[bonoboTP]

That's the current situation because spelling reflects pronunciation as it was hundreds of years ago. Basically spoken language moved on, but orthography remained fixed. In languages that standardized their spelling later, or implemented large scale spelling reforms, the discrepancy is smaller. But English is so spread out now with no central authority, so for sake of compatibility, it won't really be reformed now.

[buovjaga]

It's worse than that:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spelling_reform#English

'On the other hand, many words were refashioned to reflect their Latin or Greek etymology. For example, for "debt" early Middle English wrote det/dette, with the b being standardized in spelling in the 16th century, after its Latin etymon debitum; similarly for quer/quere, which was respelled as choir in the 17th century, modelled on Greek χορός chorus; in both cases, the pronunciation was not changed.'

[kwhitefoot]

People always seem to forget that English isn't one language, it is composed of vocabularies from multiple languages all used together. Quite a few words that people think of as English are taken from languages far away, such as shampoo, pyjamas, bungalow.

If people want English to have a stronger connection between spelling and pronunciation they can simply go for it, there is no authority that tells you how you must spell a word. Just be prepared for people to not understand what you write and to ridicule you.

And be prepared to defend the spelling of homophones that have now also become homonyms, such as straight and strait (strate?), might and mite.

[bonoboTP]

But then no language is one language in that sense. For example Hungarian is a mix of Uralic, Turkic, Slavic, Germanic etc. vocabulary. This doesn't make English unique. The somewhat unique aspect is then reluctancy to respell loanwords according to their pronunciation.

[dpig_]

Yes, precisely. A language isn't a thing as such. - Chomsky, probably.

[kwhitefoot]

> the discrepancy is smaller.

You mean like the French who don't pronounce the final consonant?

Anyway, fixing the orthography simply privileges the group whose pronunciation matches. And the pronunciation continues to drift anyway so you have to keep on adjusting the spelling.

[bonoboTP]

English and French are the two main well known exceptions. Basically all other languages of Europe are mostly written letter for letter as pronounced.

[andyferris]

Now GB has left the EU, maybe Europe should create an “international written English”?

It’s kinda a joke, but would be kinda cool. They’d only have to negotiate with Ireland, so hopefully wouldn’t get too bogged down.

[rahen]

Have a look at Interlingua, it would make a great official language for the EU. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlingua

Same article written in Interlingua: https://ia.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlingua

[raverbashing]

Way better than Esperanto at first glance

[rahen]

And English and French...

It's essentially a modern, cleaned-up Latin that any European can pick up quickly.

[bonoboTP]

> any European

*cries in Hungarian*

[bonoboTP]

You might like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_English

Also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_English