> ENGLISH - A non-phonetic language.

ENGLISH - A non-phonetic language.

Posted on Friday 23 November 2012 | No Comments

People mostly in the eastern hemisphere find it difficult to adapt to English. English although is considered a global language but people face many problems learning the language and speaking it correctly in the proper manner.

The main reason for this difficulty is that English is an non-phonetic language. The alphabets don't always relate to the same speech sounds. Hence it is the primary cause of difficulty. The pronunciation of English words do not follow the spelling and vice-versa.

English is an amalgam of many languages. It began as a Germanic derivative, however over the years, many words from different languages have been added including French, Spanish, Yiddish, Chinese, Japanese, Italian, Dutch, etc.

The sounds that are common in German were common in Old English too, but those sounds dropped out over time. However the spelling did not change to reflect the new pronunciation.

Also the words that entered English from foreign languages sometimes kept their original spelling and pronunciation. This means that the sounds that are used in those words are foreign (non-English) sounds. In other instances, the foreign pronunciation was adopted to an English pronunciation but the foreign spelling was maintained. This resulted in a disconnection between the English sound and spelling, giving English the 'non-phonetic' adjective.  

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