[Izkata]

> In Russia and Ukraine pretty much every child can read by the time they enter the first grade.

In the US too, reading is generally handled in Kindergarten, the year before first grade. If your parents didn't teach you before that, like mine did.

> Meanwhile, when I was learning English there basically was one spelling rule: memorize.

There are rules though, that we're ad-hoc taught as kids, or just absorb through exposure. Just because there's a lot of exceptions doesn't mean they don't exist. Here's an attempt at listing them out: https://www.zompist.com/spell.html

[cyberax]

> In the US too, reading is generally handled in Kindergarten, the year before first grade.

I keep hearing that students in the US struggle with reading. With something like 60% of students not being able to read proficiently.

Inlcuding a truly stunning case of a valedictorian high school graduate who couldn't read: https://www.kktv.com/2025/02/28/former-high-school-honors-st... Or the "whole language" approach to reading, which sounds completely bonkers to me.

[Izkata]

The "whole word" teaching method only got popular in the past few decades and is probably the main cause of stuff like that.