English taxes the brain more

Paris - Different languages require the use of different parts of the brain, according to a US-published study that its authors…

Paris - Different languages require the use of different parts of the brain, according to a US-published study that its authors say could help people suffering from dyslexia and other reading difficulties.

Writing in Nature Neuroscience, researchers found speakers of English and Italian need the use of different parts of their brain to read words in their native language. This is because Italian is far simpler to read aloud than English, as most of the sounds, called phonemes, are represented by the letters. Written English, however, has many contradictions, requiring a word to be analysed for its meaning before it can be pronounced.