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Spanish native speaker here. I must say learning languages is not my strong point, but I am convinced every other language is composed of arcane pronunciation rules consequence of mapping an unnecessary large set of almost indistinguishably phonemes.

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I remember a Spanish colleague expressing his exasperation at “cucumber”. I had not noticed its inconsistency until that point.

(The Japanese equivalent that springs to mind is the word for Sunday, 日曜日, pronounced nichiyōbi. It includes the same Chinese character pronounced two completely different ways within the same word.)

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