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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."

6 of 69 comments (clear)

  1. 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.

  2. 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 Gulthek · · Score: 2, Informative

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

  3. 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
  4. 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.

  5. 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.