Honestly I wish we would just stop teaching stupid ‘rules’ like this. English is easier to just remember than to try to suss out some sort of rule set by which you can magically spell a word you just heard or magically pronounce a word you have only read. I hated being told to sound shit out when I was a kid. It’s like “‘c’s make a ‘k’ or ‘s’ noise, sound it out”: Pacific Ocean Fucking really?