One of the many things that having children has taught me is that English is a very difficult language. If they weren't totally immersed in it from birth, I don't know how you'd learn it. (As an aside, I have a lot of respect for anyone that picks English up as a second language.)
A favorite quirk of mine is how pronunciations change wildly and seemingly for no reason. For example:
| Life | the thing we only have one of (hard "i") |
| Live | what we do with that (short "i") |
| Live | from New York, it's Saturday Night (long "i") |
| Lives | the present participle (short "i") |
| Lives | two or more (long "i") |
For more English fun, you can't go wrong with contronyms.