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In this video I evaluate the spelling of the 25 most spoken world languages, and judge their spellings based on how generally easy it is to determine how to pronounce words based on spelling, and vice-versa. Whether the languages you speak appear in this video or not, feel free to comment what you think about their phonemicness!
The thumbnail reflects what I think of the phonemicness of the languages there, not what I think of them as languages. Please don’t hurt me.
Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
0:28 1. English
1:24 2. Mandarin Chinese
2:28 3. Hindi
4:01 4. Spanish
5:48 5. Modern Standard Arabic
6:57 6. French
8:05 7. Bengali
9:11 8. Portuguese
10:39 9. Indonesian
11:06 10. Urdu
11:46 Lingopie
13:24 11. Russian
14:54 12. German
15:53 13. Japanese
17:04 14. Nigerian Pidgin
17:49 15. Egyptian Arabic
18:34 16. Marathi
19:37 17. Vietnamese
21:05 18. Telugu
21:50 19. Swahili
23:24 20. Hausa
24:06 21. Turkish
25:03 22. Western Punjabi
25:42 23. Tagalog
26:17 24. Tamil
27:08 25. Yue Chinese
27:43 Outro
00:28:00
source
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Turkish and Indonesian are definitely S-TIER spelling. What it's written is what it's read.
German capitalization cannot be infered by sound, but by the role of the word in a sentence, which is not very hard in most cases. There are edge cases though where also natives can be unsure.
I speak Finnish. I would put Finnish writing in S tier. 100% predictable how to say from writing and back again from speaking. I never had problems learning to spell in school. We only used 2 years for that and even that was far too much. All phonemes (b, d, f, g, h, j, k, l, m, n, p, r, s, t, v) (a,e,i,o,u,y,ä,ö) are written with their own letter except for the ng sound, which is written with ng and nk. Long and short sounds are marked with one and two letters, easy to read and write. Even syllable stress is always marked exactly where it is – since Finnish word stress always falls on the first syllable of any word 😂
Loanwords can be an issue as they often have sounds Finnish didn't originally have or even don't know how to write, but they are mostly rare and native Finnish words are very predictable. However Finns often adapt loanwords to fit to the Finnish mouth, eg. brunch as brunssi.
There is only very minor issues, that are almost never a problem and no confusion with understanding meaning or speaking the language. Following some imperatives, negative forms and words ending in e, the following consonant is doubled. But this isn't written. However it is a sort of thing across word boundaries, like French liaison, not the words itself. Most dialects have it, however some don't so I guess it is okay to not write it. Sometimes assimilation is not written like, on with pa suffix, onpa is not written ompa, although actually many speakers write it thus. Standard Finnish sometimes doesn't show doubling of the pa suffix so Tule + pas would be write Tulepas, however many speakers actually spell it Tuleppas anyway 😀 But this is so super minor, you might not even notice it.
The spoken language is often quite different from the written language, even if they are mutually understandable and quite close. HOWEVER they are also written very differently, each according to their own rules. (Except eg. for some fucking Tv show subtitles that decided yes kirjakieli is only what we use to represent puhekieli speech, for some reason.)
Also:
Swedish is B tier
Estonian is A tier
Hungarian is S tier
Italian is A tier
Babe… You're right… But…
か means "ka"
が means "ga"
か゚ means "nga"
𛀘 means "ka" but in Hentaigana way
E.g: 私か゚ means "watashinga" but most people ask as well… Why not use. 私んが which is watashin-ga
Spanish does adapt English and French loan words into a more standard spelling over time tho, it's just that it can take a very long time, and if there's a valid native alternative then it gets permanently stuck in limbo.
An example is how "driver" is probably never gonna be standardized because it's usually used only in an informal context as "controlador" is considered the correct translation (for computer related stuff, which is the only context in which "driver" is used casually). Meanwhile other words got adapted in a non phonetical way, like how "cluster" got turned into "clúster" with the 'u' read as if it was a native word.
Come to Brazil…
Polish in B, because there are words with letters ó that sound exactly like U in modern polish. There are also words that have pronounciation that are softened for easier speech, but are understood by native speakers like me.
8:41 not the IPA audio 😭
20:23 ngã is 45 hỏi is 31 i think
hi
Damn didn’t talk about Tibetan which hasn’t had a spelling reform since the year 800.
@lingolizard why talk about Persian so much but not rank it?
We spell words like a French or a German depending on what word it is since we keep importing other language's words.
20:04 the merging of n and ng in Southern dialect only appears when there are certain vowels in front.
