English spelling reform

How shall long and short vowels be denoted?

Shall
bead bid
be written as

biid bid
or
bīd bid
or
bid bidd, (double consonant after short vowel)
or
bi:d bid
or
bihd bid, (like German)
or
bied bid, (like German)
or
bid bid, (write the same way and hope the meaning can be determined from context)

<<bead bid >>

To keep the Englishness of English, I would refraign from using the German spellings

bead > beed
bid > bid

'ea' would be reserved only for the 'ea' sound in 'great'/'steak'/'break' and in 'bear'/'wear'/etc but extended to include 'sincearitie' ("sincerity"), and possibly 'vearie' ("very")

Or, we could just leave English alone and let it be a real language, not some mixed up stab at an improvement, which never would work.

<<Or, we could just leave English alone and let it be a real language, not some mixed up stab at an improvement, which never would work. >>

Caspian,

What is your definition of "a language"/ "a [real] language"?

I see that you bring that up often and am just curious...

<< bead > beed >>

But surely the sound in 'bead' is more like that in 'bid' than in 'bed'?
So why use 'ee'?

<< 'ea' would be reserved only for the 'ea' sound in 'great'/'steak'/'break' and in 'bear'/'wear'/etc >>

I think it should be:
great, steak, break > greit, steik, breik
bear, wear > ber, wer