Cna yuo raed tihs?

fi yuo cna raed tihs, yuo hvae a sgtrane mnid too. Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 55 plepoe out of 100 can.

i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghi t pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!

55%, not bad. What is the literacy rate in the testing country?

ETA: (Or should I say--Waht is the lrteicay rtae in the ttstineg crutnoy?)

I remember coming across this subject in Cognitive Psych class while I was earning my psychology degree. However, I think the stats for the percentage of people that could understand such jumbled writing was quite a bit higher. We were told that 70 to 75 percent of the people could decipher writing as long as the first and last letters were in their correct place.

Of course, that was back in 1991-1996, so perhaps new studies have shed more light on the subject...or perhaps the study that we read only pertained to a certain group, like 70-75% of speakers of English, or 70-75% of adults or something like that. Maybe more populations had yet to be studied or something. I can't remember the exact study that we covered.

On

I had no problem reading it at all, but I'm not going to attempt to write that way. It looks a lot like the way one of my sons writes (even today). He was taught the Writing-to-Read method when he was a tyke, and he NEVER could spell properly after that. He writes everything phonetically, and despite being a (time-wise) more-than-average reader and otherwise, having a very high IQ, he doesn't seem top pick up on the fact that, for the most part, a word has only one correct spelling (and he doesn't use it).

I'm curious about the demographics of the study - what the education level, or just the reading level was of the participants. Maybe I'll try this on some of the youngest lads in my Boy Scout Troop when we meet again.

http://www.languagehat.com/archives/000840.php

I keep seeing that bit of text over and over again for so long, I can't even remember when I was "hey, that's cool!"

Only 55%, or only 75% ? Wha? I thought everybody could do it. Nobody in my house cant (but we dont have any cats at the moment so the sample size is smaller than it might have been).

I got everything easily except for this word: sgtrane. Strange? I had to actually try to write it out to get it.

Matt Davis posted a summary of the original PhD thesis (Rawlinson, G. E. (1976) The significance of letter position in word recognition. Unpublished PhD Thesis, Psychology Department, University of Nottingham, Nottingham UK) at http://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/~mattd/Cmabrigde/rawlinson.html

wow! I can read it! =)
My english is not so bad...=P

I had no problem reading it, though English should not be written like that.

though English should not be written like that

Really?

Nice. I have gotten that in chain mails so often I almost memorized it. My mom can read it as well as me. My dad doesn't understand any of it. I don't know if my friends have the skill....-_- lol.

I cuold raed teh wohle tihng wtih no porbelms at all. I dotn see waht is wrgon wiht it thuohg, so waht's gievs? Wsa oen of teh wrdos mispseleld or smoethnig? I knwo I mkae teh ocacsoinla splelign msitkae - bgi dael!

Ok scottstricker....LOL

Deud taht is so awsemoe. I culod raed the wlohe tinhg wtih no pbroelm.

I could read it just fine. ;-)

1> No problem. Looks like my brother's spelling, so I got used to it long ago.

Whrate sheilft rguilp scragh erfuit? No fdure gmmable dowdte!

5
A few weeks ago at my son's school (I was substituting), I came across a phonetic dictionary. I can't for the life of me remember what the actual name of the book was, but it was quite interesting to browse. It was arranged phonetically, omitting vowels. It kept me occupied for a few minutes trying to think of words and then looking them up. Challenging at first, but then easy to use.

BTW, I could read the OP just fine, although like #9, I stumbled on "sgtrane". I can't make heads or tails out of #21.

Though I wonder what kind of understandability rates there would be for other languages...like with my native language which uses longer words and smaller group of alphabets that would become really difficult...

21>, that's fake, I presume? Or at least not English?

#21,22,23: Er, to be frank, I sometimes like hoaxes. Hope I can be forgiven.

How do you delete a topic? I can't find it in the alleged "help"?

Do you mean delete a thread? I don't know if it's possible. You can "ignore" it by clicking the little "x" at the top, but it doesn't delete it completely if you've commented on it.

But I wish we had a way of removing threads from the "topics you've posted to" list. There are some threads that I'd simply like to forget.

I could read it, but at a slower speed than is normal for me.

I love this :)

I haven't been able to find a way to ignore topics, either, but I did manage to get out of a group of mostly boring topics.