Sir, - The French journal Science et Vie reported recently that very few Italians suffer from dyslexia, that it is much more frequent among French speakers and a veritable plague among English speakers. The reason given is that Italian has 28 phonemes, represented in writing by 33 graphemes, French uses 36 phonemes, represented by "a mere" 190 graphemes, while English represents 62 phonemes by no fewer than 1,120 graphemes.
The article adds that scans show similar areas of sub-activity in the temporal lobe of the brain, regardless of which language the subject speaks. The difference is that for Italians it doesn't seem to matter much.
I did not know this when I wrote Anything School Can do, You Can Do Better (Arlen House and Fontana, 1984), or articles in The Irish Times before that. Now I feel I can say more confidently: why not give your children a chance to learn like Italian children, by helping them gradually to become familiar with one sound for each capital letter, offered two at a time, as soon as they begin to attach names to things? When I say "sound" I do not, of course mean the names English speakers give to letters (for example, "See You Pee" for CUP). Just the sound. - Yours, etc.,
MÁIRE MULLARNEY, Whitechurch Road, Dublin 14.