>I do not envy those who have to learn English as a second language.

Even less envy for those who venture into learning other languages with English as their first.

>There may be more exceptions than rules.

Our youngest learned of a rule in her AP English course, something about some weird combination of e and i when followed by a consonant from a certain set, or some such. And then it was commented by the teacher as a non-rule, because there were a total of twelve such cases in the whole language, eight of which were exceptions to this rule.