The rules make sense if ya break it up into Germanic and Romantic groupings, if it’s Germanic in origin the phonetic spelling probably is right (weird accent shit not withstanding, I swap O and A sometimes) while if it’s Romantic in nature it’s either easy to spell because it’s just straight Latin or it’s a pain in the ass because it’s one of the French words. Tertiary lone words from other languages groups tend to be with Germanic in that it has probably had its spelling rejigged to be phonetic in English, Welsh lone words not withstanding.