Is it easy in languages other than English to read a paragraph where all but the first and last letters of every word have been rearranged? I was really surprised how fast I was able to read and comprehend following text:


  I cnduo't bvleiee taht I culod aulaclty uesdtannrd waht I was rdnaieg.
  Unisg the icndeblire pweor of the hmuan mnid, aocdcrnig to rseecrah at
  Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mttaer in waht oderr the lterets in a
  wrod are, the olny irpoamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in
  the rhgit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it
  whoutit a pboerlm. Tihs is bucseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey
  ltteer by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Aaznmig, huh? Yaeh and I awlyas
  tghhuot slelinpg was ipmorantt! See if yuor fdreins can raed tihs too.


Does this phenomenon relate to the language structure, i.e. is specific to English?

Would trick works for languages with longer words, like German?

Does the same phenomenon exist for Asian, non-Latin alphabet based type languages like Mandarin?

UPDATE: 

I have tried to scramble longer words as suggested in answer below and it becomes more difficult to read: "Ceefrconne of iantrintaeonl enatldocatiiuss" (Conference of international educationalists). 

Moreover, if letters just pair-wise permuted - it easier to read than random permutation. My initial feeling is that it should be certain metric that define closeness(distance) of the words to its right spelling. Then "easiness" and speed of comprehension will be proportional to that distance.
The neologism used to describe this phenomenon is Typoglycemia.

It relates to the cognitive processes behind reading written text.

Randomising letters in the middle of words have little or no effect on the ability of skilled readers to understand the text.

Because the human mind does not read every letter by itself but as a whole, it would work for any given language where we can apply the same randomisation and keep the words separated in the same order.

Let's take the notorious German example Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän, meaning Danube steamship company captain:


Our noun Donau remains the same
It is possible for our noun dampfschiffahrts to be reformed into dampfschifffahrts
Our noun gesellschaft becomes the adjective gesellschafts
Then our noun kapitän remains the same


Let's see what happens when we scramble the compound lexeme:


Unscrambled German: Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän
Scrambled German: Dsnegapcfssamspfkaihdoftctflhreulasihatän
Unscrambled English: Danubesteamshipcompanycaptain
Scrambled English: Dbipiutpaccmmaapeansytoeshann


Virtually impossible! Now let's see when we scramble each lexeme, then compound it:


Original German per lexeme: Donau-dampfshiffahrts-gesellschafts-kapitän
Scrambled German per lexeme: Doanu-dhsffhmftpiacras-glhcselefasts-kipatän
Scrambled German composition: Daonudhiahscfmffatrpsglhcselefastskipatän
Original English per lexeme: Danube-steamship-company-captain
Scrambled English per lexeme: Dnbaue-stahmseip-camonpy-citapan
Scrambled English composition: Dnbauestahmseipcamonpycitapan


The composition being nearly just as readable as per lexeme!

Feel free to try another here.

Now let's take an example in Mandarin.

Script:


研究表明
漢字的順序並不一定能影響閱讀
比如當你看完這句話後
才發現這裡的字全都是亂的


Pinyin:


Yánjiū biǎomíng
Hànzì de shùnxù bìng bù yīdìng néng yǐngxiǎng yuèdú.
Bǐrú dāng nǐ kàn wán zhè jù huà hòu
cái fāxiàn zhèlǐ de zì quándōu shì luàn de.


Now let's invert 6 disyllabic characters.

Script:


研表究明
漢字的序順並不定一能影閱響讀
比如當你看完這句話後
才發這現裡的字全是都亂的


Pinyin:


Yán biǎo jiū míng
Hànzì de xù shùn bìng bù dìng yī néng yǐng yuè xiǎng dú.
Bǐrú dāng nǐ kàn wán zhè jù huà hòu
cái fā zhè xiàn lǐ de zì quán shì dōu luàn de.


This rather tame example now makes little sense, but does not quite appear completely disordered (with the exception of the preserved third line).

Further materials:


Psycholinguistic evidence on scrambled letters in reading - Matt Davis
Reibadailty - Graham Rawlinson
The Significance of Letter Position in Word Recognition - Graham Rawlinson
Jumbled Chinese - Victor Mair