6 ms·

I agree that Chinese/Japanese has it worse, but any language where "Spelling Bee" is a thing cannot be considered phonetic in a conventional sense.

zoky 2y ago
And yet, given the definition and language of origin, most high-level spelling bee participants can make a pretty good guess at spelling a word they may have never seen before. English is phonetic, it just borrows its pronunciation rules from many differing (and sometimes directly opposed) other languages.
- brigandish 2y ago
  "ough" has at least 9 different possible pronunciations, how is that phonetic?
  - Suppafly 2y ago
    >"ough" has at least 9 different possible pronunciations, how is that phonetic? Does a language stop being phonetic when you have to include other information provided by the rest of the word? I'm not a linguist by any means, but "ough" being pronounced a couple different ways depending how it's used doesn't seem like it'd preclude the language from being considered phonetic in general.
    - brigandish 2y ago
      9 is not a couple, unless you're in a very open relationship - which English words might be - but a language stops being phonetic at the point that the mappings between symbols and sounds are no longer clear and reliable. The most phonetic languages have one-to-one mappings with very few exceptions e.g. Japanese, Spanish, Italian, Finnish. English, on the other hand, has silent letters, inconsistent mappings even within the same word, exceptions, irregularities, and sounds that are represented by multiple letters and spellings. English is not a phonetic language except in the sense that it does have mappings between sounds and characters, which would make sense if one were to compare it to a wholly written language like Python, but not any human language.
- stephen_g 2y ago
  Very true - and every demonstration of “English is hard to spell/pronounce” focuses directly on the exceptions which exaggerates the problem. One analysis I’ve seen puts it that with a single set of rules, 59% of a sample corpus of 5000 English words can be pronounced perfectly from the spelling (of course, there will be regional accent and dialect differences so that percentage will be a bit different for each one) and up to 85% can be pretty close with only slight errors. Then there’s a percentage where they’re just direct borrowings from other languages and you need to have an idea of how that language pronounces words (especially French), so really only 10-15% or so of English words end up being true exceptions. 1. https://www.zompist.com/spell.html https://www.zompist.com/spell.html
  - nl 2y ago
    > a single set of rules, 59% of a sample corpus of 5000 English words can be pronounced perfectly from the spelling To do this you need to know 56(!) rules. I think this actually demonstrates how complex English pronunciation actually is.
    - poincaredisk 2y ago
      And you still only get 59% of the way to the correct pronunciation. As a non native speaker of English, and a native speaker of a phonetic language, I strongly object to the notion that it's easy to guess English word pronunciation by just reading it.
      - coliveira 2y ago
        And that's another reason why there are so many English speakers who don't know how to read properly. It is so much harder to read compared to more sensible languages line German (and many others).
  - Izkata 2y ago
    Oh hurrah, I think that link is what I've been looking for for nearly a decade. I ran across it, or something like it, a long time ago and could never find it again. I don't remember all the special syntax, I think the one I found was written more in plain English with more examples (and I don't think the one I found back then mentioned ghoti either), but can't be sure it's been so long - maybe it was just that page and I don't remember it. It does have around the same number of rules I remember though.

zoky 2y ago

And yet, given the definition and language of origin, most high-level spelling bee participants can make a pretty good guess at spelling a word they may have never seen before. English is phonetic, it just borrows its pronunciation rules from many differing (and sometimes directly opposed) other languages.

brigandish 2y ago
"ough" has at least 9 different possible pronunciations, how is that phonetic?
- Suppafly 2y ago
  >"ough" has at least 9 different possible pronunciations, how is that phonetic? Does a language stop being phonetic when you have to include other information provided by the rest of the word? I'm not a linguist by any means, but "ough" being pronounced a couple different ways depending how it's used doesn't seem like it'd preclude the language from being considered phonetic in general.
  - brigandish 2y ago
    9 is not a couple, unless you're in a very open relationship - which English words might be - but a language stops being phonetic at the point that the mappings between symbols and sounds are no longer clear and reliable. The most phonetic languages have one-to-one mappings with very few exceptions e.g. Japanese, Spanish, Italian, Finnish. English, on the other hand, has silent letters, inconsistent mappings even within the same word, exceptions, irregularities, and sounds that are represented by multiple letters and spellings. English is not a phonetic language except in the sense that it does have mappings between sounds and characters, which would make sense if one were to compare it to a wholly written language like Python, but not any human language.
stephen_g 2y ago
Very true - and every demonstration of “English is hard to spell/pronounce” focuses directly on the exceptions which exaggerates the problem. One analysis I’ve seen puts it that with a single set of rules, 59% of a sample corpus of 5000 English words can be pronounced perfectly from the spelling (of course, there will be regional accent and dialect differences so that percentage will be a bit different for each one) and up to 85% can be pretty close with only slight errors. Then there’s a percentage where they’re just direct borrowings from other languages and you need to have an idea of how that language pronounces words (especially French), so really only 10-15% or so of English words end up being true exceptions. 1. https://www.zompist.com/spell.html https://www.zompist.com/spell.html
- nl 2y ago
  > a single set of rules, 59% of a sample corpus of 5000 English words can be pronounced perfectly from the spelling To do this you need to know 56(!) rules. I think this actually demonstrates how complex English pronunciation actually is.
  - poincaredisk 2y ago
    And you still only get 59% of the way to the correct pronunciation. As a non native speaker of English, and a native speaker of a phonetic language, I strongly object to the notion that it's easy to guess English word pronunciation by just reading it.
    - coliveira 2y ago
      And that's another reason why there are so many English speakers who don't know how to read properly. It is so much harder to read compared to more sensible languages line German (and many others).
- Izkata 2y ago
  Oh hurrah, I think that link is what I've been looking for for nearly a decade. I ran across it, or something like it, a long time ago and could never find it again. I don't remember all the special syntax, I think the one I found was written more in plain English with more examples (and I don't think the one I found back then mentioned ghoti either), but can't be sure it's been so long - maybe it was just that page and I don't remember it. It does have around the same number of rules I remember though.