[nl]

> a single set of rules, 59% of a sample corpus of 5000 English words can be pronounced perfectly from the spelling

To do this you need to know 56(!) rules.

I think this actually demonstrates how complex English pronunciation actually is.

[poincaredisk]

And you still only get 59% of the way to the correct pronunciation.

As a non native speaker of English, and a native speaker of a phonetic language, I strongly object to the notion that it's easy to guess English word pronunciation by just reading it.

[coliveira]

And that's another reason why there are so many English speakers who don't know how to read properly. It is so much harder to read compared to more sensible languages line German (and many others).