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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Since people have covered Chinese and Japanese, I’ll also point out that written English is not very phonetic. A quick google and you’ll find examples like though, through, cough, rough, plough, ought, borough. With or without an alphabet, you hear other people say it, and you just memorize what the correct sound is.
As someone whose native language isn’t English
I can tell you, English isn’t phonetic, a phonetic language will have a letter being pronounced the same, in every single instance.
This is not the case for half the letters in English
Thanks very much, everyone! This has been helpful.
English phonetic? As spanish-speaker i have to disagree. I dont know how pronounce a word if is the first time. In English there are words so different to their pronunciation that is imposible know how do it.
Englisch Is not phonetic quite a few words are written completely different to what the sound, also some words that share similarities are spoken different.
English is not a phonetic language though. Where did you get that from?
You learn English through trial and error, because a lot of the pronouncing makes no sense whatsoever.
They don’t.
Being a logographic language, written Chinese takes more time to learn, since you can’t sound out the words. However, it allows people who can’t understand each other’s spoken language to communicate through writing.
A Mandarin speaker might not be able to talk to a Hokkien speaker. But they can both read the same language. Since each would read the words in their own dialect.
Written English is phonetic? I don’t think this is true.
It’s kind of like doing a cryptogram that you find in the newspaper. Basically you look for patterns in language, and because most of us use frequent communication for the same things, no matter what the culture, food, clothing, housing, family, so those can be Clues to figure things out. For language like Mandarin, we have had the fortune of cultures meeting and exchanging explanation. And in fact different cultures mixing their languages, can also help you find the root of whatever language you’re looking for. You can work backwards through Modern languages or ancient language is to figure out how they’ve changed over time, and kind of work backwards. It’s extremely complicated. You could also work for words from an ancient language that you understand. Anyone studying a new language and trying to figure it out, would also have all of the linguistic information that we have now and whatever was available at the time of study.
English is ”phonetic”. No, just no. Look at spanish or any slavic language for that matter.
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