I've decided English spelling is about like Chinese characters. If you see a new word you can make some guesses about how it is pronounced (many characters have pronunciation hints), but you won't really know until you hear someone pronounce it. I was told English is phonetic, and I believed it, but the fact that we had spelling tests through fifth or sixth grade suggests it is most definitely not. I'm guessing Chinese kids have about six years of learning characters before they have the standard set down. (3000 characters gets to 95% usage, in 6 years that's 20 a week for 25 weeks/year.)