Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Dyslexic in English but not in Chinese

Posted by michael on from the brown-group dept.

bmsleight writes "Research published in Nature and other sources has found that there is no one cause for dyslexia; rather, the causes vary between languages. The finding explains why one can be dyslexic in one language but not another language. Wow, time for me to learn Chinese."

69 comments

  1. i knew it! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    the language you speak seems to influence the brain. i always thought that people who speak with an accent are dumber than people who speak the language as intended. just visit your local rural area...

  2. Learn Chinese? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Shouldn't that be Chinese Learn?

  3. Whoa? You mean.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    .. the Scientologists are right?

  4. for Chinese readers wishing to learn English by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Does anyone know where to find a free Unicode font for simplified Chinese? I've got the PROnounce ad translated into simplified Chinese, but I want to do the same with the interface. Tcl/Tk can handle Unicode fonts just fine, but I can't find an unencumbered Chinese font?

    Any pointers to free good-coverage Unicode font for Win32/WinCE?

    -- js7a

    1. Re:for Chinese readers wishing to learn English by RzUpAnmsCwrds · · Score: 2, Informative

      Arial Unicode. It's on most XP systems and should have what you need. It is, however, 22MB.

    2. Re:for Chinese readers wishing to learn English by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Arial Unicode is also (c) Microsoft and licensed only with Office.

      --js7a, from Posting Prison

    3. Re:for Chinese readers wishing to learn English by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't know what requirements you need for Win32/WinCE, but this page should help you find what you need: http://cgm.cs.mcgill.ca/~luc/china.html.

    4. Re:for Chinese readers wishing to learn English by bobbozzo · · Score: 1

      Win2k and XP will install Chinese fonts for you if you ask it to.

      Dunno about WinCE, and for 9x, you'll have to find some yourself. MS used to have Chinese fonts for 9x, filenames were ie3lpkcn.exe and ie3lpktw.exe

      Also, I'm sure you can find some free ones with many linux distros. Try RedHat (or RedFlag or some other Asian Linux).

      --
      Nothing to see here; Move along.
    5. Re:for Chinese readers wishing to learn English by divec · · Score: 1
      Arphic released two open source ones: here and here. (Those are the versions in debian, but if you download the source TGZ, the TTF files are in there).
      They're also available in Traditional versions.


      OTOH getting an open-source HKSCS (Cantonese) font seems to be impossible ATM ...

      --

      perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'

    6. Re:for Chinese readers wishing to learn English by Midnight+Thunder · · Score: 1

      The most complete font out there is 'Arial Unicode MS'. Another font which is also fairly complete is 'Tahoma'.

      There are plenty of others, as can be seen from looking through my fonts on my Mac.

      --
      Jumpstart the tartan drive.
  5. established link by mcmonkey · · Score: 4, Informative
    While this research does shed some more light onto the issue, language-specific issues wrt to dyslexia are well established. English is one of the hardest written language because of the number of sounds which are represented multiple ways (e.g. f, ph, gh) and the similarities in letters (e.g. p and q, b and d).

    Wired ran a story last year on the Read Regular typeface which was designed to make each character more distinctive.

    1. Re:established link by Bastian · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Another thing that makes English difficult as a written language is that English has a very large number of vowel sounds, but all are represented by just five letters.

    2. Re:established link by fejikso · · Score: 1

      English has a very large number of vowel sounds, but all are represented by just five letters.

      Not only that, but the usage of these letters is often inconsistent.

      Two examples: "oo" may sound like in cool, or in door or book, three different vowels. Or "ee" as in been or as in sheet.

      That's why many English speakers have terrible spelling. The English language could really use either a pronunciation or spelling reform. The former is practically infeasible, of course.

    3. Re:established link by Bastian · · Score: 1

      as would the latter, I think. At least, not without adding accents or more glyphs to the English alphabet.

    4. Re:established link by fejikso · · Score: 1

      Very difficult, and it has been already proposed a few times by important linguists, but is difficult to agree in these sort of reforms.

      If memory serves well, German has already had a 'recent' spelling reform. However, I guess it was never of the magnitude that needed for English.

  6. chinese friends say by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    In chinese, one symbol usually represents one word, so it would be hard to do any spelling mistake.

    1. Re:chinese friends say by aminorex · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You haven't tried to discriminate between my zhao and wo. Spelling errors are entirely possible in Chinese. Each character is composed of a set of strokes, and the repetoire of strokes is fairly small. Substituting a hooked vertical for a straight vertical, or a narrow horizontal for a wide horizontal, will change the meaning and pronounciation of the character.

