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> - many letters are useless relics from the past, twisted, accentuated or silent.
> - similar sounds can be made by so many different combinations: au(x), eaux, ot(s), o(s), ô, oh... The same can be said about English "two", "write"? I would say even more so: the amount of silent vowels, silent consonants in English is rather puzzling for someone coming from a Brazilian Portuguese background. I still remember as a kid trying to get by the concept of not saying the S in "island" or just ignoring the K in "knight", "know" and "knowledge" or G in "align" and "design". I studied English as a kid and then French, German and Spanish as a teenager and early 20s. In the "pronunciation from written form" department, Spanish is spectacular: an absurdly regular language in this department. German was unexpectedly regular and quite manageable to grasp in my experience. French coming in third place but yet shows some rather high degree of consistency — once you get the gist it coming with a close-enough pronunciation from the written form is doable for a new learner of the language. I would not say the same applies to English, and the amount of loan words it takes from other languages doesn't make it any easier to someone learning it. > And we don't even agree on how to say it, rose is not said the same way in Paris, Toulouse or Nice. Again, dialects/accents variations are not a French exclusivity. I understand you are not comparing say inter-country variations (like Irish accent vs a Texan accent, Quebecois vs Parisian French ) but rather intra-country variations, but yet, Northern Germany German and its Souther variations are quite distinct. > - rich and complex system to explain the chain of though or events. It's powerful to use, but it's surely hard to learn, and even harder to master.
> - verbose. If you a used to go to the point, well... Yeah. Romance languages are verbose :( |