Just that. Written English is phonetic, so I can easily read an unfamiliar word by sounding it out. Even though I don’t always get it right, usually I’m close enough to be understood.
How does this work in Chinese, or Japanese?
Edit – OK, yes I get it! English isn’t really phonetic. It’s just that when I was learning to read and write, our school used a method they called phonics. It must have confused the heck out of most kids, because they abandoned the method soon after, but it worked for me. We had a lot of practice in recognizing the various patterns words can take, and the many exceptions. So for me, who always did very well in English class, words tend to be easy to spell out.
I’m really glad not to have to figure it out as an adult, because I’m sure I’d be just as frustrated as some of you friends are! And I promise you that you are much better at English than I am at your language.
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I learned this in my Chinese linguistics course in China, but basically the solution to spelling out more complicated words is to use simpler words to put together the sound. Please note that this is applicable for more olden, historical times when there isn’t pinyin or any phonetic sounding guides.
So if today I have the word 事 (shi4) I can directly use a common word that everyone should know to indicate the same pronunciation: 是 (shi4). So it would probably look like “事，音是” meaning the word 事 is pronounced like 是.
More complicated words often wouldn’t have a similar word to directly describe the sound over, especially since Chinese have to consider tone too. Generally the rule here is to describe the unknown word with two other common words: first word determining the consonant and the second word determining the vowel. (Note that consonants and vowels here don’t really work in the same way as phonetic languages where it’s a specific set of letters representing it, since each Chinese character is only one syllable with one consonant and one vowel. They work similarly but don’t confuse the pinyin below)
For example, I can have a more complicated word 冬 (dong1) that would be spelled by 都 (dou1) and 宗 (zong1), which means:
dong1 = (d)ou1 + z(ong1)
It would look like “冬，都宗切”
You may wonder how do people know what the common words even read, to which it can be assumed that it has been passed down or taught from nearby people as those are words to be commonly seen around. But it is also common to have people to not be able to read at all due to lack of education back then.
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