I show this image to my more advanced students to help them feel better about the difficulties of spelling and prounciation. As you can see, many other languages feed into the Germanic root, most espcially Latin and French. With three main types of spelling and pronounciation rules, spelling in English is chaotic at best. It is definitely not their inadequacy that makes it so difficult. English is just crazy like that. I find my self apologizing for my native language frequently.
This is fascinating. I'll share it with my students when they get discouraged over spelling!