English is an alphabetic language not a phonetic one.
In a phonetic language, you can pronounce a word just based on its written representation.
Just compare current and paste tense of read. It is spelled the same but pronounced differently.
You can argue it is an phonetically inconsistent language. However, you will find most of inconsistencies occur in the most frequently used words, making it hard for a beginner.
You are not wrong in idea, but you are wrong in specifics. Does English use a 1:1 phonetic language? No. Of course not. Just like most "functional programming" languages have a lot of differences between them. The colloquial use of the term is not nearly as precise as many think it is.
Even looking up the definition of "alphabetic" shows that that is often for phonetic languages. :D
In a phonetic language, you can pronounce a word just based on its written representation.
Just compare current and paste tense of read. It is spelled the same but pronounced differently.
You can argue it is an phonetically inconsistent language. However, you will find most of inconsistencies occur in the most frequently used words, making it hard for a beginner.