If English (and French) were phonetically written, it would have been much easier to learn it. There wouldn't have been any necessity of memorizing word's pronunciation and spelling. One sound would have corresponded to one letter. That's a very smart thing which saves people's wasted time on spelling or memorizing words. Phonetically written languages in Europe are all Germanic, Slavic and Romance languages, except English and somewhat French. The most phonetically written language are SerboCroatian and Macedonian. Cheers!