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P a g e
 
have worked their way into the dictionary as standard forms. Think of the word "catalog" 
, which was formerly spelled "catalogue" , or "draft" , formerly spelled "draught".
E.
On a relatively small scale, sensible spellings do sometimes replace less sensible ones. 
But the design of a new writing system is only a partial solution. The major obstacle that 
confronts the orthographic reformer is the existing system itself, which, with all its 
scandalous lack of utility, happens to be an Investiture that seems to defy displacement. 
The first question that arises is how far such a reform would go. We could make a good 
start by simply removing letters that are never pronounced. Though could become tho, 
guard could become gard, foreign could become forin, doubt could become dout, 
Christmas could become Chrismas, and so on. We could also, perhaps, reduce the 
number of ways to write any particular sound 
— so the “ee” sound in street, for example, 
might always be written "ee" , never "ea " , " ie" , "ei" , "i" , "e”, or whatever. Although 
these changes would help, however, they would save only a subset of the problems 
— 
and the more extensive the changes are, the more difficult they would be for the public 
to accept.
F.
Since we've already programmed our brains to work under the current, flawed system 
simplified spellings would be at least initially 
— much harder for all the hundreds of 
millions of English readers to read. There's also that little matter of what to do with the 
billions of books, magazines, web sites, and other documents that already use the "old" 
spelling. Then there are those who point out that a word's spelling gives important clues 
to its etymology, meaning, and relationship to other words. So even though the “a” in the 
word real is not pronounced, It serves the important function of showing the word's 
connection to the word " reality" , in which the " a " is pronounced. Lose that letter, and 
the words no longer appear to have anything to do with each other. Thus, at least some 
of the peculiarities of English spelling exist for entirely legitimate, and still useful, 
historical reasons.
G.

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