41 ms·
Most of these examples are unambiguous in context. For example, C is always pronounced /k/ when preceding A, O, U, and always pronounced /s/ or /θ/ depending on
by jgwil2 6y ago
Most of these examples are unambiguous in context. For example, C is always pronounced /k/ when preceding A, O, U, and always pronounced /s/ or /θ/ depending on the dialect when preceding E and I.
The function from written Spanish to spoken Spanish (provided we are talking about a single dialect) is surjective, but darn close to bijective, especially if we exclude words of recent foreign origin.
- bradrn 6y agoFrom Mark Rosenfelder (https://www.zompist.com/spell.html https://www.zompist.com/spell.html): > Many people expect … to predict the spelling from the pronunciations-- not realizing that few orthographies meet this goal. It's far from true of Spanish, for instance, which is often held up as an example of a good orthography. I stopped fervently admiring Spanish orthography when I saw a sign in a Mexican bakery with about one spelling mistake every third word. So, no, hardly bijective!
- jgwil2 6y agoWell, rules can be simple and there can be few exceptions and people will still screw up, so I don't think that anecdote proves anything. In any case, my claim is that there is exactly one possible pronunciation per correctly spelled Spanish word. The opposite direction is not quite 1:1, but again, it's very close, and anyway it's far closer than English.
- bradrn 6y agoSure, that I can agree with.