Curiously, French is also good at being "pronounced how its written", but horrible the other way around, writing down what you hear. With only a few exceptions

Curiously, French is also good at being "pronounced how its written", but horrible the other way around, writing down what you hear. With only a few exceptions, you can always read out loud a written word. There is quite a lot of rules, but they are rather strict. Once you know them, you are good to go and read everything out loud. But if you want to learn French by "listening and looking up the words in a dictionary" - good luck with that. There are multiple ways to write down the same sounds. You hear [ku] and it can be "coup", "cou", "coût"...