What about jam first or cream first. My personal preference is to put the jam on first then throw the cream in the bin.
What about phone , bone , and cone ? As the word ‘scone’ is literally the word ‘cone’ with the letter S in front of it
Thats the beauty of the english language all the regional dialect Path - Parth, Bath - Barth being other examples
What about the combination of letters OUGH? Though. Rough. Ought. Through. Borough. I'm sure I've missed at least one. It's hard enough for a native English speaker- couldn't blame a foreigner if he asks a chemist for something to treat his chesty cow.
Trough? We used to refer to our local pub as the "Ploff" (Plough) As I always stated I have never seen a horse drink from a "Trow" As you say only the English.. LOL
Up here in the lakes (Cumbrian) spelling has no influence whatsoever on pronunciation. For example Torpenhow is pronounced Tre-Pen-Ah and Gilcrux is pronounced Gilcruise. As a native Lancastrian it certainly took some getting used to. Agreed, only in English!
Down here in the West Country (where we eat parsties), we have Mousehole (pronounced mowsl) and Launceston (Larnsn) not to mention Plymuff.
In Australia (for the most part), the baked good is pronounced "scon" (short o) and the town in the Hunter Valley region of NSW is pronounced "scohn" (long o). But then again we also have two towns pronounced "greeta" that is spelt the same way as the girl's name pronounced "gretta" (Greta/Heddon Greta) Although if the name is actually derived from Margarita then you would expect "greeta" rather than "gretta"
After watching the Hawks v Crows footy game on TV at the weekend, I noticed that the commentators pronounced Launceston (Tasmania) Lorn Cess Ton I suppose this makes more sense than the Cornish pronunciation Larnsn.