As a native dutch speaker, english is veeeery weird to me. It's spellings are inconsitent and it has far too many words for everything. I know English spellings have been tried to be improved time and time again, and most of the time these spelling reforms fail. So that's why that's not what i'm doing here
So, i'm gonna intentionally make it worse, via 10 simple rules, taken from various english words that don't like to follow normal english words.
Doubt is not that interesting of a word, but it does have a silent /b/ in it. It appears to serve no purpose, only to remind the reader that it comes from a specific word? Ehh whatever, scholars are dumB. Oh hey, another word with a silent /b/. Let's look for a pattern here. What do these words have in common? In both cases, the silent leter is near the end. Also, both have a /u/ in them, right before the consonant cluster that contains the /b/. Let's make this rule: [If the word contains a /u/ right before the final consonant cluster, add a /b/ at the end, unless there's a /t/, in which case the /b/ goes before it.]
These spellings already make me cry :0
For some reason, some English words like to use /ph/ for the sound of /f/, like in phone. Let's make this consistent too! This one is simple: let's turn all /f/ into /ph/.
A short one, but a good step towards ruining english spelling.
This is one i have a very personal hate against. Ever heard of something called a tragedeigh? It's basically a name that's modified in a way that it's technically pronounced the same, but looks more "unique". One way they like to do that is turn /ly/ or /ley/ into /leigh/. There techincally aren't any words that use this naturally, but since these spellings are becoming more and more common, i'm counting it. So, this will lead us to the rule: If a word ends with /ly/ or /ley/, replace it with /leigh/.
I hate you if you name your child with a tragedeigh.