# Are all languages phonetic except for English? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 19, 2011, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-languages-phonetic-except-for-english/596853 "2011-09-19T19:03:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2011, 12:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-languages-phonetic-except-for-english/596853/41 "2011-09-20T12:29:21Z")
> [@Hypnagogic\_Jerk](#): > > I’m in Canada, and my first language is French. So I figure that maybe I just didn’t learn English right. Thinking about it more, in the sentence fragment “close to the street”, [kloz] and [klos] sound equally right to me. These two consonants are really very similar to each other. That was my immediate thought when you said you pronounced both words /kloz/ – we got a francophone here. > [@yelimS](#): > > Also: I’m still learning Hindi, but I’m told that if you know [Devanagari](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devanagari), you can pretty much pronounce everything. Seems a legit claim, there should be enough characters. I couldn’t find a number for either alphabets and the count is a bit tricky of course, but I think Devanagari’s got IPA beat when it comes to number of letters. There’s less ambiguity with Sanskrit. But in Hindi, there are complicated rules as to when the inherent vowel (short /a/) is pronounced or not. It can be pronounced or silent depending on the environment. Learners have to either learn the complicated rules or else memorize each word individually. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2011, 12:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-languages-phonetic-except-for-english/596853/42 "2011-09-20T12:39:44Z")
> [@Terr](#): > > True, but no modern Hebrew publication uses nikud, except ones that are directed at 5-year-olds, or the Torah/Talmud. Usually when a book or article prints an unusual word - like a foreign name - for the first time, they include _nikud_. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2011, 1:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-languages-phonetic-except-for-english/596853/43 "2011-09-20T13:07:44Z")
> [@Jragon](#): > > I wouldn’t call Japanese fully phonetic. There’s some interpretation with characters, where す may be “su” or “s” depending on the part of the word it’s in, the sentence, or the speaker,　し can be “shi” or “sh” and whether you pronoucne the i depends on what follows the character to a great degree,　く is “ku” or something similar to a glottalized “k” depending on context. So, like Spanish with “x” (which can have several sounds depending on its origin), “w” (same), or those syllables where the sound is defined by the whole syllable (the g in gue and güe sound the same but different from the one in ge; the u in gue is mute but the one in güe is pronounced - the g in ge sounds as the j in je… the g in ga sounds like the one in gue and ge, not like j). > [@](#): > > I’m sure it also doesn’t describe some dialects very well, but I’m not certain of that. It’s mostly phonetic, but it’s certainly not perfectly phonetic. Again, the same happens in Spanish, where seeing how something is written will (except for x and w) tell you how to pronounce it in your dialect, but knowing how you pronounce it may not tell you how to spell it. I was working with a Mexican recently who would ask us (northern Spaniards) “how do _you_ say ‘[word]’?” because “when you say it, I know how to spell it, when _I_ say it, I don’t!” I don’t know whether there are fully phonemic languages, but there certainly are differences in how phonemic a language is. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2011, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-languages-phonetic-except-for-english/596853/44 "2011-09-20T14:58:46Z")
> [@Koxinga](#): > > I like Ascenray’s “phone-osity” I figured that was a compromise. People are so inundated with the term “phonetic,” I found it difficult to say “phonemic” even though I know better. ---
**Author:** ![Fatwater\_Fewl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/4491bb/32.png) [@Fatwater\_Fewl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fatwater_Fewl)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2011, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-languages-phonetic-except-for-english/596853/45 "2011-09-20T19:57:06Z")
> [@ModernPrimate](#): > > Hush lol. 😉 Nothing inaccurate with what I said. 🙂 > > But “all languages phoenetic except for English”? Like out of the many thousands of langauges that English would be the only one that isn’t phoenetic most of the time? He learned the Russian and Greek _alphabets_ and they also “seem to be phoenetic”… he makes that conclusion from learning their alphabets…??? 95%+ of English is completely phonetic anyway. French has many of the exact same words as English. when come back bring [PIE](http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/lrc/iedocctr/ie-ling/ie-phon.html)! ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2011, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-languages-phonetic-except-for-english/596853/46 "2011-09-20T23:59:19Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > I can only come up with six: Tough, cough, plough, through, dough, hiccough. And Firefox gives two of those a red underline. I can’t think of others. But slough has two different pronunciations, one meaning a swamp and rhymes with plough (or bough to give one not redlined) while the other is a term used in bridge (to discard, not able to follow suit and not trumping) which rhymes with tough. Incidentally, without breathing hard, I came up with over 50 pairs of words with exactly the same spelling but different pronunciations. E.g. rec-ord (noun) and re-cord (verb). ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2011, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-languages-phonetic-except-for-english/596853/47 "2011-09-21T00:03:33Z")
