Does a truly symmetrically transparent orthography exist? Spelling is more difficult than reading even in an orthography considered highly transparent for both reading and spelling

Abstract Although we know that spelling develops more slowly than reading in asymmetrically transparent orthographies, such as Italian, do not whether lags behind orthographies considered symmetrically for both and reading. This is because skills are rarely tested on the same lexical items, which impedes their direct comparison. study aimed to address this issue by comparing children’s accuracy items Turkish, highly spelling. The also examined an exceptional case, namely letter Ğ, can cause phonemic ambiguity potentially complicate but Turkish. Through two experiments, rates were nonword real word at grade 1 (Experiment 1, N = 40, M age 80.93 months, SD 2.79 months; Experiment 2, 39; 80.97 2.80 months). consistent findings from nonwords words (with Ğ or without Ğ) confirmed development lagged Turkish reduced had no effect accuracy. These raise questions about notion of symmetrical transparency: less cognitively demanding even case highlights most may have cases differentially affect therefore developmental trajectories skills. Clearly, they heard always result accurate spellings children should be explicitly taught cause.