Orthographic depth is the relationship between spelling and pronunciation. Languages with shallow orthographies, like Spanish or Finnish, have a nearly one-to-one correspondence between letters and sounds.. On the other hand, deep orthographies, like English, prioritize morphology (word structure) and etymology (historical influences) over phonetic transparency, and as a result have complex spelling rules. Polish, in comparison, falls in the middle—it is a semi-deep orthography, meaning it maintains a relatively regular phoneme-to-grapheme system but still retains historical influences.
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