      --
      -I like my women like I like my tea: green-
    2. Re:chinese friends say by Gulthek · · Score: 1

      Alright! A slashdot reader that knows some Chinese!

      ????

    3. Re:chinese friends say by Gulthek · · Score: 2, Informative

      .... and slashcode doesn't support unicode chinese writing. Bah!

  7. usa usa usa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    is american english how english was intended? maybe that's the reason they say americans are dumb, according to your logic.

    1. Re:usa usa usa by jc42 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      We might observe that most American-made dictionaries have long called themselves a "Dictionary of the American Language", not English.

      Linguistically, of course, American is a dialect of English. But there is general recognition that "English" properly refers to the dialects spoken in England.

      Then there are the Aussies who insist that they speak Strine, not English. ;-)

      I'd imagine that the learning problems are similar in all three.

      --
      Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
    2. Re:usa usa usa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And what about ebonics?

      Things like, "Damn bitch, you stupid fly! Let me pull up to that bumper and smack my monkey."

    3. Re:usa usa usa by aminorex · · Score: 1

      If they were to be accurate, they would call themselves dictionaries of the predominant North American language.

      --
      -I like my women like I like my tea: green-
    4. Re:usa usa usa by jc42 · · Score: 1

      Yeah, and I've seen linguists who object to the term "General American" for the predominant dialect, on the grounds that Canadian English is a subdialect of the same dialect. You see the abbreviation GNA (General North American) in some linguistics texts, instead of the more common GA.

      --
      Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
    5. Re:usa usa usa by jc42 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      And what about ebonics?

      Yup. The linguists usually call this BVE (Black Vernacular English), or sometimes BVA (Black Vernacular American) and classify it as one of the four main North-American dialects of English. It's interesting because it's primarily a social dialect rather than regional like the other three. Linguists also like it because of its radical differences from the other North-American dialects.

      A big fuss has been made over this dialect, for social and political reasons. But linguists like to consider themselves scientists, so they mostly ignore such subjective (and sometimes moralistic and/or racist) attitudes. BVE under any name is linguistically significant and quite worthy of study.

      Of course, linguists would say the same of Navajo, Chinook, Hawaiian, and Cajun French. Linguistic interest and political/social importance aren't particularly related.

      --
      Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
    6. Re:usa usa usa by iggymanz · · Score: 1

      shizzle, de ho' busta cap in yo homboi azz you be spittin game like dat

    7. Re:usa usa usa by hopethishelps · · Score: 1
      We might observe that most American-made dictionaries have long called themselves a "Dictionary of the American Language", not English.

      You mean most USA-made dictionaries. In most American countries, Spanish is the national language.

  8. Mandatory joke... by 1001011010110101 · · Score: 4, Funny

    About the Dyslexic agnostic insomniac that stays up all night wondering is there's a dog.

    1. Re:Mandatory joke... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What about the dyslexic devil worshipper that sold his soul to Santa?

    2. Re:Mandatory joke... by 1001011010110101 · · Score: 1

      That post deserves at least +2 Funny :).

    3. Re:Mandatory joke... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, I was a memeber of DAM (Mothers Against Dyslexia)

    4. Re:Mandatory joke... by gbjbaanb · · Score: 3, Funny

      or the dsylexic occultist who sold his soul to santa.

      I guess he'll get his reward in the afterli.. well, boxing day at worst.

    5. Re:Mandatory joke... by bananahammock · · Score: 1

      I didn't realise I was dyslexic until I went to a toga party dressed as a goat.

    6. Re:Mandatory joke... by radio.cgt · · Score: 0

      A Dyslexic man who walks into a bra...

  9. The Reason by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    One is a phonographic language and the other is ideographic. Not a big surprise. (Hint: 'Hukt on fonics' doesn't work for the Chinese.)

  10. About language mix up. by El+Icaro · · Score: 1

    I haven't read TFA but funnily enough some really weird mistakes in language pop up in bi and trilingual people. I've got a few german friends who also know english and spanish and completely mispronounce sounds even after many years of living in spain. I know what I mentioned is not dyslexia but they also (to a lower extent) completely mix up words in their head, and this happens quite often.

  11. This bothers me a little.... by HotNeedleOfInquiry · · Score: 2, Interesting

    "So conclude researchers who have found that Chinese children with reading difficulties have different brain anomalies to their Western counterparts"

    So why is it a brain anomaly if you or I have reading difficulties? I mean, were we genetically disposed to read, or hunt and gather? I think it's a mistake to assume a "normal" brain reads well and an "abnormal" brain doesn't. It's not like natural selection has created a pool of "good reading brains".

