This study examines the intricate relationship between language ideology, Taiwanese identity, and the adoption of the romanized Taiwanese system (Pe?h-oe-ji) within the Taiwanese language (Tâigí) speaking community, against the predominance of Mandarin. It explores the multifaceted motivations of Tâigí users for preferring Pe?h-oe-ji, including…

The primary goal of this meta-analysis was to estimate the overall size of the relation between rapid automatized naming (RAN) and spelling in alphabetic languages and to examine what factors may moderate their relation. In addition, we examined if the size of the RAN-spelling relation is similar to that of the RAN-reading relation. A…

Mirror invariance or generalisation is the ability to recognise objects as being the same regardless of their spatial orientation. However, when, for example, learning to read Roman script, children need to hone these skills so that they can readily discriminate between mirror letters such as b/d or p/b. Korean Hangul makes a particularly…

This study aimed to examine the acquisition of Roman alphabetic script among young children within a bilingual (Arabic and English) educational environment employing a language separation pedagogical approach in Muscat, Oman. Data were collected utilizing participant observations, video recordings to capture the interactions of three children and…

This case study investigates the reading processes of two bilingual teachers who speak English as a second language and use different first languages--Mandarin Chinese and Korean. The two participants read researcher-selected digital texts in English and in their respective first language, retold the texts, and answered comprehension questions…

This study investigated the role of orthographic information in the acquisition of non-native speech sounds by monolingual English listeners. Two potentially important orthographic variables were explored: Orthographic compatibility (whether the orthographic information supports or contradicts the distributional information) and orthographic…

Jawi is the orthography in which Malay has been written since the Middle Ages, when it was adapted from the Arabic script. Introduced by Muslim traders, it was adapted to Malay phonology using diacritics that modified six letters. It was used until the Roman script (Rumi) brought in by European traders and colonisers began to supplant it in the…

Chinatowns, as neighborhoods for overseas ethnic Chinese, have garnered considerable scholarly attention from linguistic landscape (LL) researchers in recent years. These investigations tend to treat old immigrants who have been tied to the neighborhoods for generations as the key text producers of LL, with far too little attention paid to the LL…

Kazakhstan's decision to transition its Kazakh language from the Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet has serious implications for language policy, communication, education, inclusion, and social cohesion. This critical qualitative study, underpinned by a discourse-historical approach, employs critical discourse analysis to analyze statements of…

Recent studies in the acquisition of a second language (L2) phonology have revealed that orthography can influence the way in which L2 learners come to establish target-like lexical representations (Escudero et al., 2008, 2014; Escudero and Wanrooij, 2010; Showalter, 2012; Showalter and Hayes-Harb, 2013). Most of these studies, however, involve…

This paper aims at investigating the effect of Arabization of Romanic Alphabets on the development of 9th Grade English as a Foreign Language students' composition writing skills at secondary school level. This experimental study includes 25 secondary school students in their 9th Grade in which English is taught as a foreign language at…

This article examines everyday classroom peer interaction among emergent multilingual high school students who are new to the United States, new to school, new to English, and new to alphabetic print literacy. Data were collected through observation and video recording within a daily 90-minute, English language and literacy block class over the…

Romanized transliteration is widely used in internet communication and global commerce, yet we know little about its behavioural and neural processing. Here, we show that Romanized text imposes a significant neurocognitive load. Readers faced greater difficulty in identifying concrete words written in Romanized transliteration (Romanagari)…

Purpose: This study aims to investigate the use of diacritics in the Arabic script of Malay to facilitate Arab postgraduate students of UKM to read the Malay words accurately. It is hypothesised that the Arabic script could facilitate the reading of Malay words among the Arab students because of their earlier exposure to the Arabic script in…

In the present study, maternal Pinyin mediation and its relations with young Chinese children's word reading and word writing development were explored. At time 1, 43 Mainland Chinese children and their mothers were videotaped on a task in which children were asked to write 12 words in Pinyin (a phonological coding system used in Mainland China as…