dyslexia. brain site. about reading problems.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/12/101220163059.htm

Did you know that 10 in 1 people are dyslexic? 10 in 1! <:


Dyslexia, a brain-based learning disability that impairs a person's ability to read, affects 5 to 17 percent of U.S. children. Affected children's ability to improve their reading skills varies greatly, with about one-fifth able to benefit from interventions and develop adequate reading skills by adulthood. But up to this point, what happens in this brain to allow for this improvement remained unknown.

http://www.suite101.com/content/types-of-dyslexia-a99334

D - Written, spoken and both.

D - I think those who are dyslexic are often also innumerate.

The complexity of a language's orthography or spelling system – formally, its orthographic depth – has a direct impact on how difficult it is to learn to read that language. English has a comparatively deep orthography within the Latin alphabet writing system, with a complex orthographic structure that employs spelling patterns at several levels: principally, letter-sound correspondences, syllables, and morphemes. Other languages, such as Spanish, have alphabetic orthographies that employ only letter-sound correspondences, so-called shallow orthographies. It is relatively easy to learn to read languages like Spanish; it is much more difficult to learn to read languages with more complex orthographies, such as English.[48] Logographic writing systems, notably Japanese and Chinese characters, have a purer direct relationship between the sound of a word and the representative visual symbols, which pose a different type of dyslexic difficulty

For languages with relatively deep orthographies, such as English, French, Arabic or Hebrew, new readers have a great deal more difficulty learning to decode words. As a result, children learn to read more slowly.
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Aside:
D - http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091014130704.htm
D: brain basis for literacy.

In today's edition of Nature, researchers from the UK, Spain and Colombia describe a study working with an unusual cohort: former guerrillas in Colombia who are re-integrating into mainstream society and learning to read for the first time as adults.

"Separating out changes in our brains caused by learning to read has so far proven almost impossible because of other confounding factors," explains Professor Cathy Price, a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow at UCL (University College London). "Working with the former Colombia guerrillas has provided a unique opportunity to see how the brain develops when reading skills are acquired."

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Aside:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/05/070523090044.htm
D - predict language and math ability by finger length ratio.



They then divided the length of the index finger by that of the ring finger -- to calculate the child's digit ratio.

When they compared this ratio to the children's SAT scores, they found that a smaller ratio (i.e. a longer ring finger and therefore greater prenatal exposure to testosterone) meant a larger difference between ability in maths and literacy, favouring numeracy relative to literacy.

When they looked at boy's and girl's performance separately, the researchers found a clear link between high prenatal testosterone exposure, as measured by digit ratio, and higher numeracy SAT scores in males.

They also found a link between low prenatal testosterone exposure, which resulted in a shorter ring finger compared with the index finger, and higher literacy SAT scores for girls.

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http://www.human-nature.com/nibbs/02/manning.html

D: looks like competition between the sexes for ideal genes.
Um, my fingers say I'm supposed to be hyperaggressive... hmm.

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Aside: my premise for the vowel system for CVN (see other blog) was wrong.
I just never looked at it closely. I just assumed the progression of vowel universality was
1) AUI - universal
2) Italian-style ah eh ee oh oo was next - Espo style.
But my design premise is NOT what most language backgrounds can handle first.
It is, first and foremost, accessible to Chinese speakers.
When I finally looked at the Mandarin vowels, I discovered they do no match 2).

http://www.zein.se/patrick/chinen8p.html
D - I find the match of vowel letters to sounds confusing.
Don't forget the dual vowels.
13 compound finals: ai, ao, ei, ia, iao, ie, iou, ou, ua, uai, üe, uei, uo
a - far, father
e - send, very
i - sit, it
yi - machine
o - saw, all.
u - too, loop
u diacritic - german u. yeeee/yuuu?
The German long "ü" and short "ü" are two of the hardest sounds for the English speaker to master, as there are no direct equivalents in the English language. (ü ) similar to ew in pew; more like ue in French rue.

D - sorry, this one gets chopped. An Anglo is gonna get killed by it.

D - OK I cannot hear the difference between the A in father and all.

D - the sites don't seem to agree with each other on vowel sounds.

Anyway, if I need to discard 1 vowel and collapse 2 others together, that does not
leave much.

The 'intermediate' level of CVN with vowel diphthongs will likely be the default version for Chinese Speakers.
Not that the initial M and er final get discarded.
The goal is to have words and sounds that clearly indicate word boundaries.
That means words cannot appear the same both forward and in reverse.
There must be word-initial ONLY (and mid) consonants, and word-final ONLY.
Half the Cantonese word-final consonants get rejected for this reason.
This leaves the tricky case of M.
In word initial position it precludes word-final.
And Mandarin speakers can use it word-initial but not word-final - at least easily.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantonese_phonology#Vowels_and_final_consonants
D - so why would I want M word-final only?
I end up with more possible one syllable words.
Though this is misleading, since the basic structure of CVN (formerly Decimese) is
1) CV 'core' - this resembles the Espo system of lacking a grammatical element
2) a word -final nasal consonant then denotes grammar - noun, verb, adjective, adverb
Word order takes care of the rest.
Again, I CAN make a system that would allow only -N and -NG word final, with M- in word initial position. We'll see.
Also note that groups of sounds like PBM are the same lip-reading position as visemes. I'd really like to retain a simple system to port over my Visemese to CVN, as with my one blog entry on Decimese.

Mandarin syllables. There are 22 initials and 35 finals. Add the four tones, and you get a theoretical maximum of 3080 possible syllables. But, as you can see from the chart, only about two-thirds of the possibilities are actually used, which means that Mandarin uses only around 2000 syllables (I didn't count).

http://www.pinyin.info/rules/initials_finals.html

D: since Mandarin speakers say two words back to back that are structured CV and M, then saying CVM (consonant -vowel- M nasal consonant) is not much of a stretch for them.
They'll also hafta just use the 'empty space' in their syllable chart. Again, not too hard - I hope.

The finals m and ng can only be used as standalone nasal syllables.
D - interesting... M, N, NG as a set of 3 core denoters?