The flip side of the spelling coin is pronunciation. I recall reading somewhere a comment about Gilbert & Sullivan's tenor from Pinafore--spelled RALPH and pronounced RAFE-- wondering whether they didn't know how to spell RAFE or didn't know how to pronounce RALPH.

In that vein, I proffer the following Hints on Pronunciation for Foreigners, which may be harder to read out loud than Fox in Socks.

I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you
On hiccough, thorough, laugh and through?
Well done! And now you wish perhaps
To learn of less familiar traps?

Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird;
And dead: it's said like bed, not bead —
For goodness sake don't call it 'deed'.
Watch out for meat and great and threat.
They rhyme with suite and straight and debt.

A moth is not a moth in mother,
nor both in bother, broth in brother,
And here is not a match for there
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,
And then there's dose and rose and lose —
Just look them up — and goose and choose.

And cord and work and card and ward,
And font and front and word and sword,
And do and go and thwart and cart —
Come come, I've hardly made a start!
A dreadful language? Man alive,
I'd mastered it when I was five!