title: Vowels, syllables, and letter names: differences between young children's spelling in English and Portuguese.
abstract: Young Portuguese-speaking children have been reported to produce more vowel- and syllable-oriented spellings than have English speakers. To investigate the extent and source of such differences, we analyzed children's vocabulary and found that Portuguese words have more vowel letter names and a higher vowel-consonant ratio than do English words. In a spelling experiment, we found that Portuguese speakers used more vowels, but did not produce more syllabic spellings, than did English speakers. The differences that we observed are attributable to quantitative differences in the languages and their writing and letter name systems. They do not support the widespread idea that speakers of Romance languages pass through an additional, syllabic, stage of development.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Washington University in St. Louis, One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO 63130, USA. tpollo@wustl.edu
authors.forename: Tatiana Cury
authors.initials: TC
authors.lastname: Pollo
authors.forename: Brett
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Kessler
authors.forename: Rebecca
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Treiman
mesh_terms: D001938:Brazil; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D007804:Language Development; D010700:Phonetics; D011578:Psycholinguistics; D011932:Reading; D012660:Semantics; D014481:United States; D014706:Verbal Learning; D014956:Writing