Mostly I think alternate spellings should be tolerated, and there should be fewer irregularities. I like a lot of Masha Bell's suggestions to simply make Englis

Mostly I think alternate spellings should be tolerated, and there should be fewer irregularities. I like a lot of Masha Bell's suggestions to simply make English spelling less irregular. http://phonetic-blog.blogspot.com/2010/09/luv-u-giv.html http://phonetic-blog.blogspot.com/2010/09/luv-u-giv.html Keep a silent <e> at the end of a word if it makes a vowel "say its name", but drop it otherwise. Then we could make a spelling distinction between a political moderat who wants to moderate political discourse, for example. Take off the inkhorn <p> at the beginning of "ptarmigan", spell philosophy with an <f> at the beginning like they do in most of the Romance languages. The only reason night has a <gh> in the middle is because a thousand years ago it was pronounced with a velar fricative in the middle that standard English hasn't used for centuries. Why not just rite nite rite? Etymology and historical sound change is fascinating, but it's an irregularity that makes literacy harder for grade schoolers. The spelling is not the language. And is it really the case that it's more important to spend classroom time teaching children centuries-obsolete spellings rather than deep reading skills or math?