Steve, I see your point about that brain creates neural patterns in order to specialise with the sounds of a language.
can we assume that the more languages we know, the easier is to understand the listening in another new language?
Balint,
This makes me remind about “The TV method”.
As far as I know, this method states that if you take massive input from tv (even if you are starting to learn a language from scratch), you’ll learn the language. But I am not sure that it can work, because you are listening non-comprehensible audio most of the time.
Very true. I’m reading Keith’s blog (big promoter of TV method) and he has learned mandarin by watching soap operas. That was totally non-comprehensible for him at the beginning, but gradually made progress. Although I think you are right - why listen to non-comprehensible input when you actually can listen to comprehensible input therefore improve your language skills 4-5-10-100 times faster. That is what I’m doing too. 
Sorry for the off topic.
what this man shows in the video is pretty simple, there are a lot of more complicated examples in English, think about “ough,” which are pronounced “oo” in “through,” “ou” in “bough,” “oh” in “though,” “uf” in “enough,” and so on. An he should try a tonal language such Chinese or Vietnamese - it is many times harder in my opinion.
Junair, you are right, the man shows something that is pretty simple. Anyway, I think his point is that you cannot establish rules for pronunciation in English, because it doesn’t follow a logic way.
I think that there are several rules of pronunciation in English, but “There are no rules without exceptions.”
well, I believe a language cannot follow a logical way only, it is not algebra, each language has been formed naturally (except of Esperanto), and the nature of human beings is not always logical
I think that German is more logical in pronunciation than English.
I tend to agree with you in this point Yutaka
RQ, aren’t you American? Your holes are shown in the third picture of that article, labeled accordingly. No offense meant 
Balint, what you write about those English from Hong Kong, who had not known Cantonese but learned to speak Mandarin with the Cantonese accent, seems to fit into that “MRI Proof”. They have shown in the article that the unfamiliar, “non-speech” sounds train the brain in a similar fashion, making it effective in “categorizing” those sounds (in terms of the needed neurons).
English pronunciation does follow certain rules or patterns, they are just not simple. If there were no patterns no one could pronounce it, not even natives.
I wouldn’t say that English is particularly difficult to pronounce (i.e. the actual phonemes), but it’s spelling might make it less “intuitive”. Not the same thing as “difficult pronunciation”.
Erratum: difficult to pronounce
I have just seen the video and for me it is very clear. This is not about pronunciation, but rather about spelling. This man wonders why can be fun learning English with “such terrible pronunciations for words that should all be pronounced alike”. These words should not be pronounced alike. They should be written differently. English pronunciation is not easy, especially if you speak a language with few vowels (five-vowel languages like Spanish and Japanese are good examples), but there is a system, and any system can be learned. The problem with English is that writing is not phonetic at all. Many times you don’t know the right pronunciation for certain groups of letters. However, the good side is that this happens more often only with high-frequency words.
You are of course right Carlos, it is a spelling issue, not a pronunciation issue. But there is a system to English spelling otherwise not even natives would be able to spell. It is just that the system is rather complicated.
Yes, of course, there are certain rules in English spelling. You can always make a guess when you read a new word. But in this system there are also many exceptions and subtleties which make it difficult to understand it. I shouldn’t have said that writing is not phonetic at all. It is, but in a very special way.
No offense Steve, but in my opinion natives have hard time to spell. I work for an Australian helpdesk company, I talk to many-many people and foreigners tend to spell their address and name easier - due to the simple fact that here at school (and as far as I know in other anglo-saxon countries) they don’t really learn gramar and spelling, whereas foreigners who attenteded language school learned properly. It is funny and also a bit sad listening to people, who can’t even spell their street address and I have to guess it. This is not against natives, it is just a simple fact from my experience, and I thought it was worth to mention it. No offense to anyone!
It is not because natives make mistakes that there is no system. It is just that it is very complicated.
OK, English spelling isn’t as “phonetic” or intuitive as other languages, but I have guessed the right spelling several times when I have heard a new word on TV. Of course there is a system. And it helps a lot if you’re familiar with “international” vocabulary, have a common sense etc.
Personally, I’m a native speaker of English and I’m a horrible speller. I call myself a “spellcheck baby.” In other words, I’ve lived my whole life with little red lines under my mispelled words, and auto-correct takes care of most of those.
However, I NEVER make a spelling mistake in Spanish…