Reply #155: Spanish, Italian and Portuguese are also pronounced as spelled

[Julius Civitatus]

English is NOTORIOUS for not sounding like it is spelled, which is confusing even for the native English speaker. French also has issues between how certain words sound and how they are spelled. This happened in the border countries that were conquered last by the Roman Empire. They adopted the Roman alphabet and most of its phonetics, but the Latin got mixed with the local tribes into a different linguistic melange (Celts, Francs, Germanic tribes, etc) that evolved into new languages (English, French, German, etc).

In general, most romance languages (from territories invaded by the early Roman Empire) are very straight-forward in their transcription.

Just my 2 cents.