Comparing C++ to the English Language

I was reading this article on Wikipedia
[ur]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language#Number_of_words_in_English[/utl]

And it got me thinking about how no English speaker anywhere could ever learn or use all of those words in a lifetime, and that the common speaker restricts themselves to around 10,000 words for everyday communication. English has thousands of rules, and tens of thousands of exceptions for every one. Upon reading a new word, you can't even pronounce it correctly, since English spelling is so divorced from the spoken word. Yet, English is the second most-used language in the world, trailing Mandarin by only a small margin, and twice as used as the third most-used language, Spanish.

It then dawned on me, that this is extremely similar to C++. People love to talk about how C++ is a horrible kludge of a language, smashing anything and everything into a huge ball of functionality, the entirety of which nobody could ever fully utilize. Yet, it is one of the most useful and widely-used programming languages in existence.

TL;DR: WE C++ NAO

>>10
But I don't agree at all. It's true that there are a few hundred ridiculous exceptions that you have to memorize (women, boatswain, anything with "ugh" after a vowel); still, all other words can be pronounced correctly if you know the rules, and any literate English speaker should know enough of those rules to pronounce the vast majority of English words.

The one thing I'll concede is that a great number of English speakers are not sufficiently literate that the system makes any sense to them whatsoever, and from their point of view, you're right.