THE COGNITIVE COMPLEXITY IN READING THE ARABIC SCRIPT OF MALAY

The Malay language is a synchronous digraphic language as it is written in both the Roman Script (or Latin Script, henceforth, Rumi) and the Arabic Script (henceforth, Jawi).Unfortunately, the majority of the Malay speakers are not Rumi-Jawi biscriptals; in fact, Jawi is marginalized despite being the other official script for the Malay language.Jawi has been described as cognitively more complex than Rumi due to the inconsistent cognitive mapping between the Jawi symbols and the sound each symbol is said to represent.There are 4 spelling patterns in the current Jawi spelling system and this further complicates the process of reading Jawi.However, more scientific evidence is needed to support this claim.Hence, this study was conducted to illustrate how complex the process of reading Jawi is.Three experiments were conducted using the E-Prime Software that is linked to the TOBII TX300 eye tracker.Experiment 1, Experiment 2, and Experiment 3 were conducted on 30 Jawi readers to investigate the complexity in reading all four spelling patterns.Experiment 1 measured participants' correct responses and their Reaction Times in choosing the correct spelling for the words that the participants heard whereas Experiment 2 and Experiment 3 measured the participants' correct responses, reaction times (Onset), and the reading duration when two-syllable Malay words written in current Jawi spelling system were presented to them.Results show that different spelling patterns result in different mean number of correct responses and in different mean reaction times (in Experiment 1, Experiment 2, and Experiment 3).This suggests that some spelling patterns in the current Jawi spelling system are easy whereas some are not.This study hence proposes that a more consistent spelling system should be introduced to Jawi so that the number of Rumi-Jawi biscriptals can increase in the future.