The written form of English and the way words are pronounced are so different it must be a nightmare to learn in some ways. I can recall when I was progressing through school even often seeing written words that I had never heard before and having no idea to pronounce them and would ask someone and the answer would be like, oh that's a French word and the 'g' is silent ( for example a word like benign). It's actually pretty bizarre to think about it now but realizing this has given me even more respect for people who learn English as a second language. Honestly I kind of feel like the language could be simplified and made more efficient for future generations and non native speakers to learn.

The hard part is that you have many vowels. In Spanish there are only five. Understanding is often done by elimination. If I can't discard a word because I can't tell if it's bar or bore or beard or bird or bear or beer, unless context helps, I'll simply stall.

That's why I consider native teachers to be the most powerful advantage. At school they insist too much in grammar, that's important, but the foundation is how the language sounds.

I hate movies with original language and subtitles. I've used them with subtitles also in English with great results to learn.

But nothing can replace a teacher that corrects your pronuntiation as you speak and repeats the right sounds as many times as you need.

Also when I'm watching a movie for pleasure, I like to watch and listen, not to read.

After a while reading the subtitles becomes something done in an instant. Then you can listen

A while? I've done it for years and still don't like it. I'm not saying I can't do it, just that it's super annoying for me. I don't enjoy visuals if I need to read. It's totally anti-usabilty.

It's funny because as American kids are learning to read and ask what a word is we are told "sound it out". It usually works. But it definitely doesn't work the other way around, trying to spell a word by how it sounds. I had a Portuguese friend online once that spelled "awesome", "hawsom" and we had a good laugh because he felt embarrassed but we had to assure him it's still spelled wrong but still sounds right if you read it out loud.

As a native English speaker I could understand dropping the "e", but where does the "h" come from?

I guess it could come from the same place as in "hour", "honor", "honest", etc. :)

H at the beginning of a word is silent in Portuguese (as in Spanish and Italian)