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All this talk about the quirks of English spelling is interesting, but Japanese takes the cake. Here's an example I use on Japan-related forums to dismay those just starting out on learning to read it:
東 = "higashi"
東海 = "toukai"
東海運 = "azuma kaiun"
For those folks who can't see the characters displayed properly:
The first character is identical in all three, and read differently in all three ("higashi" in the first, "tou" in the second, and "azuma" in the third). The first two characters of the second and third are identical.
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