Eli5: why do languages have spelling and pronunciation in common? Counting is the easiest example. Most words that are in a foreign language can be almost guessed in English which is very weird to me.

Question

Eli5: why do languages have spelling and pronunciation in common? Counting is the easiest example. Most words that are in a foreign language can be almost guessed in English which is very weird to me.

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Answer 1

Because a lot of languages have the same roots.

English for example is a Germanic language with roughly half of its vocabulary stemming from the French. So it means that German / Nordic syntax and words are going to sound very familiar to a native English speaker. Same with a lot of words coming from Romance languages like French, Spanish & Italian. 3 = Three = Drei = Trois = Tre, etc.

But you’ll notice that English doesn’t have many similarities to languages from completely different groups, like Korean or Kikongo.