The purpose of the present study is to examine the processing effects of different orthographies for creole speakers. Choosing such an orthography is a complex question which involves issues in language policy and language ideology. It has sparked a long debate between proponents of phonemic orthography (phonology-based) versus etymological orthography (following spelling conventions of the lexifier language). Their arguments differ regarding both the functional aspects of orthography and its relationship with the lexifier language. However, there has been little investigation of how different types of creole orthographies affect native speakers’ psycholinguistic processing of text. The present study brings new evidence to bear on the discussion by employing psycholinguistic experiments on alternative orthographies.

 Hawai'i Creole (HC) has no official orthography, but two spelling systems have been used, in different circles. In creative writing, such as poetry, short stories, and novels, local voice is often described using Standard American English (SAE) spelling rules (Etymological HC Orthography), while a phonemic spelling system (Odo HC Orthography (Odo 1975)) is mostly used in linguistics.

The present study compares results for isolated visual word recognition with reading time and comprehension accuracy results from reading complete sentences. It tests Etymological vs. Odo Orthography, with bilingual/bidialectal (HC-SAE) speakers of English raised in Hawai'i and monolingual (SAE) speakers of English from the mainland US. Preliminary results suggest that expected differences between words that are easier or harder to recognize emerge within both orthographies. Moreover, challenging the popular belief that phonemic orthographies are more difficult to process and learn than etymological orthographies, after merely a short explanation of the phonemic orthography, all speakers exhibited high accuracy on comprehension questions for sentences in both creole orthographies. These results suggest that continued practice and exposure to the phonemic Odo Orthography could facilitate reading processing in HC speakers.