Thanks for your input. I think my main point is that a phonetic language goes both ways. Without any context, or meaning, you should be able to write a word ju

Thanks for your input. I think my main point is that a phonetic language goes both ways. Without any context, or meaning, you should be able to write a word just by hearing it. Similarly, without any context or meaning, by seeing a word, you should be able to pronounce it. Now, of course it's a sliding scale. But I think Chinese is on one end of the scale, where if you're just given the phenome shā without context or meaning, it's literally impossible to figure out how to write the word. In English and all romance languages, you can try to spell it somewhat, and then give it to a native reader to see what it means. This helps a lot when you're reading subtitles for television programs or listening to the radio. If you're reading subtitles, you can sorta figure out what matches up to what. If you're listening to the radio, you can make a best guess on how to spell a word and ask somebody what it means.