The present study investigated the influence of orthographic input on the recognition of second language (L2) spoken words with phonological variants, when first language (L1) and L2 have different orthographic structures. Lexical encoding for intermediate-to-advanced level Mandarin learners of Korean was assessed using masked cross-modal and…

We examined whether the first letter advantage that has been reported in the Roman script disappears, or even reverses, depending on the characteristics of the orthography. We chose Thai because it has several "nonaligned" vowels that are written prior to the consonant but phonologically follow it in speech (e.g., ??? <e:fn> is…

In this article, we introduce recently released, publicly available resources, which allow users to watch videos of hidden articulators (e.g. the tongue) during the production of various types of sounds found in the world's languages. The articulation videos on these resources are linked to a clickable International Phonetic Alphabet chart…

Mastery of the alphabetic principle necessitates learning letter--sound correspondences. In this study, we found evidence of the importance of spoken phonology in the letter--sound learning of 89 deaf or hard-of-hearing (DHH) preschoolers. Only DHH children with at least some ability to perceive speech were included in the study. DHH children were…

Bilinguals' two languages are both active in parallel, and controlling co-activation is one of bilinguals' principle challenges. Trilingualism multiplies this challenge. To investigate how third language (L3) learners manage interference between languages, Spanish-English bilinguals were taught an artificial language that conflicted with English…

Studies of the role of phonological representations in learning to read have almost exclusively focused on speech perception. In the current study, we examined links between sensorimotor control of speech, reading, and reading-related abilities. We studied two languages, English and Dutch, which vary in the regularity of their spelling-to-sound…

A large linguistic distance exists between spoken Arabic and the Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) the literary language (a diglosia). Novice readers, therefore, struggle with the complex orthography of Arabic as well as the mastering of MSA. Here, we tested whether structured activities in MSA would advance kindergarteners' MSA aptitude by the end of…

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…

This short description of the sound and spelling systems of the Vietnamese language is intended for the sponsor, teacher or friend (of Vietnamese refugees) who may have difficulty in pronouncing Vietnamese names, reading handwriting, or using a Vietnamese-English dictionary or phrasebook. Focusing primarily on the Southern dialect of Vietnamese,…

This report is part of a continuing series providing information on the status and progress of studies dealing with the nature of speech, instrumentation for its investigation, and practical applications of research. The report covers the period from 1 January 1978 through 31 March 1978, and includes extended reports on the following topics:…

This article describes a program at the University of Nancy, for the teaching of introductory phonetic transcription to beginning students majoring in English. The alphabet chosen for this program, the English Pronouncing Dictionary Alphabet, lends itself particularly to use with beginners. Introduction to this alphabet takes place in ten sessions…