ABSTRACT
Recent cross-language studies have suggested that the rate of reading acquisition differs in different alphabetic orthographies. These cross-language differences are usually interpreted to reflect variation in orthographic depth, the complexity of the grapheme-phoneme correspondence system. This chapter discusses the cross-language findings, with a specific focus on two recent studies that investigated reading acquisition in several alphabetic orthographies and two studies that examined literacy acquisition in Finnish. It is noteworthy that Finnish is one of the most transparent alphabetic orthographies. The main conclusion from the cross-language studies is that the development of literacy skills in English deviates from the majority of alphabetic orthographies. It is argued that the observed differences in early literacy development are not only quantitative, but also qualitative. This view is further supported by the observations concerning early reading development in Finnish. In summary, the research findings give consistent support for the orthographic depth hypothesis and stress the need for a revision of English-based characterisation of reading development.