    --
    "Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
    1. Re:This bothers me a little.... by DLWormwood · · Score: 1
      I think it's a mistake to assume a "normal" brain reads well and an "abnormal" brain doesn't. It's not like natural selection has created a pool of "good reading brains".

      Hmmm... I'm not so sure you can still say that. Yes, wide spread literacy is only a recent phenomonon, but the environmental pressures on the human species to perform visual symbolic abstraction, which predates what we call "writing," has existed for at least 10,000 years, possibly as long as 250,000 years, if you count the very earliest use of cave painting and tool creation. This seems to me a long enough interval of time for natural selection to determine a "normal" (that is, dominant and survival enhancing) set of genetic traits related to reading comprehension.

      Keep in mind what "normal" is supposed to mean. It refers to a trait or idea that is common or frequent, as opposed to rare. Being "normal" has little to do with being "ideal." Assuming a culture that encourages literacy, the population will have many more non-dyslexic readers than those that do. The connotation of "abnormal" equaling "deficient" is an unfortunate problem; its a big problem with USians in particular, especially when politics and religion are involved.

      --
      Those who complain about affect & effect on /. should be disemvoweled
    2. Re:This bothers me a little.... by jeif1k · · Score: 4, Informative

      So why is it a brain anomaly if you or I have reading difficulties?

      "Anomaly" doesn't mean "bad", it means "different from the normal or common". Einstein's brain was an anomaly, too.

      It's not like natural selection has created a pool of "good reading brains".

      No, but cultures have created writing systems that have worked "well enough" for most brains. Maybe they can be improved further and be made to work for more people; if you have any ideas, publish them.

    3. Re:This bothers me a little.... by benjamindees · · Score: 1

      The connotation of "abnormal" equaling "deficient" is an unfortunate problem; its a big problem with USians in particular

      While I agree with everything you've said, I'd like to point out that it is also a particularly USian problem to assume that physical and genetic traits do not affect competency in certain tasks and jobs.

      No matter how hard I try, I will never be a basketball or baseball player. Somehow I deal with it.

      But for some reason everyone assumes that people with speech disorders make just as good announcers and public speakers as anyone else. The thought of a dyslexic programmer doesn't phase Americans. I guess we all still buy into the "anybody can be President/astronaut/superman" myth and sort of apply it to everything (save athletics of course).

      I'm not saying the disabled can't be just as good or better as average announcers/programmers/astronauts, just that it isn't rational to assume everyone's abilities are equal in all areas.

      --
      "I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
    4. Re:This bothers me a little.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      While I greatly respect Deutsch's work in laying the foundation for quantum computing, his assertion that quantum computing proves that the many-worlds interpretation is correct is unfounded and he should know this more than anyone else. Up to this point, all of the issues relating to the interpretation of quantum mechanics have been philosophical and as a result have been both untestable and irrelevent.

    5. Re:This bothers me a little.... by DAldredge · · Score: 1

      USian isn't a word. The correct word is American.

      No definitions found for "usian", perhaps you mean:

      web1913: Asian
      wn: Sian Asian Hsian

    6. Re:This bothers me a little.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The many worlds interpretation predicts quantum computing by assuming that the entropy involved in quantum computations in spread among the various universes engaged in computation. As David has said, the real test of the many worlds interpretation happens when the number of particles necessary for the computation exceeds the number of particles present in the local universe. Then we will know for sure that the computation can't be happening in our universe alone.

  12. There's a fundamental difference by Basje · · Score: 3, Informative

    This is not too surprising, because of the different ways Chinese (and Japanese) and English (and all germanistic and romanistic languages) are read.

    English is a synthetic language: you have to combine the characters to form the words and grasp concepts.

    Chinese is an analytic language: you have to break apart the (combination of) characters to get the meaning to grasp concepts.

    Both methods suit different people. People with a latent dyslexia, would not be showing signs of it when the form of reading they use suits their preferred way of thinking. Yet they would show dyslexia when they are already at a disadvantage. This, of course, works both ways.

    --
    the pun is mightier than the sword
    1. Re:There's a fundamental difference by jc42 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      In a similar vein, I had a linguistics prof in college (a couple decades ago, so this isn't a new idea) who was involved in a study comparing the reading problems of children in the US and Israel. One of the points of interest was dyslexia.

      Hebrew and English turn out to be rather different in this regard. The main differences are: Hebrew has no pairs of letters that are the same except for rotation or reflection, while English has a lot of them. Thus the b/d/p/q set shows a single form that occurs in four different orientations. Also, Hebrew has no upper/lower-case distinction, which is also a source of confusion in English. (It does have a print/script distinction, which presents the same sort of problem, to a lesser degree.)

