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English is highly non-phonemic. It's not absurd. If you considered English phonetic, you'd have to consider almost every modern language writing system phonetic. The distinction wouldn't mean much.

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It's entirely possible for a distinction that contrasts a large majority with a small minority, or even an actually-existing totality with a hypothetical set of counterexamples, to be meaningful.

If it is not phonemic, what is it? It is not necessarily "regular" or "uniform" in the phonemes that are represented, but you can't consider it anything other than phonetic, as the characters represent phonemes. Pretty much period.

As said in other threads, you are not wrong that there are more direct 1:1 scripts to phonemes. You are wrong to think that is what phonetic means.

And in the context of discussing "whole word" vs "phonetic" systems of learning the English language, it seems like outright deception.

I'm assuming it isn't deception as much as it is a bit plain ignorance. I confess I have harbored the thought that English is not phonetic in the past. Is a common thing for folks to say; especially when trying to point out that English is hard.

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