> This word is roughly pronounced "ick", "thee", "oh", "fuh", "thirius". That's very close in Russian (and other Slavic languages FWITW); if I were to transliterate Russian pronunciation it would be "ikh-tio-fte-rius".

> The surprising thing in English is the ph-th bit

Interesting! I thought it would be the "ch-thy" part since "ch" usually sounds "t-sh"-ish in English, like "child".

I wonder if in English this phoneme uses the "k" sound only for words like "chrysanthemum" or "chrysalis" borrowed from Greek-ish languages.

> I don't know the actual Russian names but it will be similar.

Actually "ф" is just "ph" as in Philadelphia and "т" is "t", very close to how it sounds in the word "term". I think the key difference is that the "th" (sounds like in "the", "they", etc.) phoneme is a separate letter so it's decoupled from "t".

> This word is roughly pronounced "ick", "thee", "oh", "fuh", "thirius".

Nah, closer to "ick-thee-off-thirius": https://www.merriam-webster.com/medical/ichthyophthirius

> the surprising thing in English is the ph-th bit

Right, especially not having a vowel between them, because "f" -> "th" without an intervening vowel is very unusual in English.