Problem

Conventional English spelling is rubbish, an insult to intelligence. Actually, conventional spelling is just bad phonetic spelling fossilised.

Because the spelling is so irregular, learning English takes lot more time and effort than learning a language whose alphabet is phonetic. They say learning Chinese is difficult, but there are a lot more English words to learn than the some 2000 Chinese characters needed for everyday use. For each English word, it is necessary to know the spelling, the sounds it is made up of and on which syllable the stress needs to be put. Those whose native language is English are barely conscious of the difficulty of learning the spelling and the difficulties it causes, and they take the pronunciation for granted. But those whose native language is not English find it very hard to master, and rarely even learn to speak the sounds of English properly as the conventional spelling is so misleading.

English is becoming an international language but with the current spelling it is very poorly suited for this role.