Hacker News Reader

Comment by dotancohen | Hacker News Reader

  > I think this is ironic writing this in English.

Oh, definitely. French is worse than English, but both are bad. My two Right-to-Left languages are far easier to pronounce from reading.

View on HN

Actually, since English borrowed many spelling convention from French, and then invented quite a few for itself, I find it quite ridiculous to say that French is worse than English. In French, pronunciations is usually not an issue, the rules are quite straightforward and quite regular, despite what you may think. Grammar is pretty complicated, but it is very very rare to have words in French for which people might wonder what is the actual pronunciation. Usually, the problem will only arise for words borrowed from a foreign language with a foreign spelling.

Thank you. French is not one of the languages that I speak, so from afar French spelling and pronunciation seems arbitrary. I appreciate the lesson!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com