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9
Phonetics do not fully determine the spelling in German. For instance, terminal devoicing is not reflected in the orthography ("Wand" = [vant]), and vowel length can be indicated in several ways ("e" in "Weg", "ee" in "See", and "eh" in "Mehl" represent the same vowel [eː]).
There are some phonemes that are omitted very frequently. The most important case ...
5
There are four main reasons why the spelling of a German word might deviate from the phonetic spelling (which is rather complicated itself, especially concerning the indication of the length of vowels):
Loanwords and proper names, even if they are hardly perceived as such anymore. Either they are pronounced different like Maschine (the phonetic spelling ...
4
In standard pronunciation, short "ä" is [ɛ] and short "e" is [ə], [ɛ], or [e], where the last one occurs in foreign words ("Methode" [meˈtoːdə]) but rarely in native ones ("lebendig" [leˈbɛndɪk]). That means that most of the time, there is no audible difference between short "ä" and "e". For instance, the vowels in "nässer" and "besser" are the same, namely ...
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