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Orthography as a handicap? A direct comparison of spelling acquisition in Danish and Icelandic
Author(s) -
JUUL HOLGER,
SIGURDSSON BALDUR
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
scandinavian journal of psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.743
H-Index - 72
eISSN - 1467-9450
pISSN - 0036-5564
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9450.2005.00456.x
Subject(s) - icelandic , orthography , danish , spelling , consonant , psychology , linguistics , consonant cluster , audiology , vowel , reading (process) , medicine , philosophy
Spelling of cross‐linguistically very similar nonwords was compared in 115 Danish and 77 Icelandic children (primarily 3rd and 4th graders). Danish children made more errors than Icelandic children on word medial consonant doublets and on word initial consonant clusters, even when the groups compared were matched on simpler spelling tasks. These results suggest that the acquisition of phonemic encoding skills is slower in “deep” orthographies such as Danish than in more “transparent” orthographies such as Icelandic. The effect of orthography was expected for consonant doublets because of the relatively more complex sound‐letter correspondences in Danish. For consonant clusters, however, sound‐letter correspondences are perfectly regular in both languages. The study thus points to the conclusion that even the mastery of regular sound‐letter correspondences may be delayed in deep orthographies.