Have you ever known anyone who was illiterate?

seamus

I can well believe the 25% figure for people who have difficulty reading and writing, as I know plenty of people who wouldn't read anything more than a bus timetable or a street sign since they left school. Writing? Signing for something, at best, would be the extent of it.
Although we learn it early on, reading and writing still needs to be practiced or it will be mostly lost. There are plenty of people who have (and still do) leave school with a very fundamental grasp of literacy, but start basic jobs which require no literacy and so the skill is mostly lost over time.

That said, I've never knowingly encountered anyone who was functionally or actually illiterate. But as others have pointed out, they're often very good as disguising it so perhaps I have but just never noticed.

Chuck Stone

Dont fuget to fead de dahg

That's how dogs spell.

Smart dog how he tricked ye into feedng him again.

phasers

There were a couple of traveller girls in my secondary school that were in some reading group thing I was forced to volunteer for, and they literally could not read. I was going through the alphabet and really basic words, and all they could write was their names.

cocoshovel

Yes, there was at least 3 in my class during secondary school. They were the biggest thick ****ing dopes I have ever come across in my life. One of them once asked "How do you spell dawn? is it dan?" To which the teacher replied "no thats how you spell your name".

The other one quite ironically asked how to spell "illiterate" once. I'm pretty one of them was inbred too.

Birneybau

Was at an atm before, this big guy behind me, I thought "Oh Fcuk".

He asked me to hang on when I was finished. Gave me his card and asked me if I'd check his balance. Put his card in, he told me his pin number, I checked, told him 9e or something.

He was delighted, had enough for a pack of smokes. The guy was in his 30s...

stovelid

Yes, I've met a few. One a neighbour of my parents and others through previous voluntary work.

Jumpy

Birneybau wrote: »

Was at an atm before, this big guy behind me, I thought "Oh Fcuk".

He asked me to hang on when I was finished. Gave me his card and asked me if I'd check his balance. Put his card in, he told me his pin number, I checked, told him 9e or something.

He was delighted, had enough for a pack of smokes. The guy was in his 30s...

How did he intend to get a tenner out of the machine?

stovelid

Jumpy wrote: »

How did he intend to get a tenner out of the machine?

Checking his balance so he could use his debit card in the shop maybe...

phasers

Jumpy wrote: »

How did he intend to get a tenner out of the machine?

Maybe he was going to pay in with his card?

Faolchu

yes, my aunt cant read or write. my father had really poor spelling and basic reading, as does my mother.

also my handwriting is extremly poor and i'm in my 30s. I tend to have my wife write things for me where possible, fill in application forms, address envelopes etc. if i've to write to anyone i tend to type it. there's time where i try write words but it feels like my hand doesnt make the correct movement or doesnt get teh right signal or something and just squiggles comes out and i have to go back and redo it. during my exams in college i used pencil all the time so i could go back and rewrite stuff more legible.

Bipolar Joe

I always wondered, how do you wind up not being able to write if you can read? I always figured that if you could read the words, you could understand them, so you could replicate them. Not being ignorant, here, I just don't understand how that works.

My Uncle has severe trouble with reading and writing. He's a major conspiracy theorist, really into all that, and keeps notes on everything. When you look through them, from oldest to newest, the change is pretty amazing. He still struggles something terrible, but he went from not being able to read at all to being able to keep all these notes.

Faolchu

Lollipops23 wrote: »

He's lately started being able to write cards, inc an anniversary one for his wife

probably one of the best things she recieved from him too.

seamus

Bipolar Joe wrote: »

I always wondered, how do you wind up not being able to write if you can read? I always figured that if you could read the words, you could understand them, so you could replicate them. Not being ignorant, here, I just don't understand how that works.

Actually it's fairly simple.

Humans are great at pattern matching. Fantastic in fact. This is what marketing branding is based on. You see an image, and you instantly associate it with something. This is effectively how reading works. In fact, words don't even need to be spelled correctly for us to recognise them, or even the gist of them.

We're not quite so good at recalling patterns accurately. So while you can recognise the word "government" and understand what it means, writing it down requires you to remember exactly what letters it contains and in what order. Obviously it's a little more complex than that - you remember sounds and construct those sounds out of letters and piece them together - but you get the idea. So while someone may be capable of reading something to some degree, recalling the shapes and recalling them accurately is whole other kettle of fish.
I can read French, to a medicore degree. Could probably stumble through a newspaper article, thanks to Leaving Cert french. But write it down? Not a hope.

A simpler way to think about it is in logos. Think about a logo which has no text - the Apple logo. When you see it, you know it. You instantly think "That's the Apple company". In fact, you can recognise it distinctly from a picture of an apple, or a different drawing of an apple.
So it's a very distinctive logo. But right now, without going and looking at the logo, do you think you could draw the apple logo with enough accuracy that another person would looking at it and think of Apple the corporation, rather than just look at it and think, "That's an apple"? I couldn't.

Birneybau

Jumpy wrote: »

How did he intend to get a tenner out of the machine?

stovelid wrote: »

Checking his balance so he could use his debit card in the shop maybe...

phasers wrote: »

Maybe he was going to pay in with his card?

Yep, it doubled as a Laser card.

