The chaos that is English vowel spelling comes from the fact that vowels in English are relatively unimportant in differentiating words, and thus allow for a lo

The chaos that is English vowel spelling comes from the fact that vowels in English are relatively unimportant in differentiating words, and thus allow for a lot drift before becoming unintelligible. If you replace all the sounds in the previous sentence with a long 'a' as in "cane" you'll sound ridiculous, but pretty much intelligible. Even more so if you replace all the vowels with some sort of "shwa" vowel. This creates a lot of English accents, which fundamentally disagree about the pronunciation of different vowels. Even if the accepted spelling accurately represents how the writer speaks, it could be absolutely different from how the reader speaks. It also creates a tendency to let unemphasized vowels slip into a generic "au"-ish sound, which is where the "o" in "ball" comes from.