I grew up with the Latin alphabet, the one you’re reading now. Over time, I learned the pairings so well that I don’t really “read” English anymore. Like you, I skim and my brain fills the gaps. We know which letters belong together and which don’t. “Fr” makes sense: Friday, frustrated, frantic. “Fq” doesn’t. That’s what fluency feels like: moving at the speed of pattern recognition, not doubt.
Zulu
When I started brushing up on Zulu, I noticed the same ease. Zulu also uses the Latin alphabet, so I wasn’t burdened with an entirely new script. Even when the words were unfamiliar, the shapes were not. I could lean on the old heuristics: this letter can follow that letter, these vowels usually behave this way. My exposure to the language in South Africa helped too. I’d heard enough words to know the rhythm of what “looked right” or “sounded right.” Igama lami nguMo (“my name is Mo). Ngihlala eLondon. Reading and recalling Zulu felt like reconnecting with a familiar neighborhood: a few new streets, but the same traffic lights.
Arabic
Arabic was nothing like that. Firstly, it’s read right to left (←). The script also bends and reshapes itself, depending on whether a letter is at the beginning, middle, or end of a word. Take the word for “smart,” ذكي (dhe-kii). I had to identify each symbol, map it to a sound, attach it to the next one, assemble the sounds, then search my memory for meaning. Five steps where English gave me one. The little dots and diacritics made it harder for a first-timer. Each word carried heavy transaction costs. The only breakthrough came when I let myself trust the pairings. I noticed that ذ (dha) and ك (ka) often appeared together in words like ذكي (notice the ka looks different in the middle). Once I locked that pairing in, I could skim faster. Even if I was occasionally wrong, I was moving again.
Hebrew
Hebrew added another layer. Like Arabic, it’s read right to left (←). But with no vowels written in the basic script, I found myself second-guessing constantly. For example, take the three letters ספר (s-p-r). Without vowel marks, they could be read in multiple ways: sper (book), spira (count), or siper (told). The consonants stay the same, but the meaning shifts entirely depending on context. Again, caution made me crawl. But the more words I saw, the more I trusted the shape of the consonant clusters. I didn’t need to solve every word letter by letter. I could let my brain fill in the vowels, like native speakers do.
Mandarin
Mandarin pushed the analogy further. There, the script isn’t even an alphabet. Characters are bundles of meaning, each one a box of strokes to be memorized. For example, “smart” translates to 聪明 (cōngmíng, pronounced tsong-miing). At first, I tried to dissect every stroke, tracing the radicals and counting the lines. But this was unbearable for speed. Only when I started trusting the whole image as a single unit — a pairing of shapes that usually traveled together — did reading stop feeling slow. Fluency was less about solving and more about trusting recognition.
Driving
I ran into the same problem outside language. Recently, I converted my driver’s license. During lessons, I caught myself scanning every move on the road, estimating what other drivers might do instead of trusting what they would do. Years earlier, I’d been rear-ended at a red light by a drunk teenager with no license. I survived, but carried the trauma. On the road, that memory surfaced as constant second-guessing. My instructor grew frustrated: “assume people will follow the rules, because most people do most of the time.” He was right, but it was hard to accept. My cynicism was slowing me down — not just in passing the test, but in traffic itself. By hesitating when others moved, I became the obstacle. When I let go and trusted the flow of drivers, my mental bandwidth freed up. I could think about the journey, not just the risk of collision.
Life
The connection to life became obvious. In English and Zulu, I was an optimist: I trusted pairings, skimmed, and assumed meaning would hold. In Arabic, Hebrew, Mandarin, and on the road, I was a pessimist: I doubted every letter, every symbol, every driver. The cost was fluency, speed, and joy.
Because that’s what cynicism is: scanning every letter, every time, just in case. You avoid mistakes, but at the price of movement. You protect yourself, but at the expense of fluency in living. Optimism, by contrast, is heuristic pairing. You assume things will go the way they usually do. You trust that “fr” belongs, that “fq” doesn’t, that the pairings of life will hold most of the time. So you move faster. You stumble sometimes, but you keep going.
Life, of course, is not Duolingo. Words in an app are curated. Mistakes are rare and recoverable. The real world is messier, and failures carry heavier consequences. In those cases, a little pessimism is necessary. You can’t skim your way through a high-stakes contract or a medical diagnosis. Some words must be scanned, not skimmed or assumed. As the Russians say: doveryai, no proveryai (доверяй, но проверяй). Trust, but verify.
But when pessimism becomes a habit, the transaction costs pile up. Every decision takes longer, every relationship feels riskier, and opportunity drags with hesitation. You never reach fluency, because you’re always solving from scratch, never trusting the patterns you’ve already learned.
Cynicism protects you but slows you down. Optimism is risky but speeds things up. The real skill is knowing where to spend the transaction costs. When to check every letter vs. when to trust the pairing. When to crawl, and when to fly.
Mo Shehu, Ph.D. writes and speaks. You can find him online @shehuphd everywhere.