Absolutely not. You just teach kids the very obvious rules ("silent 'e'", "two vowels go walking, the first does the talking", "just memorize that sometimes 'gh' sounds like 'f'", ''i' before 'e' except after 'c' ... excepting obvious exceptions like 'science'", ...). With just a handful of heuristics and a modicum of rote memorization, children can figure out most English words with 0 background in any other languages. Besides this, pattern recognition is strong & easy -- tons of cognates and near-cognates, and most of the homophones & homonyms are common enough words that you'll learn them quickly regardless.
>With just a handful of heuristics and a modicum of rote memorization, children can figure out most English words with 0 background in any other languages.
Most doesn't equal all.
>Besides this, pattern recognition is strong & easy -- tons of cognates and near-cognates, and most of the homophones & homonyms are common enough words that you'll learn them quickly regardless.
It's very difficult compared to a language system where the pronunciation can be directly inferred from the letters.
