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Comment by blencdr | Hacker News Reader

She should try French, she won't complain anymore about english spelling ^_^

French spelling is quite regular. Once you know the system, you know how to spell almost any word. The only issue is that some letters are not pronounced.

Dude no. I am French native speaker, and think that French spelling is way harder. I am even starting to suspect that the spelling of the French language was made hard on purpose, so someone who didn't get a proper education would be spotted easily to his/her bad spelling.

Really? I'd be curious to hear what French words are as bad as the 11 pronunciations of "ough" in English ("Though the tough cough and hiccough plough him through)". Or, the other way around, there's the /eɪ/ diphthong, which can be spelled a, a…e, aa, ae, ai, ai...e, aig, aigh, al, ao, au, ay, e (é), e...e, ea, eg, ei, ei...e, eig, eigh, ee (ée), eh, er, es, et, ey, ez, ie, oeh, ue, or uet in the words bass, rate, quaalude, reggae, rain, cocaine, arraign, straight, Ralph, gaol, gauge, pay, ukulele, crepe, steak, thegn, veil, beige, reign, eight, matinee, eh, dossier, demesne, ballet, obey, chez, lingerie, boehmite, dengue, sobriquet. Not to mention place names like Featheringstonehaugh (pronounced "Fan-shaw"). What are the most difficult things about spelling French?

That's a little bit cheating, you're adding silent consonants to the vowel when they're not pronounced at all.

I could say that in Russian the sound [о] can be spelled ол as in солнце, but that would be bullshit. Russian is a largely phonetic language, it's just that consonant clusters get simplified in pronunciation.

Funny how half of your list are also French words

Well, in my opinion, English is hard to pronounce (for example, it impossible to know to to pronounce the word 'live' without context) and French is hard to spell.

Since you mention the /eɪ/ diphthong, in French it can be spelled é, ée, et, ed, er, ai, and many others. What is making the French spelling harder, I think, is that many letters are not pronounced, and some words have the same pronunciation with a different spelling (for example: cou - neck - and coup - hit). I can't think of anything in particular, but it all lies in the fact that many letters are not pronounced. I found this website - in French - where you can have fun testing your French spelling: http://timbresdelorthographe.com/

11 pronunciations of "ough"? I've always heard it as seven:

thought, though, through, tough, trough, plough, and, somewhat questionably, hiccough.

What are the others supposed to be?

The number depends on the dialect. Wikipedia describes it as "at least six pronunciations in North American English and over ten in British English", listing ten of them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ough_%28orthography%29

I thought that it was quite regular. I have two little girl 8 and 10 yo. I can ensure you they are learning tons of exceptions I did not realise.

sure, in English the exceptions are so frequent you cannot possibly forget that you are supposed to learn each word separately. in French you can fall to a few traps, but most of the vocabulary follows complicated yet regular rules.

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