[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.

[taeric]

Ah, I think I see. You actually pronounce the "y" in those words? I'm not familiar with any dialects where that is common. I could see it, though. In general, I would expect the pronunciation for all of those is the same. They are all words with the root "day".

Copying from Merriam-Webster for them:

  Today: tə-ˈdā  
  Friday: frī-dā
  Yesterday:  ˈye-stər-dā

The page for Friday does have "-dē" listed, as well. Which maybe is what you are referencing?

Regardless, fun reading. And please don't take this as a criticism of your pronunciation!

[gus_massa]

From https://dictionary.cambridge.org/pronunciation/english/today it looks like it's like

  today -> too-deh-I

where the last "I" is like the "i" in "ship" and not like the "ee" in "sheep". I agree that it's not a very strong "ee" sound.

[taeric]

I see /təˈdeɪ/ on that page. Per their https://dictionary.cambridge.org/help/phonetics.html page, the eɪ is how they encode what the other site uses ā for. That is, the "ɪ" is not a separate syllable from the "e".

[gus_massa]

I pronounce them in the same syllable, but I used an incorrect notation.