Fun video: What if English were phonetically consistent?

But believe it or not, while that would undoubtedly be a tricky part to learning English, it's not the hardest. Results indicate that for most ESL learners the more difficult parts are Latin and Greek loan words. We find that ESL students pick up words of English (Germanic) origin quite rapidly, but learning Greco-Latin words to be much more difficult. If you ever watch The Great Australian Spelling Bee, you'll find that over 90% of the words are of foreign origin, predominantly Latin. But the fact is that English has become so dependent on the use of non-English words that ESL learners must learn not only English, but a whole bunch of other words from French, Latin and Greek (etc) just to function in English! Especially if they want to access higher education.

Here's what the opening text for Star Wars: A New Hope looks like with all foreign words "corrected" to English.

A long time ago, in a galaxy^star-set far, far, away...

STAR WARS^WYES

EPISODE IV^FOUR: A NEW HOPE

It is a period^tide of civil war^brothers-wye. Rebel^Upriser space^room'thships,
striking from a hidden base^holdout, have won their first
victory^sye against the evil Galactic Empire^Star-set Rich.

During^Bewhile the battle^hild, Rebel spies^Upriser sleuths managed^were able to to steal
secret plans^dern layouts to the Empire's ultimate^Rich's greatest weapon, the
DEATH STAR, an armoured space station^shielded starhold with enough
power^might to destroy an entire planet^fornaught a whole world.

Pursued^Sought after by the Empire's sinister agents^Rich's evil henchmen, Princess^Firsten
Leia races home aboard her starship, custodian^keeper of
the stolen plans^layouts that can save^spare her people^folk and
restore^bring back freedom to the galaxy^starset...

Click here to read the entire script for A New Hope in 'pure English.'