Of course English spelling is closely related to English sounds, but not slavishly so. Particularly where sound is predictable, the spelling system is free to abandon the absolute relationship between grapheme and phoneme, between letters and sounds, and is free to indicate a grammatical or historical point or a particular meaning instead. Fluent readers gain very considerably from this extra information, and early learners should be told this. An example might be the plural ‘s’ ending. This is a hard and fast principle in English - (almost) all plurals are made with a final ‘s’ regardless of the sound made. Houses (houziz), lads (ladz) or cats are not spelled purely phonetically precisely because the valuable information that all three are plural nouns would be lost if they were. The sounds are predictable and known, so spelling can be used to indicate other, and more useful, things to readers. In this example, the spelling clearly and unambiguously indicates a meaning; a past tense verb form. This is profoundly useful. When we read ‘talked’ (or was it ‘chatted’?) the fact that what we are dealing with is a past tense form of ‘communicate verbally’ is of greater importance in almost every context, as we have seen, than exactly which verb is being used. We may cheerfully substitute talked for chatted, for example, but we are much less likely to read talking in place of chatted. It might be catastrophic to the reading if we did. We may consider the exact word, or sound, insignificant but not the grammatical construction which underpins meaning - we read for meaning.
There is also, of course, the question of changing and various pronunciation. The sounds of languages vary over time and between places. Spelling, unless each period and every county is to be given radically different systems, self-evidently cannot cope with such variety by simple grapheme-phoneme correspondences. We are being naïve and parochial when we demand such a high degree of phonic regularity, especially from a written language of such cosmopolitan and sophisticated maturity as English, a language of a certain age and experience. Let us rather relax and enjoy its rich and meaningful diversity, and all that history, carried visually down the centuries to us on those ancient patterns. Let us deliberately learn, rather than disparage, its secretly valuable subtleties.
Modern English derives, in fact, from all over the place. It stems from Old English (pre 1150), but has incorporated much from other languages as time has passed. After 1066, and for a couple of centuries or so, up at the posher end of things, if one was anyone, one spoke French. One spoke it at court, one even spoke it at home if one was anyone. One heard Latin in church. Were one to have schooling at all one had it in French and Latin. One read legal or religious documents in French or Latin. One probably read nothing at all in English. One would have been pushed to find anything in English to read. The people on the Clapham omnibus, or cart, however, went right on speaking English which was left free to develop in the mouths of ordinary people doing everyday things, to develop towards the practical, robust, colourful and flexible language we enjoy today, freely borrowing from other languages as and when.
Pronunciation was very different in those days and still hangs about in many spellings. The final ‘e’ in many words was, for example, actually pronounced - ‘take’ would have been something like ‘taka’. French spellings crept into English words here and there - Old English ‘cwen’ became ‘queen’ for example. Pedantic Latin ‘regularisation’ also occurred. ‘Honest’, for example, got its ‘h’ (which has always been silent) from Latin Honos (honour), even though it actually reached English from Old French ‘oneste’. Becoming aware of such derivation affects spelling and can be helpful and cheering, or at least dissipate some of the ill feeling towards spelling. Eroding the belief that English spelling oddities are simply that, devoid of rhyme or reason, is a real service to students. Etymology, the derivation of words, certainly doesn’t solve all spelling difficulties but it will solve many, explain others and fix some in the memory. For example capable is not ‘capible’ because it derives from the Latin ‘capabilis’; possible is not ‘possable’ because it derives from the Latin ‘possibilis’. You can hear the ancient Romans saying these words.