Reading and Rhyming Across Languages
By Deborah Adeyeye and Daisy Lei
Different languages have different writing systems, and often times these systems can be just as diverse as the languages themselves. One way in which writing systems vary across languages is in their level of “orthographic transparency”, which is the degree to which each letter corresponds one-to-one with a specific sound. In this activity, you’ll explore a few different languages to see just how orthographically transparent they are. To begin, try saying the words below out loud, and for the languages you know (this may be only English, and that’s okay!) write down 2-3 words that rhyme with each word on the list. Some possible solutions and an explanation are on the next page, but try not to look until you’ve done the activity:
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English
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Spanish
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Mandarin Chinese
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What did you notice? Do you think all the languages have the same amount of orthographic transparency?
Click here for some possible solutions for each of the word lists.
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English
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Spanish
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Mandarin Chinese
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Here are some observations you may have made, depending on the languages you know:
- Words that rhyme in English may have different spellings
- Words that rhyme in Spanish have a consistent spelling
- Mandarin Chinese characters that rhyme do not look like each other. In this language there is no sound to letter correspondence!
Orthographic transparency describes the relationship between the written form (orthography) and how the words are pronounced, and as you can see, levels of orthographic transparency vary widely across languages. Connecting this to the theme of our newsletter, which is the “science of reading”, scientific research suggests that noticing these types of connections (or lack of connections) between letters and sounds helps kids learn how to read.
BONUS
Do you know other languages? Where would they fall on this scale?
