Reading vowels in Kannada script

Among speakers of English, a greater number of vowels are misread by poor readers than are consonants. This is thought to be due to the complex way that vowels are represented in the alphabetic script. In Kannada, which has a phonetically regular script, children learn to read using a clear set of rules with respect to vowels and consonants. The purpose of this study was to determine the nature of misreadings of vowels by two groups, good readers and poor readers of Kannada. The poor readers misread a large number of items in two lists of syllables and words. Both groups misread vowels in equal proportion to their total number of misreadings. The results are discussed.