Chrissy, if you could get everyone to agree on a simpler form of spelling it might help until pronunciation drifted away from spelling again. English spelling is a horror.

The ‘if’ is huge.

First, who would mandate it? English has no central authority to decide that spelling should be reformed. Noah Webster had some impact back in the early 19th Century, but only in the United States, and only because he was the compiler of a hugely popular dictionary at a time when a single book could become an authority. Samuel Johnston used the same mechanism 50 years earlier in England.

Second, if spelling is to be changed so that the word is spelled the way it sounds, whose accent will rule? Or will we have different spellings in different places? You say tomato and I say t’mayto?

Thank you for your great comment, which set me thinking!