Exactly, was going to write the same thing.

You can't sound it out... you just have to remember and eventually get it by context. Kids in Israel, in first grade do learn with nikkud (the vowel symbols), but after that it's not used anymore. It's a bit different though because the kids can already speak Hebrew.

Vowels in Hebrew words follow certain patterns. The choice of a particular patten largely depends on the part of speech and the grammatical form of the word given. By listening how the words are pronounced in sentences you will gradually get used to those patterns and will learn to read withoud the nikkud, thus bypassing the primary school stage.

I think children are usually taught to read with vowels. http://www.ulpan.net/hebrew-vowels

You can memorize the roots and develop a contextual view. It is, on my view, so far, the only way I have found

Assuming genders too. triggered

Because לאוכל would mean "to food", since אוכל is a noun, whereas לאכול is the infinitive form of the verb ("to eat").

Look again, it's two ו and one ז

It's actually doubled specifically to tell you it's pronounced as a "v" sound instead of an "U" sound. Basically if you see a double Vav in the middle of a word it's going to pronounced "v". A bit weird, I know but still makes way more sense than a lot of English spelling and pronunciation . ;)