Despite being the world鈥檚 lingua franca, English is the most difficult European language to learn to read. Children learning other languages master the basic elements of literacy within a year, but British kids take two-and-a-half years to reach the same point.
In the most extensive cross-national study ever, Philip Seymour of Dundee University and his team compared the reading abilities of children in 15 European countries. They found that those learning Romance languages such as Italian and French progressed faster than those learning a Germanic language such as German and English. 鈥淐hildren do seem to find English particularly complex and problematic though,鈥� says Seymour.
The team focused on the earliest phase of learning to read. They tested the children鈥檚 ability to match letters to sounds, their capacity to recognise familiar written words, and their ability to work out new words from combinations of familiar syllables.
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Seymour鈥檚 findings might explain why more people are diagnosed as being dyslexic in English-speaking countries than elsewhere.
In languages where sounds simply match letters, some symptoms just would not show up, says Maggie Snowling, a dyslexia expert at the University of York. The condition would be more difficult to diagnose in children who speak these languages, though subtle symptoms such as impaired verbal short-term memory would remain. 鈥淧eople might be struggling, but no one would notice,鈥� she says.
Consonant clusters
The Germanic languages are tricky because many words contain clusters of consonants. The word 鈥渟print鈥�, for example, is difficult because the letter p is sandwiched between two other consonants, making the p sound difficult to learn.
Another feature of English that makes it difficult is the complex relationship between letters and their sounds.
In Finnish, which Seymour found to be the easiest European language to learn to read, the relationship between a letter and its sound is fixed.
However, in English a letter鈥檚 sound often depends on its context within the word. For example, the letter c can sound soft (as in receive) or hard (as in cat). Many words like 鈥測acht鈥� don鈥檛 seem to follow any logic at all.
Historical accident
However, the things that make English difficult to read might have contributed to Britain鈥檚 rich literary tradition. Words like 鈥渟ign鈥� and 鈥渂omb鈥� are difficult because of their silent letters, but these hint at relationships with other words. The connection with words like 鈥渟ignature鈥� and 鈥渂ombard鈥� is obvious.
Mark Pagel, an expert on language diversity at the University of Reading, acknowledges the irony that despite being the international lingua franca, English is the most difficult to learn. The dominance of English has more to do with historical accident than any innate superiority of the language, he says.
鈥淧eople who speak English happen to have been the ones that were economically and politically dominant in recent history. Those forces greatly outweigh any small difficulties in language acquisition.鈥�
