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English is can be pronounced different way in many cases. I've been wondering how they can search the word at a dictionary?

For example, if somebody heard the word "talk", it sounds like "tok" If he doesn't know "talk", he will search it in a dictionary with "tok" and couldn't find the right word.

I want to know the process Americans learn a new word when they are children.

Ting Choe
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    When any person is a child, learning their mother tongue, they do not look words up in a dictionary. By the time they learn to read, they are already fluent in their language. Americans are no different from any other child around the world in how they learn their mother tongue. You have no doubt learned your language in the same way. – oerkelens Jan 02 '18 at 12:50
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    This might be a good question to ask on [languagelearning.se] - it seems to be more about language acquisition in general than learning English in particular. – ColleenV Jan 02 '18 at 12:53
  • @oerkelens My point is, when people hear a word they don't know. Even adults sometimes encounter words they don't know. When it comes to my language, Korean, each letter has only one pronunciation. For example "ㅏ" is always pronounced as "ㅏ" So even though I hear new word, I can find it in a dictionary. But in English, "A" can be "long a" or "short a" etc. – Ting Choe Jan 02 '18 at 13:16
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    This is sort of related: How do native speakers 'guess' the pronunciation of the letters in a word they see for the first time? – ColleenV Jan 02 '18 at 13:18
  • @ColleenV Ty. Then it would be good to delete it? – Ting Choe Jan 02 '18 at 13:19
  • I don't think you need to delete this question. You may get a different perspective on [languagelearning.se] (or you may find someone has already asked a similar question there!). Be sure to read about what is on-topic before you post. – ColleenV Jan 02 '18 at 15:02
  • It can be difficult. Usually you can make some educated guesses about a word. For example, maybe you think talk begins "to..." So you look and you don't find it there. How else might it begin? Maybe it's "tu..." so you look there. Not there? Maybe it's "ta..." To use another example, maybe you hear the word "phylactery" and you want to look it up. It starts with an f sound, so you look there, but you don't find it. But if you know that ph- at the beginning of a word is also pronounced f, you might go and look under ph instead. – stangdon Jan 02 '18 at 18:28

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Complex words that are likely to need dictionary help actually are fairly predictable as far as pronunciation (especially if based on Latin or Greek roots), or words you would encounter in text anyway (like medical words).

For example, "intransigent" - a complex word, and it follows predictable rules.

"Once" is completely weird. You would only know that by being taught.

A lot of the small words with bizarre pronunciation patterns are "basic" words and learned in early school through repetition and study.

LawrenceC
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