[oincobx]

English has 205 ways to spell 44 sounds. Consider this - "cat," "kangaroo," "chrome," and "queue" all start with the same sound, and "eight" and "ate" sound identical. Meanwhile, "cough" doesn’t rhyme with either "enough," "through,"8n "furlough" or "bough." Even some identically spelled words, such as "tear," can be pronounced differently and mean different things.

Mastering such a language takes a long time and requires abilities that most children don’t develop until the middle or latter part of elementary school. 

By contrast, a language such as Finnish has regular spelling rules. Finnish also has the added bonus of a nearly one-to-one correspondence between sounds and letters, meaning fewer rules to learn. So after Finnish children learn their alphabet, learning to read is pretty straightforward—they can read well within three months of starting formal learning.

[the OlLine Rebel]

If there is one thing I would change, it would be the alphabet we use. 1 letter for every sound. “A” has so many versions, e.g.

Only problem is we would probably end up with 75 letters.

[Sherman Logan]

My personal favorite is the fact that when a house burns down it also burns up.

And flammable and inflammable mean the same thing.

[Rufii]

English has 205 ways to spell 44 sounds. Consider this - "cat," "kangaroo," "chrome," and "queue" all start with the same sound, and "eight" and "ate" sound identical

The letter "a" can have at least six distinct sounds, as represented by the words Able, Apple, All, Arrow, About, Any. These sounds can vary according to accent and dialect. For example, I pronounce Mary, Marry and Merry exactly the same, but there are those who pronounce each of these words differently.

[hanamizu]

I have read (but have no personal experience with) that Finnish, along with Hungarian, is an extremely difficult language with several (like more than a dozen) declensions of nouns and adjectives that English is mercifully free of (except for our pronouns which come from Norse). So Finish may enjoy rational spelling (like Spanish) but the rest of its grammar is incredibly complex.

English is a difficult language for non-native speakers to master, but oddly a very easy language to get by in. “No tickee, no shirtee” is often cited as an example.

Ah, but spelling. GHOTI
Of course it is pronounced “fish”
The gh of tough, the o of women, and the ti of nation.

[Petrosius]

If you think that English is bad try learning the 2000-3000 characters you need for Chinese. Of course you could also try to learn all 85,000.

[PUGACHEV]

English is actually almost two separate languages: one is the English that is spoken, and the other is the English that we write. For example, the subject/verb "I can" is usually pronounced "I kin", whereas the common use of contractions renders "I cannot" into "I kant" when spoken. One wishing to lean English must be alert for both forms. On the other hand, the ease with one can express relationships between nouns, particularly possessive relationships, makes English much more streamlined that the Romance languages. Notice, for example how much shorter signs or instructions are in English as compared to Spanish when you see them side by side.

English also has a marvelous and unique proclivity for making nouns into verbs, almost without limit. We can "Google" something or "railroad" someone. One of my favorite examples was in the film, "The King's Speech", when King Edward's brother asks him what he has been doing lately, he replies the he has been "kinging".

[Bigg Red]

I remember reading an essay many, many years ago that maintained that literacy problems were higher in English-speaking nations and blamed the problem on the irregular spelling issues. The problem, the writer stated, stems from the fact that English adopts words with their foreign spellings intact rather than spelling the new words in a way that conforms to English pronunciations.

For me, the strange spellings make English more interesting. But, admittedly, I was born with a brain for spelling. I can see how the many variations are confusing to those whose brains work differently. (My mental challenges are great, but they are related to spatial and numerical configurations.)