Ratings for Welsh words and their English equivalents

The rating of English words and their Welsh equivalents provided the opportunity to compare subjective ratings in two languages as well as the opportunity to compare ratings in a deep and a shallow orthography (English and Welsh, respectively). Four variables-age of acquisition (AOA),familiarity, concreteness, and imageability-were rated. AOAand imageability emerged as the two most important extralingual variables (r = .8 and.73, respectively). Although the patterns of ratings were generally consistent within and between languages, some differences did emerge when these patterns were compared with those from other studies. Using similar instructions to rate familiarity and AOAresulted in a low correlation in English (r = - .5) and a high correlation in Welsh (r = - .84). The mean ratings for familiarity, concreteness, and imageability were higher in Welsh than in English (5.23 vs. 3.35, 5.46 vs. 4.41, and 5.29 vs. 4.38, respectively). Both ofthese findings are explained in terms of differences in orthographic depth, and it is suggested that Welshmay be a more imageable language than English