You can work it out through tough thorough thought, though.

Seriously!

We have a third grader, and he's pretty good at reading. Recently he has been arguing with us about the pronunciation of some new words from his homework.

The problem is, his arguments are sound! He's accurately following the rules he learned for sounding out words.

When this has come up in the past, all I've been able to do is acknowledge his argument and explain to him how English has all kinds of weird rules and exceptions, and it's the kind of thing you remember with experience using the words. Like, there is no new rule to learn, and you don't have to freak out about remembering all these exceptions. It will just come with time. (Because we all know there's nothing that kids like more than olds telling them to just wait or give it time, lol)

English is basically three languages stacked on top of each other wearing a trench coat

Of all people, Gallagher made the point in the 80s. I think George Carlin also did a set about English words once.

But this is someone complaining about an English word and how it is pronounced compared to spelling. Yes, it comes from another language. That is the entire reason English has a lot of examples like this.

Even if you have heard an English word before, you're probably still pronouncing it wrong

"Tough" ought to be written as "tuff"

English is * the last language that should complain; unfortunately, 54% of the US population has a literacy level below that of a 6th-grade student.

edit: typo

But the point is that the person complaining isn't complaining about the French, but about some imagined English dude who picked the pronunciation of rendezvous for fun