[tuukkah]

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).)

[taeric]

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.

[tuukkah]

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

[taeric]

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!

[gus_massa]

[Opening claimer here. Interesting discussion!]

Probably I missed the exact names, I guess I should have used "deep" vs "shallow", instead of "phonetic" vs "not phonetic". The problem is that there are so many rules that it looks like each word has a special rule.

I agree that Spanish also have subtle rules, we have some unusual cases here in Buenos Aires, in es-ar-bue the last "d" in "ciudad" is very faint and we say the "ll" almost like a English "sh" instead or an English "lee".

The other day I was joking with my wife, and I told her that to make the list of text transformation to allow a Spanish speaker to read German enters in a napkin:

  v -> f
  w -> v
  ei -> ia [in English, something like "ee ah"]
  ie -> ii [in English, something like "ee ee"]
  eu -> oi [in English, something like "oh ee"]
  sch -> sh [loaned from English, perhaps "y" in pure Spanish but it's confusing]

I probably missed a few cases (like the g), and the pronunciation would not be perfect, but probably close enough to be inteligible by a friendly listener.

I can't imagine how to do a similar table in English, at least a table that enters in a napkin. Let's start with the infamous case of "yesterday" does it sound like "today" or "Friday"? How is the rule? Can you classify all the words in this table https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordfinder/classic/ends/all/... ?

[taeric]

Exactly. Apologies if I made it sound like you didn't have a point. I have a pet peeve against the folks that think we don't have a phonetic alphabet. A combination of words that is largely nonsensical. Alphabets are pretty much definitionally phonetic.

This got particularly bad when we realized that our kid's school was not teaching phonetics, but that the special tutor we hired was running a basic phonetics routine. And that that is really just 44 flashcards for them to work through.

To your point, Spanish generally has 24 phonemes. This is why they can map it to the 26 letters much more straight forwardly. Though, I'm a touch surprised it can map to German so easily, they have more phonemes than English, if I'm not mistaken.

All of that is to say, I'm glad you found the discussion interesting! Apologies if my pet peeve came on too strong. :D

I am curious, btw, I don't understand what you mean about "yesterday" sounding like either "today" or "Friday" The "day" on both of those sounds the same to me?

[gus_massa]

> To your point, Spanish generally has 24 phonemes. This is why they can map it to the 26 letters much more straight forwardly.

We are also cheating with "ñ" :)

> Though, I'm a touch surprised it can map to German so easily, they have more phonemes than English, if I'm not mistaken.

I'm probably collapsing "ch", "sh", "tsch", "x" and a few more shushy sounds.

I'm ignoring the difference of the German "b" and "w".

I somewhat intentionally forgot "ä", "ö", "ü". (We have an "ü", but the use is very different, it's related to the weird cases of the "g" in Spanish.)

I missed "ß", but that's easy to add to the napkin.

> I am curious, btw, I don't understand what you mean about "yesterday" sounding like either "today" or "Friday" The "day" on both of those sounds the same to me?

Using the "Dora the Explorer" encoding method, I pronounce

today -> too-deh-ee

Friday -> frah-ee-dee (a surprising "ah" in "fri", but a mute "a" in "day")

yesterday -> it depends if you are talking or singing :)

Anyway, my English pronunciation is so bad that I never would confuse "then" and "than", but it looks like it's a common error in some native speakers.