Maybe this topic has come up before, but I’d like to ask for suggestions or ideas on how to start learning a language when you’re not familiar with its alphabet.
I’ve been studying Spanish for a while, and it helps that English and Spanish share the same alphabet, so I can usually figure out how each word sounds. I’d love to learn Korean and Arabic in the future, but I have no idea how their writing systems sound.
Would you suggest starting by learning the alphabet first, or beginning with listening to mini-stories and learning the letters later?
Learn the alphabet phonetically. You can Anki for this. Try to find a deck where the letters are shown in combination with sound files. Transliteration can be very misleading.
Once you have a basic set of letters memorized, you can start working with simple sentences. Seeing the letters in words helps memorizing them.
I would avoid the mini stories alltogether, as they don’t reflect the culture. A good workbook and a beginner podcast are good starting points.
I would learn the alphabet first, it is an easy win, a mini milestone with a very clear goal post but no harm I think trying to listen to stories at the same time.
I also used ANKI to learn the alphabet. Other than just the individual character I also created random groups of characters card to test myself and also my name (so I can spell out my name) and some common thing around me, Also sang the alphabet song to my then newborn kid to help him fall asleep.
For Korean in particular, the writing system is really well thought out and there are some good youtube explanations you can use in parallel to assist your memorization.
One example is on Prof Yoon’s channel. I didn’t keep up with Korean, but I was able to learn the alphabet quickly with his help. There are probably many other good ones as well. Have fun!