Eye movements of adolescent students when reading Greeklish transliterations

Abstract

This article aims to reopen the issue of Greeklish, the Latin-alphabet Greek used for the past 30 years, sparking a lot of debate in Greek society. Greeklish transliterations (phonetic, mixed, and orthographic) that are still used in digital environments have been associated with negative effects on students’ literacy skills. The current study used eye-tracking to examine the eye movement patterns of forty adolescent students (aged 11–15) during reading Greeklish transliterated single-words (nouns/verbs) and sentences relative to their counterparts in the Greek alphabet in a sample of Greeklish users. The results of duration and numerosity reading measures that were studied support the view that Greeklish transliterations are harder to read than their Greek alphabet corresponding. Differences between Greeklish transliteration types have also been observed across all stimuli, with the orthographic one being more difficult for nouns but easiest for verbs. In contrast, the mixed transliteration has caused less processing cost when reading sentences.