At a certain point I think we need to just acknowledge that we actually all learn two quite different dialects—Written English and Spoken English—and we should

At a certain point I think we need to just acknowledge that we actually all learn two quite different dialects—Written English and Spoken English—and we should not expect our Written English to match 1:1 with our Spoken English. It's a well-known problem in public speaking that if you write out a speech the way that most people want to it will sound terrible and stilted because the rules of speech are dramatically different than the rules of writing. The reverse is also true: if you've ever tried to transcribe speech (as in a talk or an interview) you'll quickly find that to make it at all legible you're actually not transcribing it verbatim, you're translating from the Spoken English dialect to the Written English dialect. These differences aren't random or accidental either, they developed naturally to solve the dramatically different problems that the two media are meant to solve. Retaining spelling that no longer matches Spoken English is a great example of this in that it serves a number of very important purposes for readers and writers: * It allows easy communication across large (100+ year) time gaps, which is one of writing's most valuable contributions. * It distinguishes words that are now homophones but weren't always, providing greater clarity when reading. * It provides a wider variety of word shapes than a consistent orthography would, increasing the visual differences between words on the page. Every spelling reform effort gets stopped when the very literate (the ones who you really do have to get on board with a spelling reform effort) realize that the outcome will be that they will have a much harder time using formal writing for its intended purpose. Where spelling reform actually does happen and works is where language change always happens—new dialects of Written English are evolving all the time, at a faster and faster rate as more people use text for a larger chunk of their communication. But a concerted, centralized effort to change the formal writing system is never going to work.