Different spellings to produce ooooooo in English

Last night I introduced the folks in my Italian class to one of the odd points of the English language. In Italian there is but one way to produce the sound of ooooooooo. And that is with the letter "u".

In English it's not so easy. Check out the wide variety of spellings below:

• To
• Two
• Too
• You
• Shoe
• Flue
• Flew
• Flu
• Slough
• Beauty
• Impugn

I think those of us who learned to speak English at an early age (years ago) can be very happy we don't have to confront this battery of linguistic problems.