Not all languages have the same degree of correspondence between the spoken and the written form.
Saying correspondence, I'm referring to the equivalence between what we write in a certain language and the way we read it.
It seems that one of those (very few) languages that have this perfect equivalence is Serbian, although I don't know Serbian that much, therefore I can't really make explanatory examples on it.
But while Serbian, and similar Slavic languages, have a different symbol for the /tʃ/
and the /k/
sound, in Italian the letter C has 2 different sounds according to what vowel follows it.
When A, O or U are present, we have a /k/
sound, while with E and I, a /tʃ/
sound:
- Casa —
/k/
(house)- Cena —
/tʃ/
(dinner)- Cibo —
/tʃ/
(food)- Cosa —
/k/
(thing)- Cura —
/k/
(cure)
Some languages have less equivalence, like English where the reading rules make the spoken form different from the written one, or French, considering the final letters don't get usually pronounced. Others have more, like Spanish or Italian, even though they still have exceptions like I showed above, of course.