Slightly seriously, English (at least the UK version of it - USA version differs) is difficult because it's a mongrel language. It has influences, words and pronounciations which derive from: Anglo-Saxon, Celtic, Latin (old and new), Germanic, French, Arabic, Chinese (mainly Mandarin, but not exclusively), Australian Aborigine, various Indian languages (including Hindi and Urdu) American Indian, and more (I've lost my definitive list due to disk malfunction. Dammit!) Oh, and Inuit (Eskimo)... I KNOW I've left many out... So English tries to express many different languages which differ phoneticly (or is that phonetically - or fonetikly). Thus we get (approximately) 15 different pronounciations of the syllable "ough", some of which are: cough (coff), though (tho), through (throo), Slough (rhymes with cow), enough (enuff), lough (lock - Irish).. I'm too drunk to remember any more! Dr Samuel Johnson (inventor of the 1st English Language Dictionary) wrote that "ghoti" could be pronounced as "fish". Why? "gh" as in "enough"; "o" as in "women"; "ti" as in "motion".... errmm... I'll say "bye" now (Just recovering from serious disk crash...) Cheers, Diolma