Reading this out loud is surprisingly difficult, even for a native English speaker like myself. Of course, there are reasons why the language’s spelling and pronunciations can be completely arbitrary: many of the words have been inherited from other languages, with in turn their own messy rules on how to write and speak. I know that there have been efforts in the past to reform English — Daniel Webster’s American dictionary is responsible for why Americans don’t include a “u” in words like color and armor — but none have led to meaningful success. I was reminded of Anne Curzan’s paper on how Standardized English inevitably leads to a noticeable gap between those proficient in that particular dialect and those who are not, and I wondered if the same could be said about the very language itself. It may be worth it in the long run to make English a phonetic language, in the style of Spanish, for instance.
