Improving English spelling by little nibbles could make learning to read and write the language substantially easier – if English spelling was not quite so quirky. But as at least 3700 ordinary words contain one or more unpredictable letters (one, two; Monday, Tuesday; enough, said, friend…), minor changes would take centuries to make a noticeable difference to learners, or even to compensate for modernisms which keep making matters worse (ski, graffiti – hi!).

Because there is now so much wrong with English spelling, even deciding what to change first is more difficult than with orthographies which have been regularly modernised. It’s a bit like looking at a severely damaged old building and deciding where to start, when complete demolition is not an option.

Abolishing the use of ‘ph’ for the /f/ sound would not help learners much,
a) because the pronunciation of ‘ph’ is regular and
b) because ‘ph’ is used in only 35 relatively common words
(phantom, pharaoh, phase, pheasant, phenomenon, philosophy, physics, physiological, phone, photograph, phrase; graph, Joseph, nymph, triumph; alphabet, amphibian, asphyxiate, apostrophe, catastrophe, cellophane, decipher, dolphin, elephant, emphasise, nephew, orphan, pamphlet, prophet, sapphire, siphon, sophisticated, sphere, symphony, trophy, typhoon).

The use of redundant ‘-e’ endings is only sometimes unpredictable in writing (determine, famine – aspirin, boffin; promise, premise – basis, tennis), although mostly not after ‘-v’ (have, subversive) and in longer words after ‘-at’(fortunate), but it makes learning to read much harder. It makes it less immediately obvious when ‘-e’ lengthens a preceding vowel (have – gave; to advocate – an advocate; define – famine).

The pamphleteers of the English Civil War 1642-49 removed most surplus ‘-e’ endings (olde, worlde, worke), often together with doubled consonants (hadde, fisshe, shoppe), because they wanted to squeeze more information onto a page. Perhaps texting will do the same for the remaining ones? We would quickly stop missing them.

To make English literacy acquisition noticeably faster and easier, however, would require tackling some of the really big time-wasters, like inconsistent consonant doubling (shoddy body … ballad salad … very merry) or the numerous unpredictable spellings for the /ee/ sound (speak, seek, seize, siege, scene, suite, ski). They cause an enormous amount of word-by-word memorisation of spellings and make learning to read more difficult too. Compared to them, ‘ph’ impedes literacy progress hardly at all.

Substituting ‘f’ for ‘ph’, as happened in the last German reform, is easily doable, given the will. It would just not make a big difference to the overall difficulties or the long time of learning to read and write English.

The Overview page at http://www.EnglishSpellingProblems.co.uk shows how many out of the 6800 most frequently used English words use the main English graphemes, such as ‘f’ for the /f/ sound, and how many have alternative spellings like ‘ph’.

Anyway, thanks for your so interesting posting!