-fremedon.livejournal.com]

I am 34, and was taught to write cursive, and yet I can't read it reliably.

In my case, I think it might be that I learned to read print so early-- I was reading at three, and we didn't start getting any instruction until second grade, when I was seven; I already had a very firm notion of what English words looked like, and those squiggly things weren't it.

[trinker.livejournal.com]

I was reading young, too. And my cursive education came painfully, at age 8. But maybe the difference is that I had a grounding in Japanese writing by age 5 as well as English? I don't know. I've had people tell me that Cyrillic is horrendous to learn to read, but I had little trouble with it.

How are you at foreign languages?

[ellen-fremedon.livejournal.com]

I can pick up a reading knowledge very quickly; fluency in listening comes much later and in speaking pretty much never.

And I had no difficulty learning to read the Greek alphabet, and picked up Devanagari quickly but also forgot it quickly when I dropped Sanskrit, though I can and have reacquired it with practice. I've had no luck at all with repeated attempts to learn Arabic script, though, and I think its being a cursive script even in typeface has a lot to do with that.

[trinker.livejournal.com]

I've managed to learn to pick (with a reference at hand) through various writing systems, but like you, Arabic eludes me. Russian cursive is confusing as well, but I don't have a problem with the French version of cursive. I don't know what all that means, as a pattern, but it's fascinating.