Look at "through," "though" and "tough." They look similar, but they sound very different. English spelling is hard, and not only for Japanese learners. A 2003 study compared children learning to read in 13 European languages.

Most children could read correctly before the end of their first school year. But English-speaking children took more than twice as long. So if English spelling is hard for you, you are not alone.

Why do "through," "though" and "tough" sound so different? English spelling is famously irregular, and research shows it is hard even for native speakers. In 2003, Seymour and his colleagues tested children learning to read in 13 European languages.

In most languages, children could read familiar words and simple made-up words accurately before the end of their first school year. English was the clearest exception. English-speaking children took more than twice as long to build basic reading skills.

Researchers explain this with "orthographic depth." In languages such as Italian, each letter usually has one sound, but in English, letters like "ea" can be read in several ways. English also has many consonant clusters, which make early reading harder.

English spelling is notoriously inconsistent, and cross-linguistic research confirms that this creates difficulties even for native speakers. In a 2003 study, Seymour, Aro and Erskine assessed early reading in 13 European languages, testing letter knowledge, familiar-word reading and the decoding of simple nonwords. Children learning most languages became accurate and fluent readers before the end of their first school year, but French, Portuguese, Danish and especially English lagged behind.

English-speaking children took more than twice as long as children learning consistent orthographies, a gap that could not be explained by differences in school-entry age or letter knowledge. The authors attributed this mainly to orthographic depth, along with complex syllable structures. Brain imaging points to a related difference.

Paulesu and colleagues found that Italian readers relied more on regions associated with sound processing, while English readers relied more on regions linked to recognizing whole words and retrieving meaning, though age, teaching methods and culture could not be fully separated. Ziegler and Goswami's grain-size theory explains why: when single letters are unreliable, readers of English must also use larger units such as "-ight" or whole words. For learners, this suggests memorizing frequent letter patterns while treating true exceptions individually.