Reading in Greek

"Greek has a writing system characterized by a higher grapheme-phoneme consistency than English. It was the first writing system to which the alphabetic principle was applied. Some aspects of the spoken form have undergone to developmental changes, while the written form has remained essentially unchanged. Modern Greek spelling is not entirely phonetic. It has an orthography of morphophonemic nature, and most of its grapheme-phoneme inconsistency are conditional rule-learned and apply to variant but predictable spelling patterns.  In reading and spelling non-words, children are unlikely to encounter difficulties" (Porpodas, 1999). However, is not considered as transparent as Spanish or German. In terms of regularity, is closer to Spanish and French in that those inconsistencies are rule governed, while in English are more random.

Therefore, is transparent for reading but is opaque for spelling as there is a one to many phonemes-graphemes mapping. However, the instruction method used in Greece is phonics, so the negative effects of the phonological impairment are likely to be minimal. Therefore, the difficulties are centred to "speed" and not in accuracy as in English (Porpodas, 1999).

Porpodas (1999) examined 32 first grade children (16 reading disabled and 16 normal readers) in phonological awareness and working memory. He found no difference in accuracy of decoding but in "time". Thus, children with reading disabilities showed longer time rates when decoding than normal achievers. He attribute these findings to the orthography of the language / writing system.

Although no difference was found in decoding accuracy, the reading disabled group differed significant from the normal group in measures of phonological abilities (phonological awareness and working memory). As a result, he conclude that phonological processing (syllabic and phonemic awareness tasks) and speech rates are the best predictors for reading and spelling.

To conclude it can be said that Greek is more regular than English, and quite alike in spelling (opaque).
 

                                                                                                                                    
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