The English language is perhaps the language with the most creative spelling. At least with the Latin alphabet. In most European languages, from Spanish to German, words are written exactly how they're pronounced, and pronounced exactly how they're written. Within the constraints of the regional accent of wherever you are, for whatever language - spelling and writing tend to be unambiguous.
But not with English! English's unique spelling idiosyncratic creativity in spelling gets us the famous English spelling insanity. In what other language would the sound of "f" be spelled "gh"? 'Tis a combination that would make any non-native speaker blink! (If you don't know what I'm talking about, then you haven't spent enough time reading English, tough luck for you, I'd say as I chuckle so much that I'd cough up my coffee!) And don't even get me started on how "gh" could be a dozen other sounds (as I complain about when I sigh in the nighttime!) so you don't even know which sound to use for it.
Oh, beloved English, this is why we ❤️ you so much.
What’s this got to do with collagen?
For a fun example of English's creativity and the tenuous link between the pronunciation and the spelling is all the ways “collagen” is spelled. I mean, “colagin.” Or is it “colegen”?