I will say, I do think the failure of this video to place English alone in F tier is due to the prevalence of English world wide. It's learned with a side of humor. And that clouds the sheer clustef*ck the spelling truly is. Said differently, people are aware but desensitized and often pop culture bridges the gap anyways.
2:18 everyone always talks about this, but… Chinese people can talk with each other. The homophones are barely ever a problem in context. They are a problem because how unnaturally contrived the written language is, instead of just writing down what they say.
georgian: AM I A JOKE TO YOU?
Mandarin should be F tier if english is D tier, considering billions of characters and multiple fonts and dialects
日本語Fティアなの笑う。よく英語の綴りに文句言ってる日本人いるけど、日本語に比べれば全然許容できるわ
3:32 Actually, any word with the anusvar can be written with the corresponding nasal.
Conclusion: So many non-Anglophones have doomed their own orthographies by being too lazy to adapt the spellings of loanwords…
pro-NUN-ciation.
13:39 I’ve always been under the impression that stress is only ever indicated when it’s crucial to the meaning of a text, same with ё, which is often just written as e for convenience.
Chinese and English on the dame tier is diabolical 😱😱 Chinese is way harder than English
I'm surprised you didn't put in Korean, as that would have been an easy S tier pick!
Proud Spanish speaker here 👋
¡¡¡¿¿¿QUÉ COJONES ES UNA INCONSISTENCIA FONÉEEEETIIIIICAAAAAAAAAA???!!! 🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅
English is weird, because I usually intuit spellings very easily, but it's because I have a vague, mostly unconcious sense of how ancient Greek and Latin work, even though I speak neither of those at all.
How can Portuguese be on the same tier with MSA when MSA doesn't usually write the case endings? And how can English be on the same tier with Chinese, when one is not phonemic at all and the other one is quite a bit phonemic?
as a speaker of Eastern Armenian I'd put our spelling (both reformed and traditional) in a C, for the most part it's gppd, but modern spoken variant differs the literary standart to extent of bordering with diglossia. But still, inconsistencies are mostly exceptions, and if you read/write in reformed orthography (modern standard) the exceptions are even less frequent.
For Western variant, B, it's more consistent, even though it has more archaic orthography, and somewhat convoluted rules of spelling for է and օ in loanwords
Funny how the languages I speak well (canto mother tongue, mandarin, english, japanese) are all in the lowest tiers 😭
Эт люто, что фрэнч и русский в одном c-тир'е…
English should be S tier
Technically Turkish <ğ> represents a hiatus intervocalically, even between identical vowels.
Ive been learning french as my third language for almost 5 years now, and what you said is absolutely true! French has this reputation because a lot of americans are forced into taking french classes and resent the language, while also not learning anything. It is extremely easy to sound out a word based on it's spelling once you learn how vowels interact.
In english, a single vowel has a million sounds, but in french they use vowel combos to change the sounds, which clears up a LOT of confusion.
I feel like the ratings for Indonesian and Japanese are well deserved.
Pretty much most of the "larger" Austronesian languages just write their schwas with "e". Ilocano, Kankana-ey, and Tiboli also do the same.
I think that's just the thing with the large Austronesian languages, most native users don't write diacritics at all.
I wonder how would Thai fare if it were in this video. I find it funny that the tʰ (ท) and r (ร) together make the /s/ sound for some reason. Also double r's make "a"??
16:17 this isnt even the full list,
生 can also be read ai in the word ainiku 生憎
and can also be read as literally anything you want in place names and peoples last names. heres a probably incomplete list of additional name readings:
あさ、 いき、 いく、 いけ、 うぶ、 うまい、 え、 おい、 ぎゅう、 くるみ、 ごせ、 さ、 じょう、 すぎ、 そ、 そう、 ちる、 なば、 にう、 にゅう、 ふ、 み、 もう、 よい、 りゅう
Lingolizard! I live and am born in Singapore, and I’m exposed to multiple languages a day that I can’t help but learn it all. I am SO SO immensely glad that Tamil is on this list!!!!
I genuinely love how varied the languages you chose are, its missing a couple but its ok
1:55 as a Japanese, 😂
Russian should be b tier, maybe a
for Spanish you forgot to mention the word sal-le which can only be spelled wrong, there is no correct spelling of sal-le, any spelling you use is wrong
I´m native spanish and in this list I missed Italian, it would be a candidate for S Tier!
I wonder if you would have put Danish in C or D tier. It has lots of silent consonants like French and most vowels have about four possible pronunciations (typically two short and two long pronunciations). Danish also has stød which is phonemic but not written down.
You forgot the best language, basque icelandic pidgin
I'm Russian, and i absolutely speaking English always