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There are many languages less phonetic than English, Chinese is just the best example I can think of. I was just pointing out that English spoken and written ar
by shouldbworking 9y ago
There are many languages less phonetic than English, Chinese is just the best example I can think of. I was just pointing out that English spoken and written are close enough that you can learn one from the other.
- int_19h 9y agoI think Chinese is an example that's so extreme, it's not really very useful for such comparisons. Anyway, if we look at European languages, English is the one that's extreme in terms of how non-obvious the correspondence of its script and its phonetics are. It's not just that the mapping is very arbitrary - French can be similarly arbitrary in dropping consonants, for example - but it's also very inconsistent. You think you've learned how some combination of letters is pronounced by looking at some word and then hearing it... and then you find out that the same combination can be pronounced in three more ways. There are still patterns behind all it, and eventually you grok them, but they're way more complicated than "this letter plus this letter gives this sound", which is typical of other languages - or at least such simplified rules can be used to speak in a way that others will understand. Not so in English - you have to learn all those exceptions and subtle rules to be understood. A few examples: "live" / "life"; "leaf" / "leaven"; "over" / "oven"; "even" / "seven"; "dew" / "sew"; "dull" / "bull"; "mint" / "pint".