> [@Greg\_Charles](#): > > Which ones? Well, hiccough obviously, because that’s exclusively British, but also … plough? That’s the way I would spell it. There is also bough though, which even Firefox would have to concede. The ones you missed are like ought, bought, fought, and one from the name McCullogh. > > So other languages, notably French, has homophones. But do they have homographs that aren’t also homophones? Do they have “phonemes” that sound different from word to word? The only example I can think of is French where ent (I think) is silent at the end of a verb, but not a noun. Rare, but they exist. I found one, fils which is usually son, pronounced “fees” (the “s” is unvoiced), but is also the plural of the word for wire, pronounced “feel”. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2011, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-languages-phonetic-except-for-english/596853/48 "2011-09-21T00:14:19Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > I can’t think of others. But slough has two different pronunciations, one meaning a swamp and rhymes with plough (or bough to give one not redlined) while the other is a term used in bridge (to discard, not able to follow suit and not trumping) which rhymes with tough. “Slough” (the watery word) is pronounced “sloo” in my dialect. Looking it up, it seems like “slau” is British / New England and “sloo” is rest-of-North-American. The other “slough” (sluff) I associate with snakes shedding their skins. ---
**Author:** ![Greg\_Charles](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/839c29/32.png) [@Greg\_Charles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Greg_Charles)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2011, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-languages-phonetic-except-for-english/596853/49 "2011-09-21T00:32:35Z")
Cool, fils has two pronunciations. We’ve found one! I did know about Chinese characters having different meanings and pronunciations, but it does seem that for alphabet-based languages, this “non-phone-osity” is peculiar to English, at least in matter of degree. I’m still not sure why. Slough is a weird word. It can be pronounced sloo, sluff, and slau, at least in American English. I’m a little vague on the difference between a sloo slough and a slau slough. They’re both marshy kinds of places. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2011, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-languages-phonetic-except-for-english/596853/50 "2011-09-21T03:55:25Z")
[quote=“septimus, post:28, topic:596853”] [li] time = เวลา = E V L A = Vela[/li][/QUOTE] No. _Wela_. Although no doubt you’ll defend the V vigorously. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2011, 7:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-languages-phonetic-except-for-english/596853/51 "2011-09-21T07:16:48Z")
> [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > No. _Wela_. Although no doubt you’ll defend the V vigorously. Depending on speaker, the phoneme may sound like “V,” though I chose that transliteration mainly because the English vowel/consonant “W” is somewhat ambiguous. The Thai language has significant regional variation. Even the complicated consonant class/tone mark - to - tone mapping has deviations in Southern Thailand. Suphanburi is almost next-door to Bangkok but has a distinctive “sing-songy” rhythm. I sometimes impress people by telling them what province they come from. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2011, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-languages-phonetic-except-for-english/596853/52 "2011-09-21T14:23:56Z")
Suit yourself. I find nothing “ambiguous” about W, whis is how _wela_ is pronounced. ---
**Author:** ![hibernicus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hibernicus/32/2802_2.png) [@hibernicus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hibernicus)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2011, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-languages-phonetic-except-for-english/596853/53 "2011-09-21T16:11:08Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > Rare, but they exist. I found one, fils which is usually son, pronounced “fees” (the “s” is unvoiced), but is also the plural of the word for wire, pronounced “feel”. Another French example is “portions”. Nous portions deux portions de dessert. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2011, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-languages-phonetic-except-for-english/596853/54 "2011-09-22T00:08:32Z")
[Korean Hangul](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hangul) has a reputation of being the best sound-to-symbol matching system in the world. Spanish also comes in near the top of such rankings. Tibetan and Burmese at the bottom. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2011, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-languages-phonetic-except-for-english/596853/55 "2011-09-22T01:56:32Z")