      OTOH, Hebrew has a number of letters that differ in only tiny details. Let's see if /. can handle Hebrew letters: //, . (Hmm ... That doesn't look too good when I hit Review. Oh, well. ;-) What would be a serif in English is a distinguishing part of some Hebrew letters.

      Anyway, comparing reading problems in different writing systems is an old source of research funding. There's a fair amount of literature on the topic.

      --
      Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
    2. Re:There's a fundamental difference by gbjbaanb · · Score: 2, Funny

      Thus the b/d/p/q set shows a single form that occurs in four different orientations

      you obviously havn't seen my handwriting.

    3. Re:There's a fundamental difference by jc42 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Heh. I hope you get a few "funny" mods.

      Of course, the same thing happens in print. Some fonts turn these sets of letters into glyphs that don't quite reflect or rotate into each other. But this doesn't help the 5-year-olds much, since it's really an example of another problem: the many different forms of the same letter in different fonts and scripts.

      Another sort of problem that is nearly unique to our Roman alphabet: The pairs "cl" and "rn" can look like "d" and "m" in a lot of fonts and scripts. So "clear" can be nearly indistinguishable from "dear". I've seen cases where it was difficult to decide whether they meant "modern" or "modem". This is similar to the problems in Hebrew with the nearly-identical letters.

      But if you want a really nightmarish writing system, take a look at Arabic. OTOH, it can be really pretty. ;-)

      --
      Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
    4. Re:There's a fundamental difference by identity0 · · Score: 1

      I should note that Japanese also mixes Chinese-style ideograms with a phonetic alphabet - actually, two. One is called hiragana, and the other is katakana.

      Japanese phonetic writing in hiragana or katakana is *much* easier to read than Chinese, and easier than English as well. That's because it's a turely phonetic - one character makes one sound, and the pronounciation isn't changed by the surrounding characters, though there are special modifiers that can be attached to change a particular character's sound.

      Of course, the language is also filled with the Chinese-style characters, so it's not quite so simple to read a newspaper.... :(

    5. Re:There's a fundamental difference by gbjbaanb · · Score: 1

      aw thanks. I hope you get some 'informative' mods.

      Yeah, I know what you mean - our choice of lettering can be quite poor, however, we've become quite good at recognising them though. Although 'modern' and 'modem' can be the same, we can still undrestnad what we tpye even if its gibbreish. I think that's really impressive, good job we also have context within a sentence to make sense of what we see. We don't really need to distinguish the letters if there's enough context.. err, and we've learned to read, of course. tough on the 5-year olds, but if I managed to learn it... :)

      My worst source of confusion is either 1 and l, or 0 and o. Letters.. we havn't even started!

  13. validation? by jeif1k · · Score: 1

    "So far I have been able to manage replying and keeping up the work for making the typeface available, although I am not sure for how long this will be the case," she said.

    Maybe just putting it up for download on her website would ensure widest and easiest distribution of the font? Right now, the website seems oddly covered in trademark and patent notices.

  14. hip hop? by Down8 · · Score: 1

    If you wanna learn Chinese, you'll be just like Jin!

    -bZj

    --
    .sig
  15. TwinBridge? by antdude · · Score: 1

    Will this work? Go here. However, it does require you to provide an e-mail address. Just use a throwaway one. :)

    --
    Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
  16. Oh, what the hell. by falzer · · Score: 2, Funny

    Dyslexics of the world, untie!!

  17. Another obligatory joke by Viadd · · Score: 1

    The first step in dealing with dyslexia is admitting that you have it.

    Denial is not just a park in Alaska.

  18. Not Necessarily a Surprise by Captain+Chad · · Score: 1
    It is a known fact (PDF) that Chinese language processing uses different portions of the brain than English language processing. In addition, Mandarin Chinese requires one to interpret intonation, thus using both temporal lobes instead of just the left one.

    So this finding is not necessarily a surprise, and it may not hold for languages that are similar to each other (such as English and Spanish).

    --
    Check out Chad's News
  19. This is not a language issue at all by mAsterdam · · Score: 1

    Why do so many people focus on the language difference? Headline madness, maybe.

    One writing system goes through sounds, another one does not. What would the findings be if the group of chinese children would be from another area where they speak a completely different language but use the same chinese writing system?

    Sound related skills are necessary for one type of system (say sonogram), but not for the other (ideogram). The ideogram system may exclusively require other skills.
    Surely there are language-specific dyslextic fenomena - but it is a mistake to think that the language difference is the major difference here. This is about something else entirely.

