Re: A BrSc a? & Nyuu Romaji

John Cowan wrote:
>
>Andreas Johansson scripsit:
>
> > >I can't quite tell if you realize that "Myanmar" is pronounced ['b@m@].
> >
> > And they say English spelling is evil?!?
>
>Complicated is one thing, complicated *and* irregular quite another.
>About 87% of English words have pronunciations that can be predicted
>by the (complicated) rules; the remaining 13% can't.  AFAIK
>100% of Burmese words are predictable by their (complicated) rules.
I somehow suspect that one or two exceptions hang out there somewhere, but
anyways, even if 87% of English words have predictable pronunciations (I
thought English stress placement was alot more random than that?), it's not
the exceptions that gives me trouble in English. Nobody's ever tried to
teach me the rules, and I'd lie if I said that I've seriously tried to
figure them out for myself beyond the basics.

It should perhaps be said that beneath my much-reading and well-spelling
surface (I spell better in Swedish than in English, and when writing by hand
than by keyboard), I'm some sort of dyslectic. I used to spell absolutely
terribly until I had read enough to memorize the spellings of the commonest
few thousand Swedish words. So when I started to learn English, irregular
spellings weren't what gave me trouble.

                                                      Andreas

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