and yet another thread full of people that think they could write english phonetically without using the phonetical alphabet.
Sorry guys you can write
"May-Lay"
"Meh-Lay"
"Mee-Lay"
"Mee-Lee"
"Meh-Lee"
as much as you want but guess what, that's not phonetical each of this options can be pronounced in several ways so the value of this thread= 0. One of the features of english language (as someone else stated before in this thread) is that writing and pronounciation doesnt have to do very much with each other.
You can pronoune "ghoti" as "fish" if you want. (see "enough" "women" "nation" gh-o-ti = fish)
So if you want to transcribe something phonetically , use the international phonetical alphabet (IPA)