• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Dyslexia Differs Across Languages, Especially When It Comes To English

December 7, 2023 by Deborah Bloomfield

When you dig into the statistics behind dyslexia, several strange insights emerge. Not only do rates of dyslexia seem to vary massively between different languages, but it’s also evident that some bilingual people can be dyslexic in English but not their mother tongue. How does that make sense?

Dyslexia is a condition that causes difficulties with spelling, reading, and writing. People with the condition will often have problems identifying speech sounds and learning how they relate to letters and words, making it difficult to communicate through written language. 

Advertisement

It’s thought to be a condition people are born with and often appears to run in families. However, the language you speak also appears to have an unusual influence on the condition. 

Among English speakers, 10 percent of the population is believed to be dyslexic, according to the British Dyslexia Association. 

Amidst speakers of other languages, dyslexia is significantly less common. When Japanese speakers were tested on the syllabic Kana writing system, the estimated prevalence was 2 to 3 percent. Meanwhile, when tested on the logographic system, Kanji, it was 5 to 6 percent. Similar rates of dyslexia are also seen in Chinese speakers, where the prevalence is around 3.9 percent. 

Relative to English, lower rates of the condition can also be found in other European languages that are in the same family as English, known as the Indo-European Language family. Studies have suggested that Italian speakers are only half as likely to show signs of dyslexia compared to English speakers (and French speakers).

Advertisement

The explanation may partially lie in the way we test for dyslexia and how other cultures perceive certain learning difficulties. It might even reflect some educational differences between countries.

Alternatively, it may have something to do with the innate qualities of the language. English and French are both languages that have an “irregular orthography”. In other words, it can be very unpredictable and inconsistent. The sounds of the language don’t match clearly to letter combinations, plus there are more irregularities in pronunciation and spelling.

As a wise meme once said: If you ever think English isn’t a weird language, “just remember that read and lead rhyme and read and lead rhyme, but read and lead don’t rhyme and neither do read and lead.”

In English, there are 1,120 ways of representing 40 sounds (phonemes) using different letter combinations (graphemes). Meanwhile, Italian has 33 graphemes that are sufficient to represent the 25 phonemes, making it simpler to process.

Advertisement

This is potentially why native Italian speakers can have no problem with their mother tongue, but experience dyslexia when they learn English as a second language.

“The English writing system is so irregular – print to sound or sound to print translation is not always one to one,” Professor Taeko Wydell, Brunel University London’s Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, told BBC radio documentary Dyslexia: Language and Childhood in 2020.

“This irregularity or inconsistency makes it especially difficult for dyslexic individuals to master reading and writing in English.”

“This kind of irregularity doesn’t happen in other languages such as Italian, Spanish, or Finnish,” said Prof Wydell.

Advertisement

There are a bunch of other strands of evidence that back up this theory.  A study in 2013 compared the reading skills of children learning English, Spanish, and Czech, concluding that kids took significantly longer to get a solid grasp of English compared to the other two languages. 

This difficulty follows English speakers into adulthood. Research in 2015 used eye-tracking technology to show that English adults’ eyes linger more on each word when reading, compared to a German speaker. This implied that more cognitive power was needed for the readers to process English. 

So, if you’re part of the 10 percent of people who experience dyslexia, do not be scared to try learning another language – you might find it easier than you think. 

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Paris ramps up security as jihadist attacks trial starts
  2. Cricket-‘Western bloc’ has let Pakistan down, board chief says
  3. Ancient Bison Found In Permafrost Is So Well Preserved Scientists Want To Clone It
  4. Where Inside Us Do We Feel Love?

Source Link: Dyslexia Differs Across Languages, Especially When It Comes To English

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • For Centuries, Nobody Knew Why Swiss Cheese Has Holes. Then, The Mystery Was Solved.
  • Scientists Studied The Infamous “Chicago Rat Hole” And They Have Some Bad News
  • Massive 166-Million-Year-Old Sauropod Footprints Become The Longest Dinosaur Trackway In Europe
  • Do Spiders Dream? “After Watching Hundreds Of Spiders, There Is No Doubt In My Mind”
  • IFLScience Meets: ESA Astronaut Rosemary Coogan On Astronaut Training And The Future Of Space Exploration
  • What’s So Weird About The Methuselah Star, The Oldest We’ve Found In The Universe?
  • Why Does Red Wine Give Me A Headache? Many Scientists Blame It On The Grape Skins
  • Manta Rays Dive Way Deeper Than We Thought – Up To 1.2 Kilometers – To Explore The Seas
  • Prof Brian Cox Explains What He Finds “Remarkable” About Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS Story
  • Pioneering “Pregnancy Test” Could Identify Hormones In Skeletons Over 1,000 Years Old
  • The First Neolithic Self-Portrait? Stony Human Face Emerges In 12,000-Year-Old Ruins At Karahan Tepe
  • Women Are Diagnosed With ADHD 5 Years Later Than Men, Even With Worse Symptoms
  • What Is Cryptozoology? We Explore The History And Mystery Of This Controversial Field
  • The Universe’s “Red Sky Paradox” Just Got Darker: Most Stars Might Never Host Observers
  • Uranus And Neptune May Not Be “Ice Giants” But The Solar System’s First “Rocky Giants”
  • COVID-19 Can Alter Sperm And Affect Brain Development In Offspring, Causing Anxious Behavior
  • Why Do Spiders’ Legs Curl Up Like That When They’re Dead?
  • “Dead Men’s Fingers” Might Just Be The Strangest Fruit On The Planet
  • The South Atlantic’s Giant Weak Spot In The Earth’s Magnetic Field Is Growing
  • Nearly Half A Century After Being Lost, “Zombie Satellite” LES-1 Began Sending Signals To Earth
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version