Spanish Is a Phonetic Language

Abstract

T HE question is not, many of us have uttered these words in class?--we all have-but, many of us have realized, afterwards, that we had made a false statement? All speech languages are phonic, if not phonetic, all deal with sounds. What we meant was: spelling is False, because Spanish spelling is not entirely phonetic. It is more phonetic than French or English. Granted. Far more. But do we realize how much it lacks being completely phonetic? Let us investigate this a little. First, here is a letter that might enlighten us. It came to me directly from a student who could not decipher it. The author, Petra, is a Mexican girl, about seven years of age. I found the letter's spelling so interesting-in fact, so good--that I could not resist communicating it to colleagues, who in turn urged me to have it published. Such a letter actually is a document for the history of Spanish pronunciation and its relation to spelling. Notice that it is only through similar phonetic documents that we know something about the pronunciation of ancient languages. If Chr'tien de Troyes, let us say, had looked up his spelling in a dictionary, the pronunciation of his days would be a mystery to us, today. Here is the letter: