On 5-Mar-2006, "RicodJour" wrote:

After about
the age of seven, there's no Italian word that an Italian kid can't
spell - it's essentially a phonetic language.

A study done years ago found that rates of reading dyslexia were higher
in countries with languages like English and French, where spelling and
pronounciation were not necessarily consistent, and lower in countries
like Russia, Italy, Spain etc where the spelling is essentially phonetic.
The difference was pretty significant.

Mike