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[the-pi-guy]

Because spoken language has a couple thousand sounds yet we only have 26 letters. If you want to keep the language an alphabet, it'd be impossible to not have letters affect the pronunciation of other letters. Not that English couldn't do with a spelling reform but that could never get rid of all different pronunciations for the same chains of letters.

Just spell slaughter as slawter.  

There's a lot of reasons why English spelling is bad.  
Pronunciations change, and the spellings don't. For example the words knife and knight, once upon a time you'd pronounce the 'k'.

We also borrowed a lot of words from other languages like French especially, Greek, and others without properly changing it.  

Japanese doesn't have that issue, but it largely helps they have fewer sounds as well as a strictly phonetic character group.  

[Legend]

Just spell slaughter as slawter.  

There's a lot of reasons why English spelling is bad.  
Pronunciations change, and the spellings don't. For example the words knife and knight, once upon a time you'd pronounce the 'k'.

We also borrowed a lot of words from other languages like French especially, Greek, and others without properly changing it.  

Japanese doesn't have that issue, but it largely helps they have fewer sounds as well as a strictly phonetic character group.  

If slaughter becomes slawter, then what about lawyer and other words with "law" that doesn't sound like law?

Yeah English definitely has a lot of history that screw it up, but it's impossible to avoid completely. Would be interesting to see a computer attempt a spelling reform to try to get as few alternate pronunciations as possible. Or better yet, let the computer start from scratch and calculate how many letters are needed to get no alternate pronunciations within standard words.

[the-pi-guy]

If slaughter becomes slawter, then what about lawyer and other words with "law" that doesn't sound like law?

loiyer or something.  

Would be interesting to see a computer attempt a spelling reform to try to get as few alternate pronunciations as possible. Or better yet, let the computer start from scratch and calculate how many letters are needed to get no alternate pronunciations within standard words.

There's pretty much a whole field dedicated to this already.
Help:IPA/English - Wikipedia


There are some languages that have hundreds of sounds not in English, but English uses a pretty small subset of sounds.  

[Legend]

loiyer or something.  
There's pretty much a whole field dedicated to this already.
Help:IPA/English - Wikipedia


There are some languages that have hundreds of sounds not in English, but English uses a pretty small subset of sounds.  

Oh I didn't mean IPA. That's something every conlanger deals with. Guess it's pretty similar though.

[the-pi-guy]

Have you ever watched this?

[the-pi-guy]

I will probably have to take a Chinese course in the fall.  They aren't offering the Japanese course I could take, and I need another language credit.

But I'm nervous.  

Chinese is super different.  

[the-pi-guy]

I didn't realize how uncommon the "th" sound is.  

From wiki:
"Among the more than 60 languages with over 10 million speakers, only English, various dialects of Arabic, Standard European Spanish, Swahili (in words derived from Arabic), Burmese, Greek have the voiceless dental non-sibilant fricative."


And this:

Two languages kept the th sound. One was Icelandic, which shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who knows how Icelandic works - namely, keep-all-the-everything-from-Old-Norse-and-make-up-new-Old-Norse-words-for-things-the-Norse-didn't-have. It don't do change so well. So, of course, it kept the th sounds. It even has fun letters to represent them with: þ and ð.

English, in an extraordinary turn of events, was the other language. English is Icelandic's antithesis: it changes things, borrows words from everyone, chops them in half, mutilates the spelling, and serves them with a fine whigne. It should have gotten rid of the th! It makes no sense that it kept the th!

Is it a coincidence that Icelandic, Faroese, and English all have the dental fricative sound? - Quora

[Legend]

Yeah it's funny that English has one of the hardest sounds for people to learn. As natives you'd never think of the th sound being odd.

[Legend]

Have you ever watched this?

I've seen it now. Thanks!

[the-pi-guy]

Yeah it's funny that English has one of the hardest sounds for people to learn. As natives you'd never think of the th sound being odd.

It feels really strange that "th" tends to be replaced by other sounds. Feels like a center piece of the language practically.

I've seen it now. Thanks!

I thought it was a fun video

[the-pi-guy]

I usually had like a list of like 10 languages I would like to learn in my lifetime.  Wasn't always the same list, but usually was like:
Japanese
German
French
Chinese
Russian
Spanish
Latin
Greek
Italian

So I have no idea if I'm going to be able to successfully learn 1 language, Japanese is incredibly difficult.  But as I start to get competent, I'd still like to try learning more languages.  Basically in this order:

Japanese
Chinese
German
Spanish
Norwegian
Korean
French


I want to be fluent in Japanese for sure, and Chinese.  But after that, something near conversational for the others would be awesome.  

The nice thing is that the European languages might take less time combined than just Japanese will...

[the-pi-guy]

Chinese is a bit frustrating for my first day.  

"The g sounds like the k in sky, and the k sounds like the k in kite."

"The b sounds like the p in speak and p sounds like the p in pork."

Chinese has a couple vowels that English doesn't have and consonants are like ever so slightly different for most of them.  

[Legend]

Chinese is a bit frustrating for my first day.  

"The g sounds like the k in sky, and the k sounds like the k in kite."

"The b sounds like the p in speak and p sounds like the p in pork."

Chinese has a couple vowels that English doesn't have and consonants are like ever so slightly different for most of them.  

What made you want to learn Chinese?

[the-pi-guy]

What made you want to learn Chinese?

It fit into my schedule and it's a language I've wanted to learn for a long time.  
I couldn't take any of the Japanese courses this semester.  Otherwise I would have done that.  

[the-pi-guy]

Forum | Duolingo

What made you want to learn Chinese?

Quoting again.  

I have to say though, that my desire to learn Chinese increased a lot while learning Japanese.  The writing system is similar(with many of the same characters) and the grammar is simpler and closer to English.