4 ms·
I know a little Spanish still I would argue about 1-to-1: at least you do not pronounce `h` and there are two different ways to pronounce `g`.
by mapcars 7y ago
I know a little Spanish still I would argue about 1-to-1: at least you do not pronounce `h` and there are two different ways to pronounce `g`.
- pxndx 7y agoYes, there are variations on sounds, but none of the through/enough bullshit english has.
- helloguillecl 7y agoYes. But they are very few and consistent rules. The sound of "H" will be consistent, unless it is actually a "CH", which is another letter phonetically speaking (some dictionaries would treat it a a separate letter).
- kingofpandora 7y agoEngland has rules - albeit not simple ones - such that about 85% (IIRC) of never before seen words can be pronounced correctly. Obviously I'm paraphrasing someone else's study here and may be getting it slightly wrong but the gist is that English is more decipherable than it first appears.
- frobozz 7y agoI like that you use the word albeit in that comment. It's one of the words where the pronunciation rules go awry. No one is denying that English has rules mapping spelling to pronunciation for the lion's share of text. It's just that the rules are (as you say) complex and there are a lot of exceptions. On the production side, there are a number of different opshuns for righting the seim sownds, sum ov witch are legitimate homophones, rather than just misspellings. In languages like Spanish (or even better, Welsh, where sandhi is actually written down), as long as you know the rules, you can correctly pronounce 100% of never before seen words, and you can correctly spell a higher proportion of words than in English.
- InitialLastName 7y agoThere are so many words in your second sentence that belie your point that it almost seems like you wrote it that way.
- nkrisc 7y agoCompared to English, I think it's reasonable to unscientifically call it 1:1.
- lmkg 7y agoSpanish is at least 0.98:1. English probably struggles to reach the 60's.
- maw 7y agoAlso 'x' is a little weird. Depending on the dialect and the word, it's pronounced roughly like English 'x', 's', 'sh', and a guttural 'h'.
- swsieber 7y agoFrom what i understand the 'g' pronunciation is entirely dependent on the vowel following in, in a completely regular manner. So still a lot better than English.
- maw 7y agoMostly true. At the end of a word it's pronounced as though it were followed by an 'e' or an 'i'. I used to work with a guy named Gerardo Ochoa. His username was gochoa, but when addressing him in person we'd sometimes call him "jochoa." (Not his real name or username, but what I'm describing is true in its essence.)