No it's the Pronunciation that is awful.
I don't find the spelling particularly hard to remember once I am familiar with a word.

But there is often no logic to how words should be pronounced. In many cases you have to have heard the word before, or look it up to know. With British surnames and names of cities it gets even worse.

In Russian, the only challenge is to know which syllable the accent should be on.
Everything else is usually quite clear from the spelling, although some words look a bit scary to pronounce - i.e. tongue twisters! This could not be said for English.
There are several examples of words that are spelled very similarly and pronounced wildly differently.

I can never remember examples about stuff like this, but here is one:

thought
though

but there are thousands more!

Then there is the situation whereby there is quite a big difference between prononunciation between British English and other variations, like American etc. But there is very little difference in spelling.


Quote Originally Posted by Mark Twain
A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling

For example, in Year 1 that useless letter c would be dropped to be replased either by k or s, and likewise x would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which c would be retained would be the ch formation, which will be dealt with later.
Year 2 might reform w spelling, so that which and one would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish y replasing it with i and Iear 4 might fiks the g/j anomali wonse and for all.
Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants.
Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez c, y and x — bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez — tu riplais ch, sh, and th rispektivli.
Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.
Mark Twain