I'm wondering if anyone knows of any online (or CD-ROM based) tutorials to teach the various scripts of the various languages which don't use the 'standard' Roman alphabet.
I'm particularly interested in learning how to
write -- rather than just read -- these scripts, but I'd be happy with almost anything at this point.
So here's what I'd personally be interested in learning via some sort of computer-based training:
Korean (read only)
Russian (handwritten cursive script as well as the printed letters)
Simplified Chinese
Japanese (very close to traditional Chinese)
Hindi (read only)
Arabic (read and write)
The reason I'm interested in computer-based instruction is because I would like something that (or someone who) would grade the quality of my own writing (or reading), and there don't seem to be many humans with a great deal of interest in doing that.
As for why I want to learn all these different scripts, in most cases these are a prelude to learning the associated language (although I included Korean because I'd just like to be able to order from a Korean menu for a change).
Regarding I/O devices, though, there's an obvious problem. I can read without having to enter any text into the computer (or I can translate what I see into the Roman alphabet), but writing is a challenge of a different order, and I don't know of any elegant solution to the problem. My Chinese friends enter text into the computer my typing in the pinyin, then picking the correct character from a pop-up menu. Not only is this pretty far removed from the act of writing characters with a pen or pencil (the only Chinese who really excel at entering text into the computer in this way seem to be under twenty years old - probably because the translation into pinyin is not automatic for older Chinese), but it really just reduces to a reading exercise: it doesn't train me to be able to write the characters when I'm away from the computer.
The best I/O device might be something like the stylus for a PDA, entering the characters onto a PDA screen. If someone knows of something like that, I would cheerfully buy a new PDA, just in order to have that. The software would have to evaluate and perhaps even critique my writing, though, and not just attempt to recognize what I write and pop up choices for what I 'really meant to say'.
So, does anyone know of something like that? It seems that this might even be a good business idea -- the older Chinese I mentioned would certainly find this a far better way to enter Chinese text into a computer than the way it is done now.