From: naddy@mips.inka.de   
      
   On 2024-07-02, Athel Cornish-Bowden  wrote:   
      
   > Definitely. The late Bernard Pivot ran a very popular series of   
   > progammes called Les Dicos d'Or around 30 years ago. Errors in French   
   > spelling proved to depend a lot on the obscure rules of gramamatical   
   > agreement that plague efforts to write in French. One episode annoyed   
      
   They wouldn't be so obscure if they weren't silent for the most part...   
      
   > me. It was filmed in Strasbourg and one question concerned someone who   
   > had taken a trip on the île.   
      
   *frowns*   
      
   > Now, anyone who doesn't know Strasbourg   
   > will naturally interpret it as île. People who do know Strasbourg will   
   > know that there is no island that could be relevant, and that the local   
   > river is the Ill.   
      
   Right.   
      
   > I don't think that sort of programme would work in Spanish, where a lot   
   > would depend on possibilities of confusion between b and v and between   
   > y and ll.   
      
   As well as s and c-z.  H, too, but I suppose it doesn't occur in   
   too many words and in some (e.g. huevo, hielo) it's actually   
   predictable.   
      
   > Similarly with German. (I had just one year of German at   
   > school, but right from the beginning I could do a dictation with almost   
   > no errors, despite not understanding what the text was saying.)   
      
   Well, there are quite a number of ambiguities (some homonyms to   
   give you an idea: Wal/Wahl, Laib/Leib, Lid/Lied), but the customary   
   terrors of German dictation are capitalization, compounds (groß   
   schreiben? großschreiben?), and comma placement.   
      
   > Spelling to pronunciation works well in French (much better than in   
   > English), apart from a few oddities like poêle and oignon;   
      
   And that is no coincidence, but the result of centuries of concerted   
   reform effort by the Academy.  One systematic issue remains: Whether   
   final consonants are silent or not is poorly predictable; from what   
   I understand the French themselves have been somewhat confused about   
   this over the centuries, which has contributed to the current   
   situation.   
      
   > pronunciation to spelling, on the other hand, is just as bad as in   
   > English.   
      
   Sort of true, but at least there's no reduction of unstressed vowels.   
      
   --   
   Christian "naddy" Weisgerber                          naddy@mips.inka.de   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)