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Category: Project

Description: Finnish is one of the most transparent alphabetic orthographies (Seymour et al., 2003). Its grapheme-phoneme correspondence rules are almost fully predictable. As a result, it is easy to learn to read and spell in Finnish. The only, and very specific, challenge seems to lie in the doubling of consonants (e.g., 'Mikko'). This is the most common error in early spelling (Lyytinen et al., 1995). The aim of this project is to determine why spelling of words with double consonants in Finnish is relatively hard. Answering this question is both of theoretical and practical relevance. It will inform models of learning to spell in alphabetic languages and in Finnish in particular. Importantly, it will also inform Finnish teachers how to best help their students with the spelling of these relatively challenging words.