In my experience, literate native speakers of a language tend to assume that the language’s orthography is significantly more phonetic than it actually is or, with other words, tend to think that their pronounciaton of words is much closer to their spelling than it actually is. I am interested in studies or general linguistic arguments that back up this experience or refute it.
Some examples for the phenomenon I am presuming (note that these are just examples for the general tendency I am inquiring about – they need not be fully or even remotely accurate):
- Speakers of English would think that they pronounce the word misspell with two separate s-sounds, e.g., /mɪs.spɛl/, when in fact, they rather pronounce it /mɪspɛl/ or /mɪsːpɛl/.
- Speakers of German would think that they pronounce the word Butter with a vowel and a consonant at the end, e.g., /bʊteʀ/, while they actually pronounce it /bʊtɐ/ or similar (at least in most varieties).
- Speakers of French would think that they pronounce the word garçon with a distinct consonant at the end, i.e., e.g., /ɡaʁsɔn/ or /ɡaʁsɔŋ/, while in fact they use a nasalised vowel, i.e., /ɡaʁsɔ̃/.