> You know how to spell a word from the way it sounds. Spanish is my mother language, and actually it's the opposite way: given a written word, there is only o

> You know how to spell a word from the way it sounds. Spanish is my mother language, and actually it's the opposite way: given a written word, there is only one obvious way to read it (except for loanwords and a few words that keep old spellings like "México"), but given a spoken word, it may be written in two different ways (e.g. vaca/baca, kilo/quilo), or it may have a silent H ("ahí hay un hombre que dice ay"). The orthography is not fully phonetic, but you are right it's infinitely easier than English. If you want to find languages with an almost perfect phonetic spelling, look at Eastern/Northern European languages with an ortography created in the late 19th or early 20th century.