Page 26 - ELG2304 Apr Issue 484

FEATURE .

The bilingual boy who showed us

how language links to dyslexia

A BBC,” a friend e-mailed me,
lex has been interviewed by the

sending a link to an article.
Which Alex? As I clicked on
the link it became clear – this is the boy I COPYRIGHT PEXELS.COM
first heard of in the early 200Os. The one
who showed us that dyslexia can be language
specific. And who led us to discover Eng lish is
among the hardest languages to read and spell
in, especially if you have, as he does, the form
of dyslexia related to phonemic awareness.
Alex, who does not want his surname
revealed, is the son of two native English
speakers. He grew up in Japan and attended
Japanese schools. Fluent in his home language
English, he was tested for dyslexia at the age of
13 and was found to have the reading level of
a six-year-old.
“This test came along and they were like,
actually, your writing is horrible,” Alex told
the BBC in an article published this March. “I
thought I was doing ok….in fact, the numbers
that came out were quite devastating…”
Researcher were even more surprised,
however when, three years later, they tested his
Japanese. It was excellent. One of the original
researchers told the BBC that his reading BBC, he has problems with similar-looking The case of Alex made researchers realise
level at 16 was as good as that of a 20-year- words like ‘spear’ and ‘spare.’ that different writing systems required different
old Japanese university student. Alex was not Japanese has relatively few phonemes, just skills when it comes to reading. But surely that
surprised but still worried about his English. “I 20 compared to around 44 in some variants of is not the case for languages which shared the
could not spell to save my life.” English. So, there were fewer Japanese sounds for same orthography.
The research on Alex revealed, perhaps for Alex to confuse. Another advantage of Japanese Further research has found that even
the first time, that the manifestation of dyslexia is its written forms are not alphabetic; they do among languages which use the same,
varies according to the orthography, or writing not allocate a phoneme to a given letter. Roman, alphabet the reading process varies.
system, used to encode the language. Alex’s Japanese uses three writing systems. The In languages where a single morpheme is
form of dyslexia is related to phonological most familiar is made up of Chinese characters represented by a single grapheme, as is the
awareness - the ability to break up words into or Kanji which are not related to sound at all. case with for example, Spanish, Finnish and
their constituent phonemes: to discriminate, Each character denotes a meaning and the word Welsh, children learn to read more quickly and
for example, the sound in ‘hot’ which differs with that meaning can be composed of entirely far fewer children with phonemic awareness
from the one in “hat”. To this day, he told the different sounds even when spoken in different problems will show up as dyslexic. These are
dialects of Chinese. So, phonemic awareness is known as transparent languages and children
CREDIT: KEI! not necessary for reading and writing. Indeed, learn to read in them by using a single ‘bottom
reading difficulties in Chinese, we now know,
up’ mental process: decoding.
are related to visual spatial awareness - an area
Other languages like English. French
in which Alex excels. Reading Kanji is easier and Danish, where there is not a one to
for him because he can “recognise the meaning one relationship between one letter of the
of a character before reading it.” roman alphabet and one sound, are known
The other two systems of Japanese writing as opaque. The difference in complexity is
are related not to individual phonemes, but stark: According to neuroscientist Sarah
to syllables – or mora which is the Japanese Jane Blakemore an Italian child uses just one
equivalent. This kind of orthography is called a process in reading, decoding, an English child
syllabary and Japanese has two: Hiragana which uses up to seven!
is used in children’s book, and Katagana, which As for Alex, he is living in Japan and still
is used to transliterate common loan words from speaks both languages on a daily basis. He uses
other languages. Alex found both easy. It was spellcheckers when he writes in English and,
the Roman alphabet he struggled with. though he finds reading in English more tiring,
Writing systems which have one character he is an avid reader in both languages. Asked,
for one syllable pose fewer problems to 20 years on from his diagnosis, whether he
“phonemic dyslexics”. However, they can’t be regrets being diagnosed with dyslexia so late he
used for languages with thousands of syllables. says ‘no’. “I didn’t recognise the struggle until
English has 15,00, there are only 100 mora in I had good, healthy self-esteem that I could
Learning to write in Japanese Japanese. tackle it with.”
26 April 2023