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0 pointstuukkah1mo ago0 comments

I think you misunderstand. In a largely phonetic language, almost everyone learns to read in one school semester, after which it's a fully solved problem - no spelling bees or anything. Peculiarly, you don't need spelling bees either when learning English later. ("Contronyms" and "words" are orthogonal to reading as they apply to spoken language too (and it's very much automatic).)

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taeric1mo ago· 2 in thread

I think you don't understand the various orthographies.

Again, you base the claim that English is not phonetic based on confusions in how different phonemes are represented using the 26 symbols of our alphabet. A thing that is defined as symbols representing phonemes. You could also have a syllabary or a logography. The syllabary would still be phonetic, of course. A logographic writing system is truly not phonetic. Think emoji.

And, of course, I'm summarizing very very briefly.

tuukkahOP1mo ago

Of course, you don't have to believe me; you could also read about the orthographic depth of English vs other languages on Wikipedia or something. "In shallow orthographies, the spelling-sound correspondence is direct: from the rules of pronunciation, one is able to pronounce the word correctly.[1] That is to say, shallow (transparent) orthographies, also called phonemic orthographies, have a one-to-one relationship between its graphemes and phonemes, and the spelling of words is very consistent. Examples include Japanese kana, Hindi, Lao (since 1975), Spanish, Finnish, Turkish, Georgian, Latin, Italian, Serbo-Croatian, Ukrainian, and Welsh. [--] English is unusual because it combines deep orthography, with multiple possible sounds for many letters.[2] This makes it among the most difficult languages in the world to learn to read." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthographic_depth

taeric1mo ago

From the intro of the page you link: "The orthographic depth of an alphabetic orthography indicates the degree to which a written language deviates from simple one-to-one letter–phoneme correspondence."

So, sure, if you want to discuss about how English orthography is deep, go for it. I won't even really disagree. Quite the contrary.

The opening claim was that it wasn't phonetic, though. That is a different thing.

It is funny seeing Japanese as the first example in your quote, as it has both a phonetic syllabary (two, actually) and a non-phonetic logography. That is, you literally have to learn to read a non-phonetic orthography in order to read Japanese!

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