What If English Were Phonetically Consistent?

When teaching I used to enjoy citing Steven Pinker from his wonderful book 'The Language Instinct' and in which he uses an example of the English language and it's complexity and illustrating its difficulty to learn from it's rules about pronunciation. That communication is harder than it may at first seem.

He cited the example of what if I was to tell you that I could pronounce the word 
'GHOTI' 

as "FISH"?

If I take the 'f' from the gh sound in TOUGH

and add the 'i' from the 'O' in WOMENS

and then proceed to 'sh' sound in NATION from the TI sound

we have GHOTI = FISH


get it?


Also I also alway enjoyed this example in that it is sourced in the phrase 
'TOUGH WOMEN'S NATION' always made me smile!