In term of spelling French is much worse than English. I wonder how they compare in term of education level. My anecdotal experience living and going to school in both England and France as a kid leads me to believe that the level of British primary school is not very high and that basic knowledge in math and reading is introduced slower there.
> In term of spelling French is much worse than English.
Is it? Certainly, multiple sequences of characters map to the same sound: the final vowels in et, est, thé, années, soleil, clef all sound identical (at least to my ear: there may be some subtleties of pronounciaton that escape me).
But from what little study I've done of French, I don't remember the opposite problem being as bad: a given sequence of characters is generally pronounced in one way. So if you come across an unfamiliar French word, you can take a punt at how it's pronounced, and the odds are you'll be correct.
There are of course exceptions, especially with proper nouns (Moët, as in the champagne, is pronounced moe-ETTE not moe-AY, Freddie Mercury not withstanding), but these seem to be fewer than in English.
Well, I'm French and have a much easier time with spelling in English than in French... Joke aside, I guess having multiple sequence of characters map to the same sound have more of an effect on making spelling difficult.
While I think that indeed a given sequence of characters is generally pronounced the same what is confusing for children is the plethora of consonants that are not pronounced. So ils chantent and il ment. écoles et les and so on... There's also the liaisons that adds a lot of confusion between what's written and what's actually pronounced. But maybe you're right and this is more of a problem in English.
> Moët, as in the champagne, is pronounced moe-ETTE not moe-AY
I think this is a rule of the trema - the vowel is not diphtongued and the following consonant is not silent. Words like Noël, Anaïs are pronounced the same way (no-ELLE and ana-YSSE).
I don't find the spelling difficult at all. More regular than English, certainly. It's the damn gendered nouns! And they're not easy to guess, as in, say, Spanish. It's a huge impediment to picking up vocabulary. Downright demoralizing.
Is that really the case? There seem to be an awful lot where it's not: Bardot, Paris, Nantes, Flaubert, Monet, Camus, Dumas, Rimbaud, Truffaut, Roux, Lacroix, Godard, Foucault, Bordeaux, Versailles, Calais, Maginot....
That I can believe. English proper nouns are likewise typically more badly behaved, especially British English ones: Worcester (WUSS-ter), Featherstonehaugh (FAN-shaw), Dalziel, (d'-YELL), Menzies (MING-iz).
