Typoglycemia

When I fly, I read, and was able to totally catch up on my last issue of Spirituality & Health on yesterday's flight home. I "soul" that bimonthly magazine. It's not a light-hearted read, in the sense that you can't really read it quickly.

But not that it's always heavy either. Take this fun exercise I found in the corner of a page: "Typoglycemia: Believe it or Not, You Can Read this:"

"I cdn'uolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg: the phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid. Aoccdrnig to a rsceearch taem at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Such a cdonition is arppoiatrely cllaed Typoglycemia :)-

Amzanig huh? Yaeh and you awlyas thguoht slpeling was ipmorantt."

Now that I'm home, I've done a Wiki on it and have discovered that "In actual fact, no such research was carried out at Cambridge University. It all started with a letter to the New Scientist magazine from Graham Rawlinson in which he discusses his PhD thesis. For more on that, click here. The gist is that "we only need the first and last two letetrs to spot chganes in meniang."

Does this mean that spelling really isn't as important as all our teachers cracked it up to be!

As a linguist by education, this has amused and amazed me. What intrigues me now, for those of you whose Mother Tongue is NOT English, is if the above exercise was just as easy for you as for the rest of us?? Pray tell.