Our English Language Can Be Weird
i before e except after c...and whenever else we felt like it.
English is a mess because it's a mash-up of several languages. Starting with a mix of Gaelic and whatever the Britons spoke before the Romans showed up and forced them to speak Latin, then mixed with German, Latin again, German again, then French. Then just a mess of adopted words from various languages including Spanish, Hindi, various African dialects, Yiddish, and Italian (at least).
Supposedly, Mandarin is the only language harder to learn than English.
As a voice teacher, I have to teach students proper diction for singing in Latin, Italian, French, and German (occasionally I have to teach someone Russian, Portuguese, Korean, or something Slavic for a particular song, but mostly the main four) as well as English, of course. Students consistently hate learning to sing French the most for two reasons (I think):
1. Much like English, the French can't decide on one way to spell a vowel sound.
2. All the extra letters one doesn't pronounce in French. This is even worse singing French than speaking because when set to music, most French composers put notes on syllables that normally aren't pronounced when speaking. It becomes very confusing to the students.