Again, you base the claim that English is not phonetic based on confusions in how different phonemes are represented using the 26 symbols of our alphabet. A thing that is defined as symbols representing phonemes. You could also have a syllabary or a logography. The syllabary would still be phonetic, of course. A logographic writing system is truly not phonetic. Think emoji.
And, of course, I'm summarizing very very briefly.
So, sure, if you want to discuss about how English orthography is deep, go for it. I won't even really disagree. Quite the contrary.
The opening claim was that it wasn't phonetic, though. That is a different thing.
It is funny seeing Japanese as the first example in your quote, as it has both a phonetic syllabary (two, actually) and a non-phonetic logography. That is, you literally have to learn to read a non-phonetic orthography in order to read Japanese!
Probably I missed the exact names, I guess I should have used "deep" vs "shallow", instead of "phonetic" vs "not phonetic". The problem is that there are so many rules that it looks like each word has a special rule.
I agree that Spanish also have subtle rules, we have some unusual cases here in Buenos Aires, in es-ar-bue the last "d" in "ciudad" is very faint and we say the "ll" almost like a English "sh" instead or an English "lee".
The other day I was joking with my wife, and I told her that to make the list of text transformation to allow a Spanish speaker to read German enters in a napkin:
v -> f
w -> v
ei -> ia [in English, something like "ee ah"]
ie -> ii [in English, something like "ee ee"]
eu -> oi [in English, something like "oh ee"]
sch -> sh [loaned from English, perhaps "y" in pure Spanish but it's confusing]
I can't imagine how to do a similar table in English, at least a table that enters in a napkin. Let's start with the infamous case of "yesterday" does it sound like "today" or "Friday"? How is the rule? Can you classify all the words in this table https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordfinder/classic/ends/all/... ?
This got particularly bad when we realized that our kid's school was not teaching phonetics, but that the special tutor we hired was running a basic phonetics routine. And that that is really just 44 flashcards for them to work through.
To your point, Spanish generally has 24 phonemes. This is why they can map it to the 26 letters much more straight forwardly. Though, I'm a touch surprised it can map to German so easily, they have more phonemes than English, if I'm not mistaken.
All of that is to say, I'm glad you found the discussion interesting! Apologies if my pet peeve came on too strong. :D
I am curious, btw, I don't understand what you mean about "yesterday" sounding like either "today" or "Friday" The "day" on both of those sounds the same to me?