Measuring graphematic transparency

In this article, a quantitative method to calculate the graphematic transparency of an alphabetic writing system is suggested. Graphematic transparency is a part of the traditional concept of orthographic depth, dealing with the direction from written representation to phonological representation only. Based on a thorough analysis of German graphematics given in Neef (2005a) and a tentative analysis of Italian graphematics, the respective gt-values are calculated in a constant theoretical framework. As expected, the gt-value for Italian is lower than that for German. For assessing the relevance of these calculated gt-values, further analyses of other writing systems are necessary. Keywords: orthographic depth; graphematic transparency; graphematics; typology; correspondence rule; phonological filter; geminate; German; Italian