Does the Brain Read Chinese or Spanish the Same Way It Reads English?

There are at least 6,000 languages spoken in the world today [1]. The world’s languages are represented by a variety of writing systems called “orthographies.” Orthographies are the symbols used to represent spoken language. You are looking at one type of orthography now, as you read this! So, an orthography consists of the symbols used to turn a spoken language into a written form. However, orthographies differ in the size of the sound unit that is represented by each symbol. For example, in alphabetic orthographies, such as English, Spanish, and Russian, each symbol represents an individual sound called a phoneme (e.g., the/b/ sound in “book” is one phoneme). In non-alphabetic orthographies, such as Chinese or Cherokee, the symbol represents a larger sound unit such as a syllable (e.g., such as “pro” in the word “project”). Over 400 orthographies exist today. Each orthography can be classified as alphabetic, such as English, or non-alphabetic, such as Chinese. In this article, we will first learn about the characteristics of different orthographies. Then, we will use these characteristics to help understand how different writing systems affect the process of reading. We will then learn about the brain regions involved in reading. A S