  20. Santaism by tepples · · Score: 1

    Satan, Santa, same thing. Learn more about Santaism

    And there is more than one boxing day.

    1. Re:Santaism by gbjbaanb · · Score: 1

      someone didn't read the links posted... its nothing about Satan, but commercialisation. But I did love this bit: (as Clapton *is* god).

      "Santaism and Santanaism

      Santanaism would be the worship of Latin guitar great Carlos Santana. While he is truly impressive, I don't think that anyone seriously thinks he is any sort of guitar diety. What's more, Santanaism, whatever form it took, would probably differ radically from traditional religions, most likely being closest in form to Claptonarianism, another recent development. "

  21. I have a dirty mind. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    At first, I read that as "One is a pornographic language...".

  22. Dyslexia in letters vs. numbers by robson · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I don't have any problems with written language, but written sequences of numerals are terribly problematic. The numbers (almost literally) jump around, switch places, and imposter for other numbers. This makes even simple math problems a nightmare. In high school, I got a solid D- in Algebra, followed by an A in Geometry the next year -- because geometry was all about proofs, shapes, and logic, without any of those messy numbers! :)

    1. Re:Dyslexia in letters vs. numbers by riscthis · · Score: 1

      I'd be interested to know, do you get the same effects with numbers written out in word form?

      e.g. a telephone number of the form: five, five, five, one, two, three, four.

      I'm just wondering if it's something that is related to sequences generally -- regardless of how they are presented -- or whether there's something significant about the actual digit representations that makes them difficult for you to interpret reliably.

    2. Re:Dyslexia in letters vs. numbers by robson · · Score: 1

      I'd be interested to know, do you get the same effects with numbers written out in word form?

      e.g. a telephone number of the form: five, five, five, one, two, three, four.

      I'm just wondering if it's something that is related to sequences generally -- regardless of how they are presented -- or whether there's something significant about the actual digit representations that makes them difficult for you to interpret reliably.

      Curious. It was easier for me to read and remember the sequence, though the block of three fives still seems to mess with me a little.

      It almost seems like there are two things going on:
      1.The more visual information that's presented, the easier it is to read.
      2.Having to read them written out forces a slower read as well as a "conversion" to a numerical representation, thus devoting more brain time to each element.

      Though your example was pretty easy because it really just formed two logical sequences (3 identical, 4 linear additive); when I did a test where I wrote out 7 random numbers in a row, it wasn't neary as easy to remember then. It was easier to read them, though. (But I'm not making any promises if you reply with "two X squared minus four X minus sixteen" ;)

  23. Evner! by quintessent · · Score: 1

    Denial is not just a park in Alaska.

    It's also a river in Egypt.

    --
    Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
  24. Some other points by Midnight+Thunder · · Score: 1

    One of the issues in English, that is likely to get people, is that some words are not spelled as they are pronounced, or that the same spelling gives two pronounciations. Examples:

    Lead - to take the lead
    Lead - it is as heavy a lead

    Read - Read the book
    Read - I red the book
    Red - I chose the colour red
    Reed - The duck is amongst the reeds

    Put the former into a phrase: "I was lead to read the red book which was a heavy as lead, which was amongst the reeds" - I am sure you will have some people making mistakes here.

    One thing in Chinese that makes it simpler is that new words are composed of older words to give new meaning. In English, especially for scientific purposes we start importing words from languages such as Latin, or Greek. Since few people learn Latin these days trying to remember a word without understanding its meaning is no easy. In Chinese the word will be composed in the same way as our Latin definition would be, but will use Chinese. Because its in the same language, the person has an easier job of retaining the definition.

    *Note: when talking about Chinese, I am assuming Mandarine.

    --
    Jumpstart the tartan drive.
    1. Re:Some other points by n54 · · Score: 1

      Put the former into a phrase: "I was lead to read the red book which was a heavy as lead, which was amongst the reeds" - I am sure you will have some people making mistakes here.

      You weren't "lead" to read, you were "led" to read ("led" is past tense of "lead"). So yes your point is proven, you will have some people making mistakes :)

      --
      this comment is provided "as is" and without any express or implied legibility or congruity [...]
  25. More unicode fonts by Midnight+Thunder · · Score: 1

    These is a whole bunch listed here. At the same time I am still looking for a very complete and readable unicode monospaced font, for terminal use.

    --
    Jumpstart the tartan drive.
  26. you obviously mean by dario_moreno · · Score: 1


    that is time for you to learn Chisene ?

    --
    Google passes Turing test : see my journal