We had a spelling reform or two already, they were unfortunately stupid, eg doubt has never had the b pronounced in English. https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/d

We had a spelling reform or two already, they were unfortunately stupid, eg doubt has never had the b pronounced in English. https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/doubt https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/doubt That said, phonetic spelling reform would of course privilege the phonemes as spoken by whoever happens to be most powerful or prestigious at the time (after all, the only way it could possibly stick is if it's pushed by the sufficiently powerful), and would itself fall out of date eventually anyway.