The Illogical English Language

I'm going to channel my inner Gallagher today.

Don't worry, you don't need protection from watermelon chunks . . . I'm talking about when Gallagher points out the absurdity of the English language.

In my day job, there's a cafeteria where the daily specials get posted on a chalkboard.  The people who run the cafeteria are not from this country, so English is a second (or maybe third) language for them.  Because of that, sometimes the board will say that a Ham and Chedder sandwich (or something similar) is available for lunch that day.  While that seems minor, when it says we're having Sweat & Sour Chicken for lunch, the problem becomes very unappetizing.

But I don't see it as their fault.  E-a-t is pronounced "eet," so it makes sense that they would think s-w-e-a-t sounds similar.  It's our lexicon that's messed up.

When I lived in Prague, I took a course so I could teach English as a Foreign Language (or EFL).  As part of the class, we had to do some on-hand training with actual Czech students (both children and adults), to learn firsthand the difficulties that we might encounter in our new careers.  It took me a very short while to realize I wouldn't be a good EFL teacher, because I wasn’t able to answer the questions that students would ask for clarification purposes.

Like, why is t-h-r-o-u-g-h pronounced "threw" (which is another word that means something completely different), but r-o-u-g-h is pronounced "ruff?"  And b-o-u-g-h is different still, as "bow" (which is another homonym).  During my training, whenever the students would ask me these quite pertinent questions, all I could say is "It doesn't make sense, but that's the way it is." 

Now, maybe I would've been able to find the "proper" answers if I had done more research into the etymology of words, but I didn't even fully understand my mother tongue, so I felt very inept in trying to teach it to someone else.  I’ve heard that English is one of the hardest languages to teach, and I believe that. There are so many exceptions to nearly all of the rules of our collective vocabulary that it’s hard to tell someone to just accept them without question, when the words in their native tongue follow that language’s rules quite precisely.

Even now, all I remember of my education was that we were told to memorize the pronunciations of the words, and not question them.  There’s even that childhood rhyme “I before E, except after C . . .” that’s used to teach us how to spell.  And even that rule has some exceptions to it.

*Side note, why do you remove the "o" from "pronounce" in order to make a "pronunciation?"*

I'm sure I don't have the answers to these questions, and it would probably hurt my brain to try to figure them all out.  I just have to keep on my toes when reading my company's daily lunch board, and make allowances for the kooky rules of English.