I went to accompany my wife to meet a new tenant recently at one of the house she is acting as a real estate agent for. The guy was a pilot with a leading airline in Malaysia. He was not a Malaysian and from the name he may be from Spain.
His name has the word 'Ja' in it which is not pronounce as such. Being Spanish, it is said as 'Ha'.
Being Malaysia, and as a Malay, all our words are phonetic. We said what we write. 'Ja' is 'Ja' and no two ways about it. So, it is hard for us to learn languages such as the English language which is not phonetic. Then give us those Spanish or France and you can see us suffer to pronounce it.
I know, I know. It is the lingua franca of the world at one time or another. But, still....
With all my complain, at least we don't have to cluck or anything to talk to each other...
Hi. As somebody who majored in languages (Spanish and French), I can understand the frustration. French is actually easier to learn grammatically, but, oh, the pronunciation and the spelling! Btw, I'd say Spanish is phonetically easier than English and you seem to be doing well with English. :)
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