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.
In: Other
In Chinese, a large number of characters are constructed such that half of the character indicates the sound while the other half suggests the meaning. For example:
种 (pronounced as “zhong3” or “zhong4”) is made of 禾 (meaning “rice”) on the left and 中 (pronounced “zhong1”) on the right, so by guesswork it means either “seed” (“zhong3”) or “to plant” (“zhong4”) (and also “category” so it can get very complicated).
Beware there are also a lot of *faux-ami* where the actual pronunciation is completely different from what it may suggest. If you get those wrong you would be laughed as an illiterate idiot.
In modern Chinese dictionary the characters are usually listed in *Pinyin* order, but usually there will also be a list of these character components which can be used to search for unfamiliar characters.
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