Sold A Story - How adult politics created an American illiteracy epidemic

[Nemra]

31 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

The real reason kids are illiterate is because they are lazy and the schooling system is not strict enough to beat the laziness out of them.

Firstly, parents should not let kids use phones and play video games the whole day, and schools should ban phones entirely until a certain age.

Beating kids with a stick must be the last resort, however, kids must sense teachers' seriousness. Teachers must inspire kids or be loving towards them with a serious attitude.

[Thought Art]

17 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

English words are just kanji made of letters.

You can't sound out English words because English spelling is nonsensical.

This is false, and doesn't take much to show that... So no, what you are saying is false. Also, English isn't chinese our words aren't Kanji. You could treat them as such but you are limiting your understanding of the language.

[Leo Gura]

@Thought Art You are not trusting enough that the mind will figure it out along the way.

You are introducing formality which isn't necessary.

As if the mind is so stupid that it won't understand that "tion" is pronounced "shun" while memorizing words.

If the mind worked like that we would all be retarded.

Edited Sunday at 10:02 PM by Leo Gura

[Basman]

Reading academic philosophical texts makes you feel like you don't know how to read as an adult. 

[Leo Gura]

Academic philosophers get paid by how much they confuse you. The more they confuse you, the more you will depend on them for answers, creating a neverending career for themselves.

Edited 16 hours ago by Leo Gura

[Basman]

8 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Acedemic philosophers get paid by how much they confuse you. The more they confuse you, the more you will depend on them for answers, creating a neverending career for themselves.

It's a shame because it makes academic philosophy as a study unbearably tedious. It makes philosophy in general seem like drivel since academia culturally has all of the prestige.

It's a grift that university is treated as the be-all and end-all of knowledge when they are so corrupt in terms of incentives. People just drink the kool-aid. It should be obvious that philosophy isn't inherently confusing stuff. 

[Leo Gura]

Academia is a self-licking ice cream cone.

If you wanna learn philosophy just read Wikipedia pages. Saves you all the tedious BS.

Edited 16 hours ago by Leo Gura

[Lyubov]

Phonetics is so damn important. Trying to learn a second language taught me this. I struggled a ton and eventually shelved learning Portuguese because my phonetics were so weak. 

[Porphyry Fedotov]

On 12/14/2025 at 6:54 AM, Leo Gura said:

Yeah, I saw that recently.

People are getting so lazy they are too lazy to learn to read.

They are still teaching English wrong. The right way to learn English is to memorize every single word the way Chinese memorize their kanji.

English words are just kanji made of letters.

Memorize 5,000 words and you will know English.

You can't sound out English words because English spelling is nonsensical.

It makes sense if English is your second language. For the record, I was learning English the same way. Each time I would stumble upon a new word, I would memorise its spelling as well. Like Kanji. But is it sustainable for the native English speakers? It makes more sense to change the spelling system and make it simpler and more similar to the Russian or Spanish ones

[Elliott]

23 minutes ago, Lyubov said:

Phonetics is so damn important. Trying to learn a second language taught me this. I struggled a ton and eventually shelved learning Portuguese because my phonetics were so weak. 

To read it, or speak it?

[DocWatts]

14 hours ago, Basman said:

Reading academic philosophical texts makes you feel like you don't know how to read as an adult. 

I'm not exaggerating when I say that learning to decode 'Being & Time' was like learning a second language - this is NOT a credit to its author. Heiddegar was a deep thinker but rubbish at communicating his insights in a straightforward manner.

Most academic philosophy texts are written for other professional academics. In 80-90% of cases I would recommend finding someone who's already decoded these texts into something that's intelligible for normal humans.

No need to reinvent the wheel, unless you're doing so for a very deliberate purpose (like if you're writing a book on 'everyday phenomenology').

Edited 13 hours ago by DocWatts

[DocWatts]

40 minutes ago, Elliott said:

To read it, or speak it?

Phonetics is foundational for learning to read phonetic languages like English. We learn to speak before we learn to read, phonetics let's us decode words by sounding them out into the spoken language.

[Elliott]

7 minutes ago, DocWatts said:

Phonetics is foundational for learning to read phonetic languages like English. We learn to speak before we learn to read, phonetics let's us decode words by sounding them out into the spoken language.

Can you decode any of these words with phonetics? (Don't use google)

Adynamia

Crepuscular

Impignorate

Petrichor

Abibliophobia

Callipygian

Élucubration

Floccinaucinihilipilification

Kakorrhaphiophobia

Edited 13 hours ago by Elliott

[Thought Art]

15 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

@Thought Art You are not trusting enough that the mind will figure it out along the way.

