[rlpb]

> because native Anglophones will not know either

I'm not sure that's true. There are still underlying patterns to it, even if it's very convoluted. The exceptions are in the core language that native Anglophones know well. For vocabulary in the periphery, I think native Anglophones (with the same accent) will tend to come up with the same pronunciation for an unknown word because they apply the same patterns.

For example, someone from the UK will infer the language the word was borrowed from, and then apply the rules of that language combined with the same system of English pronunciation butchery that has been applied to it to come up with the same result.

[CJefferson]

In my experience, this is not very true. I hear lots of pronunciations for words like gnocchi, usually until people are shamed into saying it correctly.

[rlpb]

I agree that it's not universal amongst all native English speakers.

But otherwise, that's just a prescriptivist/descriptivist argument. What's "correctly"? You'll note though that there are only a few variations - native English speakers still generally agree, even if in multiple classes, and usually one class is a clear majority.

[kaba0]

Because it is an Italian word, which is perhaps not as common a source for words as to have it ingrained into people’s brain, say compared to French.

But quite clearly there are lots of soft rules that should never be learned directly, but indirectly people do pick up (not only natives, I am not a native English speaker, yet I can probably guess an approximate pronunciation for unseen words that won’t be statistically too bad) — like how an ML model might do.