Introduction to (applying) linguistics.
Tutorial materials.

 Discussion of orthography.

Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird.
And dead; it’s said like bed, not bead;
For goodness sake, don’t call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt).
A moth is not a moth in Mother,
Nor both in bother, broth in brother.

Richard Krogh

cited in O’Grady et al. (1996) Contemporary
Linguistics: an Introduction.

 

Graham Chapman: Trouble at mill.
Carol Cleveland: Oh no - what kind of trouble?
Chapman: One on't cross beams gone owt askew on treddle.
Cleveland: Pardon?
Chapman: One on't cross beams gone owt askew on treddle.
Cleveland: I don't understand what you're saying.
Chapman: (slightly irritatedly and with exaggeratedly clear accent)
One of the cross beams has gone out askew on the treddle.
Cleveland: Well what on earth does that mean?
Chapman: *I* don't know - Mr Wentworth just told me to come in here and say that there was trouble at the mill, that's all - I didn't expect a kind of Spanish Inquisition.
Monty Python. The Spanish Inquisition sketch

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One thing about English spelling, or orthography, is that it does not allow straightforward recovery of how a word is pronounced.

Considering the following might help discussion of these issues...

Exercise

Find out something about how current English spelling developed (e.g., by searching on the web, by looking in some introduction to linguistics books, or in books about the history of the English language).

Are there any considerations that would argue against a spelling reform that would bring English orthography in line with English pronunciation?