You are introducing formality which isn't necessary.

As if the mind is so stupid that it won't understand that "tion" is pronounced "shun" while memorizing words.

If the mind worked like that we would all be retarded.

I am sure you can learn that way. 
 

Me, my sister, brother and my sisters boyfriend all struggled to learn to read the way you describe. We all were tutored to learn with phonetics. 
 

Learning phonetics allowed me to read at a grade 12+ level by grade 6.
 

Phonetics provided a deeper mastery and intuitive understanding of how English letters and phonetics words actually work. This meant I don’t memorize words at all I know how to spell just from hearing it. 
 

And, apparently studies back me up. 
 

However, I assume most adults don’t know English phonetics like you. I’m sure after massive exposure to words they over time developed intuitive pattern recognition. 

However, your previous comment of how English letters are non-sensical is revealing of how it isn’t the case you actually understand how English letters works. When, I actually do because I learned it. 
 

We are both right to varying degrees. However, I stand my understanding based on phonetics is superior.

Edited 12 hours ago by Thought Art

[DocWatts]

25 minutes ago, Elliott said:

Can you decode any of these words with phonetics? (Don't use google)

Adynamia

Crepuscular

Impignorate

Petrichor

Abibliophobia

Callipygian

Élucubration

Floccinaucinihilipilification

Kakorrhaphiophobia

The point of phonetics is to connect written words to spoken words that are already in your vocabulary. It's not a replacement for building a vocabulary.

Maybe an example would make this more clear.

Think of an 8 year old knows what a porcupine is. If shown a picture he could point to it and say "porcupine!"

Then he comes across the word porcupine in a book. If he hasn't been taught phonetics and hasn't encountered the word already, there's no way for him to connect it to a word in the spoken language that he already knows.

Beginning readers who lack phonetics aren't struggling to decode Floccinaucinihilipilification - they're struggling with the written version of spoken words that they already know. Like confusing 'invite' and 'invade' for example, because they're the same length and both start with 'i' (they use this example in the podcast). Encountering the written word 'automobile', knowing what the spoken word means, but being unable to decipher it on page, because they've memorized 'car' but not 'automobile'.

Edited 12 hours ago by DocWatts

[Elliott]

Just now, DocWatts said:

The point of phonetics is to connect written words to spoken words that are already in your vocabulary. It's not a replacement for building a vocabulary.

Maybe an example would make this more clear.

Think of an 8 year old knows what a porcupine is. If shown a picture he could point to it and say "porcupine!"

Then he comes across the word porcupine in a book. If he hasn't been taught phonetics and hasn't encountered the word already, there's no way for him to connect it to a word in the spoken language that he already knows.

Exactly, it's only for 'low hanging fruit' words, it's not "decoding" English, it's cheating.

[Thought Art]

23 minutes ago, Elliott said:

Can you decode any of these words with phonetics? (Don't use google)

Adynamia

Crepuscular

Impignorate

Petrichor

Abibliophobia

Callipygian

Élucubration

Floccinaucinihilipilification

Kakorrhaphiophobia

I wasn’t claiming with phonetics alone you can know what every words means. But you can sound it out, and if a word uses root words or other patterns it’s easier to recognize them making it easier to know what it means. Obviously, like I’ve shared definitions are important especially for these rare words.

[Thought Art]

3 minutes ago, DocWatts said:

The point of phonetics is to connect written words to spoken words that are already in your vocabulary. It's not a replacement for building a vocabulary.

Maybe an example would make this more clear.

Think of an 8 year old knows what a porcupine is. If shown a picture he could point to it and say "porcupine!"

Then he comes across the word porcupine in a book. If he hasn't been taught phonetics and hasn't encountered the word already, there's no way for him to connect it to a word in the spoken language that he already knows.

No, they need not be in your library. With phonetics you could sound out and pronounce all his words he shared without knowing the word prior or even its meaning. 

[Hezbollah]

1 minute ago, Thought Art said:

No, they need not be in your library. With phonetics you could sound out and pronounce all his words he shared without knowing the word prior or even its meaning. 

Did you pay off your dept alreeadY?

[Thought Art]

@Elliott If you are able to sound out every single word while reading a book with many words you’ve never seen before it makes it a lot easier because you can sound out the word, and keep reading for deeper context. Being able to read every words makes things way easier. 
 

When I speak of phonetics I also speak of the spelling of the word instead of the memorizing of words. This means for example a word with “ology” you could know it’s a study of something. 
 

But, the main skill in learning phonetics is being able to spell any word you hear with high accuracy and being able to read and sound out every word. This is a more robust and complete form of reading and writing.