Today, the words Hao was trying to get correct were 'straight' and 'curly'. I wrote them on a piece of paper for her, giving a simple demonstration of each. 'Curly' was the easy one. I underlined 'cur', then 'ly' with my pen as well, showing her the proper syllabification.
Then came 'straight'.
Three letters longer. All one syllable. And that 'aight'. How the &*$% do you explain to someone to get 'ate' from 'aight'?
I was forced in the end to sum it up with "English is crazy." To which Hao nodded sagely and said, "Yeh I know. Englishu too many lettah. Easy to say, harda to write."
She's got that strait. Er. Straight.
--Chiaroscuro