4 ms·
Learing to pronounce French words is rather easy. English is a huge mess.
by ahakki 8y ago
Learing to pronounce French words is rather easy. English is a huge mess.
- gerdesj 8y agoReally? French (there are quite a few of them - think CA for example) has just as many idiosyncrasies as English when you really get in to it.
- umanwizard 8y agoThis is categorically wrong. French spelling has absolutely nowhere near as many idiosyncrasies as English spelling. It is totally impossible to predict how an unfamiliar written word is pronounced in English, but quite easy in French (barring some ambiguous situations like if a noun ends in “s”.) By the way, I don’t know what CA means. If you’re referring to the French word “ça”, its pronunciation is completely regular and predictable given the spelling.
- y_molodtsov 8y agoWell, it's possible, but only if you know where did the word come from.
- evincarofautumn 8y agoIt’s relatively easy for an English speaker to learn because we have a lot of French vocabulary, but the correspondence between pronunciation and spelling isn’t simple[1]—although granted it is somewhat simpler than English[2]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_orthography#Sound_to_spelling_correspondences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_orthography#Sound_to_sp... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_orthography#Spelling_patterns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_orthography#Spelling_p...
- saryant 8y agoI don't think it's obvious that 3 of 7 letters in "mangent" are silent (as in "ils mangent").
- umanwizard 8y agoYes it is obvious once you learn French. It’s usually (not always) clear how a word is pronounced in French if you know its spelling.
- snovv_crash 8y agoWhat isn't clear is how you spell the word after hearing it.
- heliodor 8y agoEasy? Fine. But it's still a huge waste of time on a global scale compared to phonetic languages, when you consider how many people have to learn French, English, etc.