11. English pronunciation
English pronunciation is hard for number of reasons. First, it’s been in print for longer than it has been stable-we settled on the spelling of words before we settled on their pronunciation. Second, the language is unusually receptive to foreign loan words and we rarely change the spelling so as to signify their origin. Third, we have no language authority that culls the language periodically, as do the French. (Although Americans have had a few successful tries at spelling reform.) Fourth, modern English is more akin to a creole of Angelic, Norman-French and Low German than more straightforward language evolutions out of Latin. Lastly, English orthography is used to differentiate those roots.