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Two experiments examined the influence of dialect on the spelling of vowel sounds. British and Australian children (6 to 8 years) and university students wrote words whose unstressed vowel sound is spelled i or e and pronounced /I/ or //. Participants often (mis)spelled these vowel sounds as they pronounced them. When vowels were pronounced similarly in both dialects (e.g., comic, with /I/; fossil, with //), British and Australian writers wrote the correct spelling similarly often. For vowels pronounced as /I/ in British English but // in Australian English and spelled with i (e.g., muffin), British writers correctly wrote i significantly more than Australian writers. For vowels with this same pronunciation pattern but spelled instead with e(e.g., rocket), Australian writers correctly wrote e significantly more often than British writers. Dialect-related phonological differences influenced the spelling of both beginning and skilled spellers across both familiar and unfamiliar words.

Item Type:	Refereed Article
Research Division:	Psychology
Research Group:	Cognitive and computational psychology
Research Field:	Psycholinguistics (incl. speech production and comprehension)
Objective Division:	Education and Training
Objective Group:	Learner and learning
Objective Field:	Learner and learning not elsewhere classified
UTAS Author:	Kemp, NM (Associate Professor Nenagh Kemp)
ID Code:	56584
Year Published:	2009
Web of Science® Times Cited:	6
Deposited By:	Psychology
Deposited On:	2009-05-13
Last Modified:	2014-11-25
Downloads:	2 View Download Statistics