[tsimionescu]

This is not about regular VS irregular, there are aspects of English spelling that are highly non-phonetic. It's not uncommon to have letters in words that are entirely irrelevant to the pronunciation. For example the spellings "programme" and "program" would be read the same by any English reader, and yet both persist in certain places. The s in island is completely unnecessary.

Also, the same English word can be read in very different ways by the same speaker, but in different contexts. This is most proeminent with some of the most common words in English - a, the, there, and many other connective words can be pronounced very differently by the same speaker in the same speech, depending on stress (for example "a" can be pronounced as either ə if unstressed or eɪ if stressed). And yet, there is no version of written English that differentiates these - another sign that English is not a phonetic spelling.

Of course, on the other hand, you can't say that there is no correlation between spelling and pronunciation, like you can in Mandarin and other Chinese languages.

[taeric]

That is what is typically meant by a regular orthography. Wikipedia also calls it deep and shallow. These are legit terms that pre-exist to this odd debate that English isn't phonetic.

Nobody that knows how to read English at a level to be on an internet forum is surprised that English has odd spelling. Many people would be deeply confused to be told that written English doesn't follow a phonetic system. Rightfully so.