The language may have just 26 letters, but we have way more phonemes. Having one letter for each phoneme could result in having as many as (or more than) 32 letters, such as in Russian Cyrillic.
Using “th” for two different phonemes is very confusing. Not to mention silent letters.
yeah, 26 letters, 44 sounds. There is a funny book, “P” is for pterodactyl