Some of the advantages in having a language you can sound out even if you don't know the word is lost when you think about the number of pronunciation rules English has. And that's not even beginning to deal with the foreign words that have now become part of English.

English must be very difficult to learn if it's not your mother tongue. There is a large number of words that sound the same but are written differently depending on context. Their, they're, there etc...

- Trevor