Unfortunately, while English pronunciation has changed a lot since the days when Samuel Johnson wrote his famous dictionary, English spelling hasn't. Even native speakers need help sometimes. Would you know how to pronounce "epitome"? To look at it, you'd think that it was "EP-i-tome", but actually it's "i-PIT-o-mee". Many words are spelled the same but pronounced differently: for example, "read" is pronounced one way when it's in the present tense, and a different way when it's the past tense -- but both forms are spelled the same.