All those non-English words you used do actually come from languages with phonetic alphabets (albeit only in one direction for French).
And while English spelling is inconsistent an educated native speaker can often pronounce newly-seen words with decent accuracy based on previous encounters with similar words so it’s not completely arbitrary.
English spelling gives you a pretty good idea of a word’s origin, which gives you a hint to its pronunciation. And this phenomenon of importing foreign words unchanged is hardly new so I think it’s something most native speakers would be familiar with.
Personally I really like English’s spelling. I like being able to look at a word and have a good idea of what its origin is, I think it adds something to the language. Reading English is like looking back through time. I understand the arguments for phoneticisation but I really think we would lose something great in the process.
And while English spelling is inconsistent an educated native speaker can often pronounce newly-seen words with decent accuracy based on previous encounters with similar words so it’s not completely arbitrary.
English spelling gives you a pretty good idea of a word’s origin, which gives you a hint to its pronunciation. And this phenomenon of importing foreign words unchanged is hardly new so I think it’s something most native speakers would be familiar with.
Personally I really like English’s spelling. I like being able to look at a word and have a good idea of what its origin is, I think it adds something to the language. Reading English is like looking back through time. I understand the arguments for phoneticisation but I really think we would lose something great in the process.