I would be amazed if someone who were illiterate, not even able to read and write in his native language, were able to learn to read in adulthood and on top of that learn a new language. But is this really possible?
I have this video of Matt vs. Japan interviewing Ken Cannon, titled “illiterate boy speaks perfect Japanese”. The title claims that Ken was illiterate in his native language before learning Japanese. Is this title accurate, or is it just false clickbait? Is it possible to learn a foreign language when he can’t read his native one? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7Pcpi5kr3c
3 comments
yeah it’s possible
in the past people learned to write in Latin a lot, but mostly their first language was not Latin, and most bodies of work were not in their native (vulgar) tongue
see? and that was hundreds of years ago, this is of course possible now
I listened to the whole interview several months ago, and I think the “illiterate” part was referring to him not being able to read Japanese. He talks about having printed out romaji word lists, so he would have been able to read the western alphabet just fine.
imo, it’s just a clickbaity title.
Didn’t these guys made a scam together about a secret method on learning Japanese and it turned out to be shadowing lol.