Analogies: Set 4

Learning versus Learning the Alphabet

Children in the first grade have already been exposed to the alphabet, but as they try to draw the letters they tremble and are unsure, but the letters are still recognizable. You may think you already know how to move your body, but if you remember you first Taekwondo class, then remember how awkward and clumsy you were. Your front kick was sloppy but still recognizable as a front kick.

After children learn to write the letters, they begin to put them together into words. As Taekwondo students, as we learn the basic techniques, we learn to put them together into combinations.

Children learn that some letters are silent and not pronounced, while other letters have a special accent on them. As Taekwondo students, we learn the same thing. Some parts of a technique are vital but they are downplayed so as not to be noticeable, while other parts are highly stressed and readily apparent.

After you learn one language, when you hear another language, you may notice some of the same characteristics, or you may notice some subtle differences in pronunciation, such as the h in Spanish. You may notice confusion in some languages between some letters, such as between s and c, or the difference in pronunciation in Italian when the c is followed by an h or a vowel. As Taekwondo students, you may notice the way other martial art styles perform their basic techniques. They are not necessarily wrong, it just a different way of doing the same thing.

If you know more than one alphabet, you will see that related alphabets have letters whose shape is very similar, if not the same, like the A in Cyrillic, Latin, and Greek alphabets. Some words have the same meaning in different languages. If you know more than one martial art, you may notice some similarities between them, even when they claim to be new or different.