> [@Johanna](#): > > [Korean Hangul](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hangul) has a reputation of being the best sound-to-symbol matching system in the world. Spanish also comes in near the top of such rankings. Tibetan and Burmese at the bottom. The closest I think I’ve personally encountered, at least using the Latin or Roman alphabet, is Malay and Indonesian (or the national language Bahasa Indonesia itself and not one of the 300+ other languages found in the country). They had no writing before the Western adventurers arrived, and the writing has become a pretty straightforward match with the sounds. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2011, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-languages-phonetic-except-for-english/596853/56 "2011-09-22T02:22:52Z")
Indonesian is really just a standardized dialect of Malay. The same way that Pilipino is a standardized dialect of Tagalog. I believe that at one point the term “Malaysia” could be applied to the entire region. (There’s no reason to say “Bahasa Indonesia” when writing in English. “Bahasa” just means language and is a Sanskritic word. It’s used across South and Southeast Asia. Didn’t someone mention Bahasa Thai?) ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2011, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-languages-phonetic-except-for-english/596853/57 "2011-09-22T02:39:28Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > Indonesian is really just a standardized dialect of Malay. The same way that Pilipino is a standardized dialect of Tagalog. I believe that at one point the term “Malaysia” could be applied to the entire region. > > (There’s no reason to say “Bahasa Indonesia” when writing in English. “Bahasa” just means language and is a Sanskritic word. It’s used across South and Southeast Asia. Didn’t someone mention Bahasa Thai?) I am well aware of what Bahasa means. I wrote it that way because Bahasa Indonesia is what the national language is called, and the term is commonly used over here, so I am rather used to it. (The national language of Malaysia is Bahasa Melayu, but it is normally rendered as Malay without the Bahasa; dunno why.) Yes, Indonesian is basically the same as Malay, which is why I mentioned both of them together. However, there is some difference, as while I was in Indonesia, my Malaysian and Indonesian colleagues both told me that one side could understand the other pretty well but not vice versa. I can’t remember which side was which. There seems to have been some sort of linguistic divergence following the British and Dutch colonizations, and I’ve heard Malaysians and Indonesians referred to as “one people divided by history” as a result. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2011, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-languages-phonetic-except-for-english/596853/58 "2011-09-22T02:52:30Z")
One other factoid I meant to mention: Over here, you often hear foreigners commonly but incorrectly referring to the Indonesian language as just Bahasa, not realizing that all it means is “language.” As in: “I can understand a bit of Malay, but I’d like to learn some Bahasa for when I go to Jakarta.” ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2011, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-languages-phonetic-except-for-english/596853/59 "2011-09-22T04:02:05Z")
> [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > The closest I think I’ve personally encountered, at least using the Latin or Roman alphabet, is Malay and Indonesian (or the national language Bahasa Indonesia itself and not one of the 300+ other languages found in the country). They had no writing before the Western adventurers arrived, and the writing has become a pretty straightforward match with the sounds. What are you talking about? Of course they had writing. Malay language was written in Arabic script (_huruf Jawi_) from the Middle Ages. Before that, Old Malay was written in an ancient script of Indian origin called Pallava, akin to Tamil script. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2011, 4:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-languages-phonetic-except-for-english/596853/60 "2011-09-22T04:26:22Z")
> [@Johanna](#): > > What are you talking about? Of course they had writing. Malay language was written in Arabic script (_huruf Jawi_) from the Middle Ages. Before that, Old Malay was written in an ancient script of Indian origin called Pallava, akin to Tamil script. Oops! Yes, you’re right of course. Excuse the brain fart on that part. But anyway, as it’s written today with the Latin alphabet, it’s very phonetic, both Malaysian and Indonesian. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-languages-phonetic-except-for-english/596853.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-all-languages-phonetic-except-for-english/596853.md?page=4)