the words you use as an example are irrelevant and look nothing like gif. see if you had thought about it a little you'd figure that people pronounce things based on the type of the word and syllable. German, gender etc are two syllable words. people say gif with a hard G because it's similar to words like give, get, gill, etc. now your argument, had it been good, would've instead involved words like gin and gib. they're less common but at least similar in structure. but there's my argument, it's more intuitive to read it similarly to give and get rather than gin and gib.

and the argument you give about intuitiveness are wrong on several fronts.

first of all, listing a bunch of words doesn't prove anything as every rule can have exceptions. just because some words aren't intuitive doesn't mean people won't gravitate towards reading intuitively. doesn't even make sense.

second of all, some of the words don't even fit the "unintuitive" description. colonel, sure, it's a stupid word with a stupid history. but knight? you know intuitiveness doesn't mean "read as written", it means it makes sense within the rules and exceptions of a language, for example i would easily know the k in knight is silent because I've seen tons of other words that have the same silent letter. know, knife, knock, knack... I guarantee that someone who is not familiar with one of the less common words that start the same way, say knave for example, would intuitively know how it's pronounced, and wouldn't really try to sound it out as "kuh-nave". same with phlegm.

third of all, these are not new words. my argument about coining a new word and expecting it to be read a certain way would place the onus on you to make it look like that's how it's read.

finally, because these are old words, some of them actually undercut your argument because the nonstandard pronunciation is the convenient one. knight lost the k later, when people found it more convenient that way. woden's day is now called "wensday"3 now because people find that more convenient not because Odin himself came down to Midgard to tell people this is how you're supposed to say the name... if even God names don't survive the convenience of the majority spekers, some fucking file format doesn't have a chance.

good day.