Register  Login  Active Topics  Maps  

The most phonetic languages

 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room Post Reply
96 messages over 12 pages: 13 4 5 6 7 ... 2 ... 11 12 Next >>
Journeyer
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
tristan85.blogspot.c
Joined 6879 days ago

946 posts - 1110 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, German
Studies: Sign Language

 
 Message 9 of 96
19 May 2009 at 8:23am | IP Logged 
Satoshi wrote:

German appears to be pretty weird too, though a lot more regular than English. Not knowing exactly which of the "ch" pronunciations to use is horrible.


Actually there are phonetic rules for this so you would know which one is correct. Since they are rather simple I would list them but I'm out of practice and also really tired at the moment and so can't recall them clearly. It's not as hard as it would be at first glance though.


1 person has voted this message useful



staf250
Pentaglot
Senior Member
Belgium
emmerick.be
Joined 5708 days ago

352 posts - 414 votes 
Speaks: French, Dutch*, Italian, English, German
Studies: Arabic (Written)

 
 Message 10 of 96
19 May 2009 at 10:28am | IP Logged 
Turkish, my opinion, is a very phonetic language.
1 person has voted this message useful



Sennin
Senior Member
Bulgaria
Joined 6045 days ago

1457 posts - 1759 votes 
5 sounds

 
 Message 11 of 96
19 May 2009 at 11:08am | IP Logged 
staf250 wrote:
Turkish, my opinion, is a very phonetic language.


Turkey adopted the Latin script only in recent history ( some 50-80 years ago? I'm not sure ) Half a century is probably not enough time for the spelling to drift away from its phonetic transcription.

Some people push forward Bulgarian as the most phonetic language in the Slavic family. It is not completely phonetic (e.g. stress is variable and there are some difficult to distinguish sounds) but overall you write what you hear.

Edited by Sennin on 19 May 2009 at 11:12am

1 person has voted this message useful



rlf1810
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6351 days ago

122 posts - 173 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Slovak

 
 Message 12 of 96
19 May 2009 at 11:31am | IP Logged 
Slovak is a very phonetic language. Every letter has one sound and every word is stressed on the same syllable, unlike some other Slavic languages. You can know 99.9% of the time exactly how to pronounce a word. The ONLY exception being with foreign loanwords, which is a very small matter of a consonant not being soft where it would be in an originally Slovak word.

It's an orthographic dream.

-Robert
3 persons have voted this message useful



andee
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Japan
Joined 7088 days ago

681 posts - 724 votes 
3 sounds
Speaks: English*, German, Korean, French

 
 Message 13 of 96
19 May 2009 at 12:59pm | IP Logged 
I think Indonesian is pretty phonetic.

Korean has a lot of spelling irregularities... but these irregularities are regular ;)

Satoshi wrote:
Well, if you count furigana in (or the kanji out), Japanese would be the most phonetic language there is...

...Nor count particles は / へ ;)

But yes, using furigana, Japanese definitely is phonetic.


Edited by andee on 19 May 2009 at 1:00pm

1 person has voted this message useful



pesahson
Diglot
Senior Member
Poland
Joined 5739 days ago

448 posts - 840 votes 
Speaks: Polish*, English
Studies: French, Portuguese, Norwegian

 
 Message 14 of 96
19 May 2009 at 2:17pm | IP Logged 
Polish is definietly a very phonetic language. Stress is very regular (with few exceptions) and once you get the rules (how to pronounce each letter or each diagraph) it goes smoothly.
2 persons have voted this message useful



Thatzright
Diglot
Senior Member
Finland
Joined 5683 days ago

202 posts - 311 votes 
Speaks: Finnish*, English
Studies: French, Swedish, German, Russian

 
 Message 15 of 96
19 May 2009 at 2:50pm | IP Logged 
Finnish is indeed a very phonetic language. Everything is spelled like it is written, really, can't think of exceptions right now. I would say the rule thing about Polish above applies to Finnish too, sure the letters are pronounced very differently from English, but once you get how they are pronounced, you can pretty much pronounce everything correctly.
1 person has voted this message useful



MartinB
Triglot
Newbie
GermanyRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5710 days ago

4 posts - 4 votes
Speaks: German*, Esperanto, English

 
 Message 16 of 96
19 May 2009 at 2:52pm | IP Logged 
From my own experience:

Esperanto is pretty much phonetic.
Hungarian as well. Once you master the pronounciation rules, and some special cases like sz,cs you can easily read a text and have a hungarian understand it.
There are some exceptions to the rules still.

Martin


1 person has voted this message useful



This discussion contains 96 messages over 12 pages: << Prev 13 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12  Next >>


Post ReplyPost New Topic Printable version Printable version

You cannot post new topics in this forum - You cannot reply to topics in this forum - You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum - You cannot create polls in this forum - You cannot vote in polls in this forum


This page was generated in 0.3750 seconds.


DHTML Menu By Milonic JavaScript
Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved
No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization.