Referencing works fine in phonemic-orthography languages: unambiguous spellings are picked after a time by convention combined with fitness for the target langu

Referencing works fine in phonemic-orthography languages: unambiguous spellings are picked after a time by convention combined with fitness for the target language. See the example of ‘Watson’ here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20799966 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20799966 Curiously, your argument unabashedly presumes independence, if not primacy, of written language from oral. That wasn't ever the case at least in continental European languages—afaik spelling did matter in development of only a few words, contrary to some of modern folk etymological intuition. But this may change now that writing is much more prevalent in people's lives, with the English web getting ubiquitous, and English finally becoming completely logographic. If Mandarin doesn't wipe it all out sooner, anyway.