Dyslexia == Chinese?

[jason]

I just saw a very strange and problematic commercial on TV from an international dyslexia organization (http://www.interdys.org). The commercial, to me, implied that dyslexia was something related to christians who speak english. They went so far as to say something like isn't it frustrating when the words all look like chinese? It scares me when I see so little thought put into the presentation of ideas.

[update: the organization said that it wasn't their doing, and that they have not been advertising. strange, as I got the URL for their website from the commercial. still investigating.]

Comments

I would have liked to see the commercial!

[jenmccarthy.livejournal.com]

I don't know why people often say that. Though Chinese is another langauge and it does not use the same type of letters that we use I don't see why there would be any comparison. Why not just say that its like the words are scrambled or something like that. You should give them some ideas!

Re: I would have liked to see the commercial!

[(Anonymous)]

I found this as I wanted to know if there was any relation between languages that can't be pronounced character by character and dyslexia.
what do you think?
Like if you can't read absolutely in one direction. (you have to read the whole word before pronouncing it) Wouldn't this increase cases of dyslexia?

Re: I would have liked to see the commercial!

[complicittheory.livejournal.com]

It would be interesting if that was the case, but I personally don't see it. I have seen no research to that effect either.

" languages that can't be pronounced character by character and dyslexia" isn't what say chinese or japanese is like. There IS no character by character inherent in it, though people have invented phonetic (character by character) readings. The languages are pictographic. One thing I can say about pictographic languages is that you don't have the same problems with characters, lines or glyphs, inverting or moving around. When I write a chinese character I 'get it right' even when I can't write an English word.

But I'm sure they have other problems.

[(Anonymous)]

No, what scares you is that these people had *these* thoughts in the first place.

That's true

[jenmccarthy.livejournal.com]

It's sad to say that many people have heard these kinds of things in the first place. Secondly it's even sadder that they might agree. Last but not least it's even more sad to try to recycle the point of view to people watching commercials or through other sorts of mass media!

stupid commercial

[a-me-lum.livejournal.com]

i would be concerned with the comparison too, are chinese characters/words really that bad? if they really said "isn't it frustrating when the words look like chinese" i would be offended. Yes they're different and hard to understand if you are not chinese, but the same goes for all other languages. Pretty rude and stupid commercial if you ask me.

Re: stupid commercial

[complicittheory.livejournal.com]

Ya, rather. And anyway, I think chinese would be easier for a dyslexic to understand. I know some japanese which uses chinese characters, and the great thing about it is that I don't confuse me as much as the English alphabet. Pictographic languages like chinese may be what dyslexics need. Pretty culturally intolerant anyway.

[maria-dellanno.livejournal.com]

oh man...by saying that they're pretty much saying that only english speaking people can be dyslexic...wow...someone needs to clue them in.

Whoa

[cheryl-brown.livejournal.com]

Was it American??? HA.

I can't believe that that was acutally said on a commercial. I hear people say it sometimes but honestly on a commercial.

Dyslexian and Chinese, there is no comparison. They are completely unrelated. I am shocked and appalled.

That's nuts

[edae-l.livejournal.com]

I think that when english letters start to look like chinese characters, you have a whole different set of problems that have nothing to do with dyslexia.