This might be a fun page to check out:
http://www.zompist.com/spell.html
Believe it or not, English *has* a system of pronunciation (no one said it was a good one, however).
I can't believe that some people pronounce "merry" and "marry" about the same (I live on the east coast and they're completely different -- here, "merry" has an "e" like "bed" and "marry" has an "a" like "cat"). I also can't belive that "Don" and "dawn" (or "cot" and "caught") are pronounced the same in some places...wow (here "cot" is pronounced like "box" and "caught" like "awl").