English orthography isn't really hacked together. Most of the "examples" I see people bandy about are because you're reading the wrong English: try Old English, instead. For example, knight: it was pronounced "k-ng-ee-h-tuh" (my IPA is too rusty to use). That's, like, precisely how it's spelled? What's gone
wrong is the our modern pronunciation is poor.
Other languages have this even worse. Try comparing Egyptian Colloquial Arabic vs literary Arabic. I mean... these are different languages. Or, for instance, American Sign Language (ASL) vs. written English: the former is more like Chinese than English.