It's "english" in the same way that replacing each letter with their hexadecimal equivalent would be "english." TLDR, someone didn't like that you could spell fish GHOTI (couGH, wOmen, moTIon), so they made a new alphabet that is supposed to be based completely on the sounds used so you can sound out any word if you know the alphabet. In practice, most people were all like "actually, I'm okay with remembering which words use GH to sound like f-" when the alternative was knowing a whole ass alternative alphabet.