Reading Comprehension Depends on the Alphabet

Back when I worked in the baby food factory, most of our staff from the small village only had a 3rd or 4th grade education. Many of them were embarrassed to read instructions out loud because of their low level of literacy. One lady in particular seemed like she was better educated but still stumbled when reading and often lacked any comprehension of what she had read by the time she got to the bottom of the page. One day, she picked up my hand scratched notes for the day’s meeting and began to share them quickly and unhindered. “You can read that?” I asked shocked. Instead of taking the time to form the looping Arabic letters, I had simple written out the sounds in English letters. “This is the same alphabet we used in school when I was growing up; it is so much easier to read.”

 She wasn’t the only one who thought so. My friend from back at the University was an English major who had been educated since kindergarten in the national language. She had never officially learned to read and write U but, when it was written with English-like letters, she could sound it out and understand her mother tongue.

 Here were two women with very different educational backgrounds yet the U Bible, as it is published in the Arabic script, was hard for them to read and comprehend. They may be the exception, from among the thousands of neighbors I met over the years, but they are not alone. The U language can be written in four different alphabets. The current and most common one used in the U home land is a modified Arabic script. Some Central Asian countries, that spent years under the hand of the Soviet Union, use a modified Cyrillic (Russian) Alphabet. Years ago, when my factory coworker was in school, they used a Latin (English) system to write the language. They all sound the same when read aloud, but look very different on paper. See Psalm 139:13 below in all four versions.

Psalm 139: 13 “ For you have formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb