As a non-native English speaker, until recently I didn't know ee and i sounded different, eg: bee and bit. Someone explained to me that there are something like 30 vowel sounds in English. Y u no 1 letter = 1 sound???
It's a messy language.
Each little area of England used to have its own spellings. Heck Shakespeare didn't even spell his own surname consistently! Eventually (1700's IIRC) things started to go national such as dictionaries and newspapers which did start leading to consistency, as well as simplification over a period of about 30 years. However sometimes the consistency came before the simplification. Consequently English has some words from before simplification and most from after. We just see these as exceptions and quirks. Bryson covers this stuff well, and is a very amusing and informative writer. (And there are those who quibble with his content.)
If the word was from a language written in Latin script it often kept its original spelling even when that was contrary to what passes for English orthography. It's a big mess, but (usually) it works out.
That word itself is a mongrel of a Latin root, a Latin numeric prefix, and an English adjective-forming suffix. You still knew what I meant by it. I have also tried reading news articles in different languages, or understanding what is going on in a Univision or Telemundo Spanish-language program. It is much easier than one might think.
I have been able to decipher Italian genealogically-relevant municipal records, written in the most self-indulgent cursive script I have ever seen, because English and Italian have a lot of cognates, and bureaucratic record-keeping is about the same everywhere you go.
Chinese, on the other hand, simply has no entry point. I'm with it right up until the number symbols go from 3 to 4, and then it just goes into alienese and never returns.
I'm a native speaker of English and I was unaware there was any difference in pronunciation between these two words. Unless you mean the difference is between those two and 'pick'?
now try piece,peace and piss :)
Piece and peace are also homophones and pronounced identically \ˈpēs\ while piss is pronounced \'pis\.
Apparently you have trouble distinguishing between ē and i sounds but there are only two different sounds in those word triplets, not three.