[goda90]

Surely you can't mean without teaching. It'd be pretty hard to learn to read without someone teaching you.

Perhaps you mean an experiment where a child is raised by a blind caregiver who never talks about reading. Given full access to children's books and other media but no one to tell them about reading, will they pick it up?

[wapapaloobop]

Children learn to read because it enhances whatever they are most interested in. At present this will usually be video games.

Quite apart from the moral aspect, which is usually ignored, this negates the standard argument that "reading is extremely useful for all sorts of activities, therefore it must be taught".

Of course, adults may help and answer questions when needed.

[iopq]

In Russian it's much easier. After someone learns the letter shapes, they're able to read anything. The pronunciation is only ambiguous in terms of stress.

[bzbarsky]

I used to say this, until I actually tried teaching someone to read in Russian. Then I ran into all sorts of weird cases I had never noticed: "ничего" and similar, various silent letters, etc.

I mean, I agree that it's much simpler than English in terms of going from written letterforms to pronounced word, but there's still a bunch of weirdness floating around.