Newsgroup: it.cultura.linguistica.inglese
Titolo: Dislessia e inglese - curiosità -

Qualche curiosità dal mondo della scienza...
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/03/010316073551.htm
Dyslexia Study In Science Highlights The Impact Of English, French, And
Italian Writing Systems
Dyslexia is increasingly believed to be a disorder that has a genetic and
biological origin; a deficit in phonological (language sound) processing is
thought to be the causal link between brain abnormality and reading
difficulties. However, it is an established fact that countries that have a
more complex or irregular system of writing, or orthography, have a higher
incidence of dyslexia, for example, a study of the prevalence of dyslexia in
10-year-old children in Italy was found to be half that of the USA.
Why is this? Do the brains of dyslexics across different languages have
different processing problems?
Now, by studying adult dyslexics across three language groups--French,
Italian, and English--an International research team, directed by Professor
Eraldo Paulesu, University of Milan Bicocca, has found that this is not the
case.
The results of their research, published in the 16th March issue of Science,
show for the first time that the neurological basis for dyslexia is the same
across French, English and Italian languages, but that the disorder
manifests itself in different ways according to the regularity of the
orthography.
English and French are both languages that are said to have an irregular
orthography. In English, there are 1,120 ways of representing 40 sounds
(phonemes) using different letter combinations (graphemes). Mapping letters
to word sounds is ambiguous; this is illustrated by pairs of words such as
mint/pint, cough/bough, clove/love, where you can only read each pair
correctly if you have previously learnt how they should sound. By contrast,
in Italian there is no such ambiguity and 33 graphemes are sufficient to
represent the 25 phonemes. This means that the same letter groups in Italian
almost always represent the same unique sound, which makes the written langu
age logical and easy to read.
Senior author, Professor Uta Frith, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience,
University College London, commented: "This research proves the existence of
a universal neurological basis for dyslexia. It also highlights the impact
that the complexity of orthography can have on reading proficiency of
dyslexics and therefore the severity of the disease and the ease of
diagnosis. This means that in the Italian population there may be hidden
cases of dyslexia. On the other hand, otherwise mild cases of dyslexia may
appear far worse in irregular orthographies like that of English or French."
The researchers showed that French, English and Italian dyslexics all did
equally poorly in tests that involved phonological short-term memory,
whereas Italian dyslexics performed better in reading tests, in particular
achieving fewer errors than their English and French counterparts. In order
to determine if this disparity had a neurological basis, the researchers
used positron emission tomography (PET) to visualise regional cerebral blood
flow, and hence neural activity, resulting from exposure to printed
material. Their results prove that French, English, and Italian dyslexics
have the same difficulties in carrying out phonological processing tasks and
reduced activation of the left temporal lobe during reading tasks.
"It is important to make the distinction between orthography and language,"
commented Professor Paulesu. "The complexity of the English and French
written languages stems from historical events that have introduced
spellings from other languages, while in comparison, Italian has remained
quite pure. The addition of the data from the French subjects reinforces
findings that languages with complex orthographies are difficult for both
dyslexics and non-dyslexics to read. There is an argument for reforming
complex orthographies to improve literacy problems in these languages as
attempted by the U.S. Webster reform, which simplified the spelling of
groups of words according to sets of rules; an example is the change of
colour to color."
This research was funded by the Gatsby Foundation, the Wellcome Trust and
the U.K. Medical Research Council.
Notes:
1. The Webster Reform -- In 1864, the U.S. Government officially implemented
parts of the Webster Reform for the simplification of English language.
2. The irregularity of the French language stems not from the same letter
combinations resulting in different sounds (as with English), but rather
from the number of letter combinations that can represent the same sound.
Consider the similarity in pronunciation between au temps and autant.

 change of colour to color."
Be easier to adopt italiano. :-)
IMHO  If the English spelliing is changed then textual clues to meanings
would be lost. 
Cheers,
Loki
-- 


My best friend at school was mildly dyslexic or maybe he just couldn't
spell. Anyway, one day we had to write an essay describing our ideal
political system and his contained the following:
"Once a year the people would go to the pole ... and elections would take
the form of a ballet."
Now he's an Ofsted schools inspector.
Chris