One Reason Learning to Read English is Hard

    At age eight almost reaching nine, I knew absolutely no English. At age 12 I was still struggling in school.  However, in time English became my primary language  and that struggle was eventually forgotten to the point of telling  Mexican immigrant that learning English was easy. He laughed and said "Oh sure it is easy!"

    Eventually as I became more familiar with the intricacies of English,  I realized why the Mexican felt that way. One reason is English the incontinency of letter combination sounds.  For example, take the word trough. The gh is pronounced as an f. However, in the word through, they are left unpronounced. In the word, pronounce, the letter o is sounded. But it is left silent in the word through.

    Then we have the double 00 inconsistencies. Notice the differences in the pronunciation of blood, soon, moon, flood.

   Then we have the letter a in war sounding like an o in bore while in the word tar, and car,  it doesn't. 

     Then we have the letters ea as in the words ear and fear, sounding differently in the words teach, reach each, and peach. 

Then we have homonyms such as blue, blew, whine whine, see-sea, sun, son, soul sole, polish Polish, two, too, to,
be-bee,  sight-site, might-mite, rite, right,