A word on English spelling and pronunciation

Look--a post that's not about Lacey.

In college I majored in linguistics. Every once in a while, I have to vent about the misconceptions people have about English language and English grammar. My vent of the day: English spelling and pronunciation.

English spelling is NOT phonetic. It may be semi-phonetic, or wannabe phonetic, but the bottom line is that spelling of a word does not dictate its pronunciation. Dumb, I know, but that's how it is. In a perfect system, the pronunciation of a word would dictate its spelling, but, alas, we're stuck with what we got. The discrepancies between spelling and pronunciation stem from several sources. These are the ones that I've come across.

First, English pronunciation in general has changed since the language was codified in print after the invention of the printing press. All those silent gh's and g's and k's used to be pronounced. Also, when English was put into print, many of the words had different regional pronunciations, so printers opted for spellings of older pronunciations to be more consistent.

Second, English has borrowed heavily from other languages, including French, which is infamous for its silent letters.

Third, there are way more distinct sounds in English than we have letters to represent them. English has 15 distinct vowel sounds alone, to be represented by {a} {e} {i} {o} {u} and sometimes {y}. Doh!

Fourth, there is still wide regional variation in English pronunciation. No one region has a corner on "correct" pronunciation. The fact is, there is no "correct" pronunciation; there is only standard and non-standard. Bottom line, I can say it however the heck it comes naturally to me, regardless of how it is spelled, as long as I'm understood by the people that I need to be understood by. It is very useful to know and be able to use standard English pronunciation, but there's no law that says you have to use it or that it's more correct than other pronunciations.

My favorite illustration of the English spelling situation is this--

ghoti

How would you pronounce this word? Most people would say "goat-ee." However, it is a variant (made up) spelling of the word "fish." How can that be? Check it out:

enough
women
nation

English spelling is jacked. It's not gonna change, so you might as well get used to it.