Is Spanish written verbatim to the way a person speaks?
I got a little confused as I continued to read your question. I’m now not sure about whether you’re asking about things like grammar or whether you’re asking about sounds of the language. In either case, the answer is no. About the sounds: You are right that it is clearly not possible for a language with a picture-based writing system, like Chinese, to have a close relationship between the sounds that people speak and the written version. Actually, English is well-known for not having a close relationship between the way its sounds are represented in the writing system either. For example, a word that is spelled k-n-i-g-h-t is pronounced like [nait]. We have all kinds of silent letters and strange letter combinations. The spelling system of English was created a long time ago and the pronunciation has changed since then, so the letters and the sounds don’t match up as well as they used to. Hence, we get words that are spelled p-s-y-c-h-o-l-o-g-y but are said something like “saikalaji”.
