In this series of articles I have been putting forward the proposition that English is not quite the easy language that many people consider it to be. Of course, easy is not an absolute term, and it is only in relation to other languages that we can decide whether English really is as simple as its reputation. So this time I want to take one aspect of the language system and compare English with another language, German. The aspect I want to consider is spelling / pronunciation (but please first see * below).
The learner of German as a foreign language does not have a difficult job in this respect. Once she has learned the sounds associated with the vowels or vowel combinations, she will know how to pronounce every new word containing those vowels. Conversely, she will be able to spell with great confidence any new word that she meets for the first time in spoken language. So for example, having learned that the vowel combination "ei" is pronounced as in the English words my, high, she will be able to correctly pronounce any of these German words: kein, Schein, fein, herein etc. Once she knows that the "ie" sound is like the English me, tree she should have little difficulty in spelling words like wie, sieben, ziemlich etc.