orthography - How to guess the pronunciation of some inconsistencies in English?


I’m not a native English speaker, and I have a lot of problems when is comes to pronouncing words like archive, archon, zealot, heal, health.


Why is the ch sometime pronounced like a k?


Why is the ea sometime pronounced like a French i or è?


Are there rules to follow when it comes to pronouncing these words, or do we just need to know them?


Edit


This question is not a duplicate — sorry if I was not clear. I was not looking for an history course; I wanted rules or tips to help myself when it comes to pronounce these words. @brick's comment was pertinent.


I found something in Wikipedia that might be interesting English spelling for this question. But after looking at all these rules and exceptions, I understand why everyone fallback to the easy answer that you just have to know how it is pronounced.




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