I find the idea of an ‘opaque’ orthography rather opaque.

Orthographies like those of English and French may be phonetically opaque, but are quite good at being phonologically transparent. In any case, there probably isn’t a single segmental-type orthography that isn’t opaque in respect of some (or all) of the language’s accents.

I’m afraid I don’t really get the argument here!

Mark

From: Teaching of phonetics mailing list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Keith Johnson
Sent: 25 June 2006 02:26
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: spelling [was: Re: Difficult to perceive phonetic contrasts]

I really don't think that any claim is being made that dyslexia is CAUSED by opaque orthographies.  If I remember right, I think what you're referring to is a study claiming to identify the biological causes of dyslexia, and that speakers (or better, readers and writers) of languages with opaque orthographies may well have more problems reading and writing than those who speak languages with more transparent orthographies.  It could well be the case that the task of reading and writing in languages like English exposes to a greater extent the trouble dyslexia can cause.  English might create more havoc in the dyslexic writer but I doubt it creates the dyslexia.

Keith "Arizona" Johnson  :)

Quoting Tom Zurinskas <[log in to unmask]>:

> From: Ole Stig Andersen <[log in to unmask]>
>> Reply-To: Ole Stig Andersen <[log in to unmask]>
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: spelling [was: Re: Difficult to perceive phonetic contrasts]
>> Date: Sun, 25 Jun 2006 00:08:21 +0200
>>
>> John Wells wrote
>>
>> > And what about "lead (Pb), lead (v. present), led (v. past)", but
>> > "red, read (present), read (past)"? Why do we all have to burden our
>> > memories with such inconsistencies? Lectal variation has nothing
>> to do with >
>> > it.
>>
>> Which prompts me to ask:
>>
>> I see the common sense in the notion that spelling "inconsistencies" burden
>> the memory, but is it correct? Is there any kind of hard evidence to that
>> effect?
>>
>>
>> Ole Stig Andersen
>> Copenhagen
>
> Paulescu 2000? states that languages lilke Italian that have consistently
> spelled orthographies have half the number of dyslexics as USA or UK. He
> thinks the cause for half the dyslexics in USA and UK is the inconsistent
> phonetic spelling of English.
>
> tom z