Arabic readers routinely encounter words that can be pronounced and interpreted in multiple ways because short vowels are removed from standard text. This ambiguity—homographs appearing roughly every three words—is a core feature of the written language, yet almost nothing is known about how readers navigate it. The problem matters because virtually all reading research has focused on English and similar European languages, leaving the cognitive demands of Arabic largely unexplored. Arabic is the official language of 24 sovereign states, and low literacy rates threaten individual opportunity and sustainable development goals. Without understanding how Arabic readers handle this ambiguity, efforts to improve reading instruction remain guesswork. If this research succeeds, it will produce openly-available computational resources and large-scale datasets that allow other researchers to study Arabic reading systematically. The team plans to work with international aid organisations and global reading charities to translate findings into evidence-based reading programmes. The project is primarily fundamental science—it asks how writing systems shape reading behaviour and how general learning mechanisms operate across languages—but its insights could directly inform literacy interventions in low- and middle-income countries where Arabic is spoken.
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Psychological research has produced a well-developed understanding of how we read and learn to read [1]. However, virtually all of this research has been conducted in English and in similar European languages. This narrow focus has led to a framing of the challenge of reading in terms of the salient properties of these specific languages and writing systems, and has meant that impacts have largely been restricted to English-speaking countries [2,3]. Our project aims to enhance the field’s theoretical richness and increase its global impact by discovering how we read in Arabic. Arabic is the official language of 24 sovereign states representing over 400 million people. Eighteen of those 24 sovereign states are low- and middle-income countries, in which approximately 59% of children fail to learn to read [4,5]. This low rate of literacy threatens not only individual opportunity but also many of the sustainable development goals (SDGs). Yet, our review of publications in four major reading research journals over the past decade reveals that Arabic has been the focus of only around 1% of studies (20 out of 1,668 articles). This project will investigate a central challenge of reading in Arabic: the routine removal of diacritical marks in Modern Standard Arabic (the standardised written form of Arabic; hereafter, MSA). Diacritics are glyphs that represent short vowels in Arabic script. These diacritics are typically removed in standard text, leaving readers in a situation where they frequently encounter homographs, printed words with many possible pronunciations and meanings. Estimates suggest that this form of ambiguity is widespread in Arabic text (occurring approximately every 3 words [6]). We have a poor understanding of how Arabic readers adapt to this core property of the writing system and under what circumstances it poses difficulties for reading. This prominent feature of Arabic is a prime example of why a full understanding of reading cannot be derived from studies of English and similar European languages alone. Our empirical objectives are (a) to quantify the presence and nature of this form of ambiguity in a large corpus of MSA and (b) to investigate the consequences of this ambiguity for visual word recognition and text reading in adult Arabic readers. Our theoretical objectives are (a) to advance knowledge of how the nature of a writing system impacts on reading behaviour; and (b) to deepen understanding of how general learning mechanisms allow the reading skill to be acquired across a range of languages and writing systems. Finally, we aim to produce openly-available computational resources and large-scale datasets that will substantially advance the capacity of other researchers to study Arabic reading. The project will lay the foundation for understanding why children struggle to learn to read Arabic and for addressing this through evidence-based reading programmes. The team will use deep connections with international aid organisations and global reading charities to realise these impacts during the life of the project and beyond.
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