Are there any languages more difficult to pronounce than other languages?
Phonetic Text System (PTS) is a system designed to help people sound out all varieties of languages in 26 alphabetical letters as well as symbols on a regular computer keyboard. With the help of the sound-spelling method of the PTS, we hope people will be able to sound out or speak human languages in one unified form.
The sound Spelling method is to spell words that match the native sounds of languages in an optimal consistent sound and spelling level. It is called the Consistency of Sound and Spelling (CSS). Phonetic Text System (PTS) follows the guideline that spelling matches the sounds, in other words, do not change the sound of languages and only change or make the spelling.
Through our investigation and research on about 50 languages, some language pronunciations in Google translate are different in terms of the consistency of sound and spelling. The recording sound doesn’t match the spelling examples in some languages. They are categorized into three consistency levels, just for reference as follows:
Level 1: Very easy to pronounce
- Chinese Pin-Yin
- Filipino
- Hausa *
- Hawaiian *
- Indonesian
- Japanese
- Javanese
- Malay
- Māori *
- Samoan *
Level 2: Easy to pronounce with some alternatives
- Afrikaans
- Arabic
- Armenian *
- Bengali
- Cebuano *
- Chichewa *
- English
- Esperanto *
- Estonian
- French
- German
- Greek
- Hindi
- Italian
- Korean
- Latin
- Macedonian *
- Nepali
- Norwegian
- Pashto ***
- Persian ***
- Portuguese
- Russian
- Spanish
- Swedish
- Turkish
- Ukrainian
- Uzbek *
- Vietnamese
- Xhosa *
- Yiddish *
- Zulu *
Level 3: Not easy to pronounce
- Hebrew **
- Hmong *
- Lao *
- Myanmar
- Thai
- Welsh *
* no recorded pronunciation.
** recorded pronunciations but no spelling examples (need Phonetic Text).
*** no recorded pronunciation and no spelling examples (need Phonetic Text).
The goal of the Phonetic Text System (PTS) is to make an optimal system that fits all human languages so that people from all over the world could write, read, and most of all, sound out /pronounce different languages in a universal form.