America too had got and overcome spelling reform illness:
http://www.taemag.com/issues/articleid.15682/article_detail.asp
http://www.sprachforschung.org/index.php?show=news&id=185#7309
Kommentar von The Economist print edition, Aug 14th 2008, verfaßt am 15.08.2008 um 18.27 Uhr
Adresse:
http://www.sprachforschung.org/index.php?show=news&id=185#7309:
English spelling
You write potato, I write ghoughpteighbteau
The rules need updating, not scrapping
''... despite interest in spelling among figures as diverse as Benjamin Franklin, Prince Philip and the Mormons,
English has never, unlike Spanish, Italian and French, had a central regulatory authority capable of overseeing standardisation.''
That indeed wouldn't fit if the land of the free would have a ''central regulatory authority'' for spelling.
''Yet as various countries have found, identifying a problem and solving it are different matters: spelling arouses surprising passions. Residents in Cologne once called the police after a hairdresser put up a sign advertising Haarflege, rather than the correct Haarpflege (hair care). Measures to simplify German spelling were rejected by newspapers such as the Frankfurter Allgemeine, and defeated in a referendum in Schleswig-Holstein (though later endorsed by its legislature). A similar fate befell the Dutch, when opponents of the government’s 1996 Green Book on spelling (Groene Boekje) released a rival Witte Boekje. French reforms in the 1990s didn’t get off the runway, despite being presented as mere “rectifications”, and attempts this year to bring European and Brazilian Portuguese into line were denounced in Portugal as capitulation to its powerful ex-colony.''
''There are linguistic reasons too why spelling reform is tricky to undertake. Written language is more than a phonetic version of its spoken cousin: it contains etymological and morphological clues to meaning too.''
Most important reason for not doing spelling reforms. German reformers haven't yet got this.
''So although spelling English more phonetically might make it easier to read, it might also make it harder to understand.''
You maybe start out reading character by character in primary school, but once you are an experienced reader, you recognice words.
''Moreover, as Mari Jones of Cambridge University points out, differences in regional pronunciation mean that introducing a “phonetic” spelling of English would benefit only people from the region whose pronunciation was chosen as the accepted norm.''
For the above reason, I also would doubt a ''phonetic'' spelling to benefit the people from the region whose pronunciation was chosen as the norm.
''And, she adds, it would need continual updating to accommodate any subsequent changes in pronunciation.''
That's why spelling reform proposal are silly proposals.
''Yes despite these concerns, some changes are worth considering; it takes more than twice as long to learn to read English as it does to read most other west European languages, according to a 2003 study led by Philip Seymour of Dundee University.''
How long does it take for chineese or japanese children to learn all these characters necessary for depicting their languages?
English is a world languages, so also non natives does learn it besides their native languages and orthographies. There're even people knowing more than their native tounge and English's orthographies.
''Standardising rules on doubled consonants—now more or less bereft of logic—would be a start. Removing erroneous silent letters would also help. And as George Bernard Shaw observed, suppressing superfluous letters will in time reduce the waste of resources and trees. In an era of global warming, that is not to be sniffed at.''
Nothing would help, really! It's best the way it is. Every change causes confusion!