Writing systems
Today I
will introduce to you the English language. By discussing the writing system, I
hope to shed light on how language is dynamic, how oral language changes but
how written language is so slow in catching up. At the end of the discussion
you should be able to understand the frustration of a dyslexic reader.
Let’s
begin by understanding the written language, written words are spoken language
represented by visual form and written language can be represented in two main
ways:
The sound
of the language,
The
meaning
Or a
combination of both.
English
as an alphabetic language it uses sounds of letters as visual symbols, we call
these phonemes. On the other hand, Modern Yi uses syllable size sounds not
small units of sounds such as phonemes.
Chinese
dialects such as Mandarin are an example where there is very little sound
representation in the visual system, these types of languages are called
logographic languages. They use meaning as a way of transmitting information. For
instance the character for the word book and library
書 圖書館
book library
Language
Dynamics
Language
is dynamic, we say oral language changes while written language changes at a
much slower pace. This is seen particularly in an old language like English.
Let’s consider the word ‘book’ which suggest a long vowel sound, in old English
‘book’ was pronounced with a longer vowel perhaps sounding like ‘boook’.
The
middle ages came with a big vowel shift, vowels changed their sounds, their
sounds became shorter, the oral language changed but the written language
stayed the same.
The frustration
of a dyslexic reader
I am sure
all English teachers would agree with me in saying English has a lot of
irregularities. We shall compare a list of pseudo-words (nonsense words) and
irregular words to demonstrate this:
Irregular words
pseudo-words
bush mum
biscuit buk
young riz
might vej
height zoc
court zuz
thought jup
You were
easily able to manipulate the pseudo-words by activating your phonological
decoding route, but if you were to use this same route in reading irregular
words the pronunciation comes out wrong altogether. You would actually need
your direct access path to complete this task! In contrast newer languages like
Finish have a letter sound relationship, they are more consistent. Their letter
sound correspondences are nice and predictable. Whereas English is much less
regular, it has had vowel sifts because of the introduction of new words form
other languages therefore it has become much less transparent resulting in big
implications on children having difficulties to read.
It is hard and frustrating for a dyslectic
reader when the letter and sound correspondences or the rules are not
consistent. Evidence has shown that there is just more to learn from a language
like English….
Acknowledgments: University of London and Dyslexia International
(Supporting children with learning disabilities)
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