English overloads vowels to the point that almost any vowel or any cluster of vowels can be pronounced like any other given certain contexts and there are far more vowel sounds than there are letters to represent. E.g. Despite being the most common vowel sound in the language, English has me symbol for schwa. Better representational symbology better aligns pronunciation with orthography and regularizes spelling.
Linguists do have a way of explicitly notating language, called IPA. However, just reading straight IPA can be exhausing. (dʒʌst ɹidɪŋ ai pi ɛi kæn bi ɛɡzɐstɪŋ). Not to mention, one's own accent comes through in the transcription. I remember in school i was confused by the utterance kœkəkœwlɐ which turned out to be "Coca-Cola" transcribed in a British accent (I'm from the US).