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eldin raigmore

Is dyslexia as common, more common, or less common, in languages written in logograms, than in languages written in alphabets?
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"We're the healthiest horse in the glue factory" - Erskine Bowles, Co-Chairman of the deficit reduction commission

Aert · Joined: 03 Jul 2008 Posts: 354

That's a good question - I wonder if the problem manifests differently due to the different script style, eg. syllabary, alphabet, logographs, etc. And also, what types would manifest in illiterate people? (though that one might be harder to answer)

Kiri · Joined: 13 Jun 2009 Posts: 471 Location: Latvia/Italy

No idea.

From what little I've heard/read about dislexia, it's basically not being able to differentiate between letters that look similar to each other, e.g. "d" and "b", etc.

From what I've seen of scripts like Chinese (logogram), they have loads of things that look similiar even for a non-dyslexic person, so does the Tamil script (abugida) and Arabic (abjad). Also Korean (alphabet, kind of a special case). I think it depends less on the type of script and more on the actual shapes of letters.

That said, in theory, it might be more difficult to create a dyslexic-friendly abugida than, for instance, alphabet because of the risk of the "vowel" signs to look all the same. On the other hand, Korean hangul is technically an alphabet and one that is esteemed to be easily learnable at that, but I'd say it's as dyslexic-unfriendly as it gets.

Just my two cents.

eldin raigmore · Posted: Tue May 28, 2013 7:50 pm Post subject:

Slightly different question:
Since none of us knows the answer to the thread-title question;
who do we ask? or where do we go to find out?
Anyone know?

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There is one type of dyslexia among users of the Latin alphabet that has to do with not being able to distinguish letters that differ only by orientation. By way of example; the lowercase letters b d p q; or the uppercase W and M (and ∑ if you will); and uppercase L and V; and uppercase N and Z. (This seems to be more of a problem when remembering the letters than when seeing them.)
This is often connected with a talent; namely, being able to easily visualize how an object would look if it were rotated in three dimensions.
Such a talent certainly occurs in illiterate people; the correlated increased difficulty in learning to read never shows up unless they try to learn to read and give up.

But I doubt all dyslexia among English readers and writers is connected to such a thing, or to ambidexterity, or anything like that; though FAIK most of it is.

In some ways of writing, K and H look alike topologically; whereas in others, K and X look alike topologically. The <K> I just typed looks X-like in the font I'm currently displaying, because the lower slanted leg meets the upper slanted leg exactly where it meets the upright, thus there's only one crossing and it's four-fold rather than three-fold. But the <K> label on the key on my keyboard looks more H-like, because the lower slanted leg meets the upper slanted leg to the right of (and above) where the upper slanted leg meets the upright. Thus it has two crossings, both three-fold.

(If we're going by topology, the categories for the upper-case letters on my keyboard are:
( one line: C G I J L M N S U V W Z
( one loop: D O
( one three-fold crossing: E F T Y
( one loop with one three-fold crossing: P Q
( one four-fold crossing: K X
( two three-fold crossings: H
( one loop and two three-fold crossings: A R
( two loops and two three-fold crossings: B )

On the CBB somebody said that dyslexia was more common, rather than less common, among the readers/writers of radix-and-determiner scripts such as the Chinese ideogram/logogram system and Egyptian hieroglyphics etc., but it consisted just of being unable to remember (when trying to write them) many of the characters of the script.

Reading that on the CBB is why I asked here.

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I don't see why Emperor Sejong's Hangul Korean script, nor any other featurography, is dyslexic-unfriendly. (Hangul is like an alphabetic syllabary which is also a featurographic alphabet. Or something.)
_________________
"We're the healthiest horse in the glue factory" - Erskine Bowles, Co-Chairman of the deficit reduction commission

eldin raigmore · Posted: Fri May 31, 2013 8:05 pm Post subject: