"Marco Cimarosti" <marco.cimarosti@...> wrote:

> But this is probably not incompatible with what you say: uniformity
> can be a Good Thing in the early phase, when the child is learning
> the letterforms and the basics of the system. But it can become a
> nuisance in the long run, when one starts reading by recognizing
> whole words at a glance.
>
> In the learning phase, uniformity and consistency certainly help the
> learner, minimizing the effort for his/her memory, and giving him a
> pleasing sense of understanding.
>
> But, later on, the similarity of letters to each other may impair
> the ability of recognizing groups of letters as a whole.

I would have guessed that the reverse was true, that for the first-
time learner the advantages of consistent letterforms would be offset
by the confusability of mirror images, but that as the reader becomes
more experienced the confusion would subside.

I'm currently observing a 5-year-old who is learning to write and only
occasionally mirrors letters, and an 8-year-old who still has problems
at times with mirroring. It is interesting to note the effect of
these errors. There is no such letter as "backwards s," so when you
see one, you know right away what the intended letter was. But when
you see 'b' written instead of 'd' or vice versa, it is not so clear;
the affected word may make sense either way (e.g. "big" vs. "dig") and
only context can provide the answer.

I wonder which letters cause more trouble for learners, the ones like
's' that have no legitimate mirrored form or the ones like 'b' and 'd'
that do.

Unlike Latin, Greek seems to have no rotated/reflected letter pairs,
and Cyrillic also has none unless you count UKRAINIAN IE (U+0404 and
U+0454, reflections of U+042D and U+044D). Does the absence of such
pairs make Greek and Cyrillic easier to learn than Latin? Does the
typographical uniformity of Cyrillic (highlighted earlier by Peter
Daniels) offset this advantage? Greek seems to have more
typographical diversity than Latin (at least in the lowercase
letters), so perhaps this last question does not apply to Greek.

How do other alphabets and abjads fare in terms of ease of learning?
What is the potential impact on literacy? Peter noted that the
Ethiopic script, with its many confusable letterforms, has existed in
its current form for 1500 years, so it must not be badly broken; but I
note that the literacy rate in Ethiopia is only 35 percent (less if
Eritrea is included). Obviously there are many, many factors that
influence literacy, but is the complexity of the script *a* factor?

Anyway.

> I was wondering: what if our visual apparatus naturally tends to
> *ignore* the rotation of letters?
>
> After all, in our daily life, we are presented with objects randomly
> rotated (e.g., my pencil on the table). Our primary need is to
> *recognize* these objects, *regardless* of their rotation (e.g., I
> just need to find my pencil; I don't care which direction the tip
> points to).

Very interesting. However, if you go beyond simply recognizing the
pencil to actually *using* it (even as little as picking it up), the
directionality will almost certainly come into play. You will
probably pick up the pencil in such a way that it is ready for
writing, even twisting your hand or arm as necessary so that the tip
will point the right way. The same is likely true for your coffee cup
or dining utensils.

-Doug Ewell doug_ewell@... or dewell@...