I was reading yesterday's "A-Word-A-Day." It discussed Noah Webster's efforts to simplify American English, spelling "colour" as "color" and so forth. I had heard of such things before and I remember thinking at the time that it seemed to be a very sensible idea—especially as one who has suffered through school, being taught why there are so many unecessary letters in the word "taught." English is a product of many different languages and our words are fossils of this evolution, using letters that do not always accurately correspond to how the word is pronounced.

Hebrew is written phonetically. If you can read it, you can say it. My study of Hebrew has lead me to really appreciate phonetic spellings.

My question is simply this: Given English's place as the lingua franca of the world, would it be wiser to switch to a phonetic rendering of our words in order to make the language more logical and easier to understand?

Tim

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