> It is not clear to me what that "condition" would mean in China If you said so because I'm Chinese and you wonder what I meant, in this specific example, I'm

> It is not clear to me what that "condition" would mean in China If you said so because I'm Chinese and you wonder what I meant, in this specific example, I'm talking about a British person writing English. You know, a good number of people in China also write English all the time. ;) With regards to Chinese characters, not only do people forget how to write characters sometimes, but also some people do have problems recognizing mis-written characters, e.g. a missing stroke, an extra stroke, etc. > It is also unclear to me how anyone could have a "condition" in which they struggle to spell if we did not have arbitrary spelling conventions. I agree, if hypothetically there is only one way to pronounce words, and only one way to spell a syllable, this would be less of a problem, as the person can deduce the correct spelling if memory fails. There are still other factors, like speed and error rate, that the hypothetical language might not solve. Although, I imagine it would be hard to replace the natural languages in human society at this point. > I would argue that a "true" medical/psychological condition should not be so dependent on specific cultural practices like spelling rules. If the actual cause of the condition is triggered by a specific cultural practice, I don't see why the condition cannot be referring to such practice. It would be similar to how when a condition is caused by occupational practices, its medical description will refer to the occupational practices. At this point, we don't have a universal definition dyslexia, and I don't think that's because the is cultural specific, but simply that we don't know what's happening. Our recognition of the condition is quite superficial, and even within a single language, a universal and precise definition has not yet been contrived.