No more 'Ants on the Apple' please : busting the phoneme/alphabet myth

Let’s face it, English is a complex language! I’m stating the obvious when I say that reading and writing (spelling) English is no walk in the park. The main source of difficulty comes from the fact that the English language uses 26 alphabet letters to make 40+ sounds (phonemes) represented via 120+ different written combinations. I’ve been rather vague about the number of phonemes and written combinations, for they keep growing as foreign language words are adopted and adapted into the English language.