He must have had to ask somebody in the shop to enter his pin...

rainbowdrop

My aunt is 60, and never learned to read or write beyond the standard of a 6-7 year old. She told me that when she was in school she used to regularly get beaten by the nun's who taught her for being 'thick' and not understanding. It never really affected her life I don't think, she just used to get her husband/sons/daughters to write letters, fill out forms or read the paper for her when needed. She works as a domestic in a hospital so probably literacy skills are not of high importance for her job!

She reckons now that she was dyslexic, but dyslexia wasn't heard of in 1950's Ireland when she was in school, so she was written off as stupid. If that was nowadays she would have received extra classes to help her learn.I wonder if a lot of the older people in Ireland that never learned to read or write just had undiagnosed dyslexia?

mfceiling

Most of my "friends" on facebook

Cud hav dun wit 1 more hor n bed
C u on frid nite Hun
Yous r all mad yokes

This is even posted by university educated people.

inkwell

22% in 2006! :eek: Thats awful lot of people. How is this possible?

http://www.eurotopics.net/en/home/presseschau/archiv/results/archiv_article/ARTICLE6730-Astonishing-illiteracy-in-Ireland

DanTheMan91

A very good friend of mine left school very early so he is not the best at reading and writing. I just got use to it after awhile and now when he asks me to spell something I do so without even thinking.

Ally Dick

Chuck Stone wrote: »

Big deal.

Yes it is a big deal. It looks dreadful. I also doubt you would get an A in English in your Leaving if you mis spell "lose" in it !

charlemont

A former cell-mate couldn't read or write and he had no intention of ever learning either, So I used to write and read his letters for him, Absolutely hilarious stuff id be writing for him, Crazy guy, He was what people would describe not as a Traveller but a Knacker, Coated in scars, Rob anything that's not nailed down and had no fear of authority, he even escaped from Limerick Regional Hospital in handcuffs!! And it gets funnier, He made his way to a halting site in Tipperary and used a con-saw to cut the cuffs almost ripping his arm apart in the process. Same bloke would go around Weston and Tipp Town on a horse.

I heard he is doing ten years now but I doubt he will ever bother to learn.

hatrickpatrick

Closest thing I know to illiteracy would be extreme dyslexia, where someone has to underline what they read with their finger and even then takes half an hour to string a paragraph together.

It's weird because dyslexia is so common, but only when you really think about it do you realize how awful it must be to have it. In the information age, reading disabilities must make like ridiculously difficult.

Chuck Stone

Ironically one time this guy asked me to spell 'ironic' saying 'cos you can spell good' and ironically I spelled ironic wrong.

Ironic or what?

Giselle

cosmicfart wrote: »

There was a guy i knew in school in 5th year who could not read. He had a terrible stutter when trying to read, not your average stutter mind, he use to pronounce words like 'The' easily enough but when he came to some Big words he use to make what can only be described as a gasping for breath sounds as he tried to pronounce the word, it was the funniest sound ive ever heard and to this day still makes my chuckle when I thing about it

I'd say being laughed at like that while he struggled so much was a big part of the problem. Must have destroyed him to have people chuckling at him struggle. Poor guy.

geetar

the only time i met an illiterate was in a spar close to where i live.


he was an old man, around 70 id say, and came up to me with a shopping list that said

"milk"
"dictionary"


he said he was trying to learn, and accepted the funny irony that he couldnt read dictionary!

Ally Dick

I used to work in a bank. Some travellers who came in couldn't sign the withdrawal slip. One fella always said "I'm no scholar sir". I used to feel sorry for them

El Siglo

Thread reminds me of this scene from the Wire. Brother Mouzone what a legend of a character!;)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGGrvn44LNA

Ickle Magoo

seamus wrote: »

Actually it's fairly simple.

Humans are great at pattern matching. Fantastic in fact.

So good sometimes the pattern is matched to a meaning without necessarily repeating the actual word they are reading as a literate person would...I've seen one student who while reading certain words, says something else which retains the general meaning as they have learnt it; such as reading the word "double" but saying "twice". They can read a paragraph and understand the majority while substituting at least a word a sentence with their own inbuilt thesaurus.

It is amazing how many coping skills people develop but illiteracy is such a huge barrier to so many things.

charlemont

FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO HAVE TROUBLE SPELLING*** !!!!TRY THIS!!!!AOCDRNDICG TO RSCHEEARCH AT CMABRIGDE UINERVTISY, IT DSENO'T MTAETR WAHT OERDR THE LTTERES IN A WROD ARE, THE OLNY IPROAMTNT TIHNG IS TAHT THE FRSIT AND LSAT LTEETR BE IN THE RGHIT PCLAE. TIHS IS BCUSEAE THE HUAMN MNID DEOS NOT RAED ERVEY LTETER BY ISTLEF, BUT THE WROD AS A WLOHE. IF YOU CAN RAED TIHS, PSOT IT TO YUOR WLAL. OLNY 55% OF PLEPOE CAN

oppenheimer1

There are plenty of posters on boards that clearly can't read...

Fart

My granny is. She had to drop out of school at a young age to look after her young sisters and brother after her father died in a boating accident and her mother worked to bring in money. After that she pretty much worked without the need to read or write. My grandad, when he was alive made life easier for her.

Now we help her. She gets along grand though.