I love the English language and all its strange little ways – how it is perfectly unsuited to learning to read using an exclusive phonetic system.

Take a simple word like Slow.

Slow can be pronounced phonetically as Slough, like the town, or Sloe, as in the name of the fruit.

If you come from Birmingham, you probably will say Slough for Slow.

And if you come from the North East you will say something nearer to Slew.

In Newcastle it will sound more like Slaw and in Yorkshire Slor.

Cockneys, in Lunnun Tahn, might say Slah-oow.

In South Wales it might sound a bit like Slor-awe

In Slough itself the world might be pronounced Sleeow.

Out in the West and East Anglia you will hear Sloo.

Other regions and nations might say Sloah, slurwah and Slah-oo. If you’re posh, Slee-oow and let’s not forget that wonderful antipodean rising inflective – Slah-oow?.

Some people think that reading is decoding.

Decoding is an analytical pursuit for cryptographers, accountants and machine translators. Decoding provides raw data that can be interpreted in a multitude of different ways.

All the pronunciations above are my interpretations of different accents. Others may hear those accents and interpret them quite differently.

Human’s are messy, elastic creatures that tend to break the rules.

English is a messy, elastic language – it tends to break the rules too.