We need a grammar competition, making contestants chart out sentences "All the faith he had had had had no effect on the outcome of his life" or this gem- "A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed."
Evidently Italian, Finnish and Hungarian are the European languages that have the most regular and transparent rules. Italian kids can spell almost any word perfectly after only a few months of reading instruction. How to spell a word becomes obvious as soon as you hear it. The same is true for Finnish. It's a little harder with French, Portuguese, and Danish. They have writing systems that take longer for children to learn to read, but it's English that takes the longest of all the European languages. There are many more inconsistencies and complexities in the way English words are spelled.
@shiftingsands My parents were Polish. I spoke Polish at home but never read or wrote it. My mother often complained about how hard it was to write English, not like Polish which was "written the way it sounds". She left out the part that maybe that was true if you were Polish or totally fluent, but impossible to do if you were English, lol.
She's right though, Polish is written the way it sounds. It's just you need to learn the rules of pronunciation first before figuring out how a word is said
My only other language experience besides English is French. Ain't no way they can complain about our spelling rules. As I tell my kids, when you are trying to pronounce french words, just pretend you're lazy and stop after the first half. Most of the time you'll sound like a native.
You're right. We don't have spelling bees but our spelling is way worse than English (it's made to be beautiful and long, not practical). I've heard people fight over spelling and sometimes on some general knowledge quizz games the winning question will be about spelling. Stuff like "au temps pour moi" or "par acquit de conscience" can animate a (lame) party. We also have some contests where someone reads a text and people write it down, I've won some nerdy prizes at these types of things.
My only other language experience besides English is French. Ain't no way they can complain about our spelling rules. As I tell my kids, when you are trying to pronounce french words, just pretend you're lazy and stop after the first half. Most of the time you'll sound like a native.
Or the fantastic Schifffahrt and Schiffracht