I wonder how native English speakers do it, but here’s how I approach this problem.
My trick involves using a consistent spelling system for encoding a random letter sequence into a sound which I can memorize. When writing, you just pull those auditory memories, decode the sounds back to the original alphabet salad, and you’re done! Needlessly complicated, but that’s a common theme in English anyway, so it should fit right in.
To make this method work, you need a consistent spelling system, so you could make one up or modify one previously invented for another language. Basically anything more consistent than English should do, so it’s a pretty low bar to clear.
Here are some example words to test this idea with:
- carburetor
- carburettor
- carburetter
Pronounce those letter sequences using that alternate spelling system. It won’t sound like English, but it’s consistent and that’s all we care about at this stage. The end of each word could sound like this:
- [retor]
- [retːor]
- [reter]
In my system, each letter corresponds to a specific sound like e=[e], a=[ɑ] etc. I’ve been thinking of including the Italian c=[tʃ], but you could use other languages too. Feel free to mix and match, as long as you make it consistent.
The idea is that it’s easier to memorize sounds rather than whimsical letter sequences. Once you have those funny sounds in your head, it’s easy to use that same consistent spelling system to convert the sound back to letters.
Once you know that trick, it suddenly becomes a lot easier to spell common words like “island”, “salmon”, “subtle”, or “wednesday. For example “cache” could be stored as [tʃatʃe] in my head. Still haven’t settled on a good way to store the letter c, so I’m open to suggestions.
I’m a native English speaker who learned to read at the same time I was learning to talk, very young, so wasn’t really sounding things out, more looking at the shapes of the words. There were always words I knew, because in context they made sense, but didn’t know how to pronounce!
Our spelling, while nominally phonetic, is really more historical. So I kind of like it now, it shows where words are from.
The only language I’ve tried to learn is Spanish, and I don’t have to worry about the spelling since it’s pretty phonetic and so close to our pronunciation, and I hear it a lot, so I don’t even think about it, any word I can see I can pronounce (but that doesn’t help much with understanding, only with reciting)
A c in English can be K sound or S, I’m not sure how you would have one marker. There are phonetic systems that bridge languages already. If I am writing something phonetically I default to Spanish letters, because their spelling is so consistent.
And you could also use the Spanish spelling system to remember any sequence of letters. Like “rhetoric” for example. If you pronounce that word using the Spanish system, can you hear the h? If so, you can memorize that sound more easily than the exceptional spelling.
There wouldn’t be any “h” if you thought of it in terms of Spanish sounds.
If you really get into the weeds, the funky spelling can sometimes give you a clue about how the word is pronounced. (But only sometimes.) For example, “rhetoric” can have a bit of an “h” sound, especially in British English. I notice it some in American English too, but it can vary from person to person.
Or “gnats.” The “n” is a tiny bit different than if you said “Nats,” like the baseball team. You obviously don’t say the “g,” but the tongue comes up a little in the back of your mouth, almost like you were going to say a “g.”
That’s nothing to worry about, it’s just something I’ve noticed.