Well, you have it easy. So do we, in Romania - phonetic language. You learn the alphabet in the first grade (6-7 years) and you learn how to write words during the 2nd and 3rd grade I think. But basically once you know the alphabet you can pronounce any word. Except for, you guessed it, neologisms, words imported from non-phonetical languages.
Plus we have ce/ci/ge/gi/che/chi/ghe/ghi as the only exceptions, no doubled consonnants or actually any doubled other letter for no obvious reason, no long or short sounds. If I want a long "e" (we pronounce "e" - "eh"), I write it "ee" (duh!). Idea = idee. You can hear it, you can write it. You can read it, you can say it. EZ!
What we actually learn during school is higher level grammar: syntax, semantics. I'd say that Romanian is like the Python of natural languages :)
Plus we have ce/ci/ge/gi/che/chi/ghe/ghi as the only exceptions, no doubled consonnants or actually any doubled other letter for no obvious reason, no long or short sounds. If I want a long "e" (we pronounce "e" - "eh"), I write it "ee" (duh!). Idea = idee. You can hear it, you can write it. You can read it, you can say it. EZ!
What we actually learn during school is higher level grammar: syntax, semantics. I'd say that Romanian is like the Python of natural languages :)
(same for other phonetic languages)