Set for variability (SfV) is an oral language task that requires an individual to disambiguate the mismatch between the decoded form of an irregular word and its actual lexical pronunciation. For example, in the task, the word wasp is pronounced to rhyme with clasp (i.e. /waesp/), and the individual must recognize the actual pronunciation of the…

Phonological interference during written-word meaning judgments occurs in both Chinese and English, suggesting that word-level phonological activation is universal rather than dependent on the sublexical structures that vary with writing systems. To accommodate this universality, we distinguish two sources of phonological congruence between a…

It is well-established that allographs like the uppercase and lowercase forms of the Roman alphabet (e.g., a and A) map onto the same "abstract letter identity," orthographic representations that are independent of the visual form. Consistent with this, in the allograph match task ("Are 'a' and 'A' the same letter?"), priming…

The authors examined whether exposing young students to spellings as they learn proper names would facilitate memory for the spoken names when tested without the spellings present (i.e., orthographic facilitation), whether emergent readers with letter knowledge would show this effect, and whether phonemic segmentation (PS) training would enhance…

This study explores whether emphasizing the phonetic components of "kanji," Chinese characters used in Japanese, facilitates second language (L2) learners' novel character learning. Previous L2 studies on Chinese characters indicate that phonology plays a major part in word identification. However, this view remains controversial,…

In research on the acquisition of reading, there have been cross-orthographic comparisons made between some alphabetic scripts and a few syllabic scripts. In the present study of Japanese Grade 1 children learning to read hiragana, a syllabic script, there was a comparison of assessments of oral word reading accuracy levels recorded by scorers…

The pronunciation of a word represented in an alphabetic writing system (such as this one) is relatively transparent--but a language's sounds change over time and vary across space, while its spellings remain relatively static, resulting in some amount of divergence between the written and spoken forms. The introduction of loanwords and…

Objective data on the relative frequency of occurrence of the multifarious phoneme-grapheme correspondences of English, which the author dealt with in an earlier book, Relative Frequency of English Spellings, are applied to the learning of reading. The target audience includes the educator, the textbook author/publisher, and the classroom teacher.…

Foreign language lyric diction is a compulsory subject in all undergraduate vocal performance degrees in universities. However, the effectiveness of its teaching depends on the capacity of students to absorb the material, for which many are largely unprepared, due to their lack of previous language study. Further, native speakers of North American…

This wordbook was prepared to help carry out the policy of the Agency for International Development to encourage Americans stationed abroad to learn the official language at their duty post. The book is intended to be a supplemental text for both private individual study and formal classroom instruction. The bulk of the publication is made up of…

Argues in favor of the use of Russian orthography as a vehicle for the combined presentation of Russian sounds and inflection. (AM)

The 1986 report by the Canadian Task Force on Aboriginal Languages, which recommended that the writing systems used for the northern Dene languages be standardized within 10 years, resulted in the 1987 Dene Standardization Project. The mandate for the project was to make recommendations on orthography standardization as the first step in the…

Alphabetic orthographies vary in the (in)consistency of the relations between spelling and sound patterns. In transparent orthographies, like Italian, the pronunciation can be predicted from the spelling, in contrast to opaque orthographies such as English, where spelling-sound correspondences are often inconsistent. The pronunciation of English…

ALTHOUGH THE PURPOSE OF THIS DICTIONARY IS TO "GIVE A FULL AND ACCURATE PORTRAYAL OF THE BASIC NATIVE KOREAN VOCABULARY," SOME OF THE COMMON AND USEFUL CHINESE AND EUROPEAN LOANWORDS HAVE BEEN INCLUDED AS WELL. THE AUTHORS (SAMUEL E. MARTIN, YANG HA LEE, AND SUNG-UN CHANG) HAVE FOLLOWED THE HANKUL SPELLING CONVENTIONS OF THE…

The literature dealing with the identification process in beginning reading is surveyed. The first major section presents a review of the basal, Language Experience Approach, Phonic Word Method, linguistic, and i/t/a programs. Questions are raised about the empirical investigation of the subject matter and the instructional procedures used in…