ABSTRACT
Morphophonemic writing systems like English and French lack one-to-one mappings between sounds and spellings. For example, in French, the final sound /o/ is spelled in three different ways in the words lavabo (washbasin), landau (pram), and marteau (hammer); many words include silent letters, especially in the final position (e.g., the unpronounced d in the words bavard and buvard); and most of the time, there is no phonological distinction between whether a consonant is single or double (e.g., ule and ulle are similarly pronounced in the words bulle [bubble] and formule [formula]). Consequently, although there is no ambiguity concerning how to read words such as lavabo that are usually categorized as regular words in reading tests, there is some uncertainty as to their spellings: For instance, lavabo could have been spelled lavabau, lavabeau, or lavabot.
