Even as a native speaker English spelling is hard. I was working on reading with my son last night and hit the word "love". Pause, and think about that word and

Even as a native speaker English spelling is hard. I was working on reading with my son last night and hit the word "love". Pause, and think about that word and its pronunciation. Well, he starts la-a-v-eh, and I correct him "the e at the end isn't pronounced", and later we get to 'make', ma-ah-k, Mac!, And I tell him, "no, this word has a long a, Ā, eh, because...of the e at the end" -_-, "but only sometimes." Then we hit 'night'. Ni-eye-ga..."no, no", I say, "gh" in the middle of a word isn't pronounced. Luckily the book didn't have "though" and "thought" in it. English pronunciation and spelling are basically no more related than second cousins at this point. I can't imagine having to learn to pronounce it simply by reading it. That's only the German bit of the language, the French bit is subtly different, and then the Greek bits work just a little bit differently as well. Then there are native American loan words, usually as place names, that weren't regularized (or maybe they were but aren't anymore?). Is there another word with a gh pronounced like the first pair in Youghiogheny (j ɒ k ə ˈ ɡ eɪ n i)(yock-a-gain-y)? I think it's probably via Scottish? But I'm not sure.