>>>Similarly "toongue" cf "tong" for "tongue".
>>
>>Not getting that. Toon is like tune, and tong is like long. Tongue rhymes with dung.
>
>as I said before that, ("oo" as in "wood")

Thanks guys, this was all the proof I needed. English spelling can't be trusted to have any means of representing sounds. You need an example word for everything.

BTW, if I am badly mistaken here, what is then the way to represent a short u as in butcher, so that nobody can mistake it for either yoo (as in use) nor uh (as in us)?