German orthography, although largely phonemic, shows many instances of spellings that are historic or analogous to other spellings rather than phonemic. The pronunciation of almost every word can be derived from its spelling, once the spelling rules are known, but the opposite is not generally the case. Today, German orthography is regulated by the Rat für deutsche Rechtschreibung (RdR; German for "council for German orthography").
Read more about German Orthography: Grapheme-to-phoneme Correspondences
Famous quotes containing the word german:
“How much atonement is enough? The bombing must be allowed as at least part-payment: those of our young people who are concerned about the moral problem posed by the Allied air offensive should at least consider the moral problem that would have been posed if the German civilian population had not suffered at all.”
—Clive James (b. 1939)