(06-09-2013, 09:55 PM)Echo Wrote: This poll has me a bit curious, how does one speak and write, but not read? Â Does this imply that a person(race?) is self taught in such an informal way that only they can comprehend what they write? Â Or is there any way to interoperate this?
I think I'm actually very interested in trying to put this element into my character~
Okay, so I'll expand upon this.
There are four basic communication skills. There are tons of subdivisions, depending on which linguist you ask, but basically they are:
Listening (receptive) Â Â Reading (receptive)
Speaking (productive) Â Writing (productive)
So you have two pairs of receptive and productive skills. Listening and Speaking are considered inherent communication skills - that is, they come naturally and without much assistance. Whereas Reading and Writing are taught communication skills, which require a subject to be taught and be immersed in an environment that encourages reading and writing in the target language.
In general, it is much easier to hone your receptive skills than your productive ones. Taking humans into example, one normally learns how to Listen and then Speak. Reading and Writing come after and must be taught.
Note that this only applies to a subject's first language. Secondary language acquisition is virtually completely taught and not inherent, since subjects must make proper associations between their first language and the second language to understand the second language. This does not apply to true bilinguals, however.
EDIT: I see your point Echo. Upon reading the poll again, I realize that a few of the options make no sense for a first language speaker or even secondary language speakers.
"Writing Only" doesn't make sense because in order to write, one must be able to associate the written word with either the spoken one, the heard one, and/or the read one - unless the character is associating the written word with the equivalent word in a different language, as one might do in secondary language acquisition.
"Speaking Only" doesn't make sense for much of the same reasons above. I guess this situation would be possible for people going through secondary language acquisition, but I highly doubt it.
"Can read and speak" implies the character cannot Write or Listen. While the inability to Write is understandable, the inability to Listen while still being able to Speak does not make sense unless the person is deaf - even then, it barely makes any sense (the subject would not have any way to associate the word with the proper sound). However, this case would be possible during secondary language acquisition (People learning Japanese in a classroom tend to learn how to Read and Speak as they learn how to Listen - Writing comes last.)
"Can Speak and Write" implies the character cannot perform the two receptive skills needed to perform the these two productive ones, which also does not make sense, unless we were also including secondary language acquisition, even then, this situation is practically impossible.
