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In Swedish if you read a word you have never seen before, you know how to pronounce it. But you have to memorize if it's neutral sex of non-neutral sex. ("en" o
by vlehto 11y ago
In Swedish if you read a word you have never seen before, you know how to pronounce it. But you have to memorize if it's neutral sex of non-neutral sex. ("en" or "ett")
In English you have to learn spelling and pronunciation separately. Which is lot more work than Swedish genders. The structure of the language is simpler. But there is more exceptions to every rule.
So tie before Hollywood effect.
- raverbashing 11y agoYes, the mismatch between writing and pronunciation of English is hard. But it is let's say, 30% off the rules (meaning that the basics can get you to pronounce some 70% of words correctly - my estimate) The worse mismatch between pronunciation and writing I know is Gaeilge (Irish)
- vlehto 11y agoWhen I started learning English, I had absolutely no idea how to pronounce most written words. I just checked and it would have held true for 13/16 words in the above sentence. From spoken English into writing it is also true. It took me years to accept that the word "know" has k-letter in the beginning. That is significantly worse than Swedish, if you guess the "en" gender, you are correct more than 50% of the time. And the language stays pretty much understandable with wrong genders. That might not be true with English. My native Finnish is more structurally complex than either of those. But I think it has fewer exceptions. Terribly hard to tell when it's bit too fluent.