Some authors have criticised efforts at spelling reform. They say that our spelling can't really be improved - that its idiosyncrasies have definite advantages.
Such ideas have probably arisen due to the failure of all past attempts at reforming English spelling. But as explained above, those attempts were doomed because they attempted changes to the spelling that were too drastic, or that were unnecessary.
These criticisms have also been coloured by the writers' personal prejudices - "I had to learn it, so my kids can learn it too".
Steven Pinker in his book "The Language Instinct" criticised the idea of reforming our spelling on
three main grounds:
Phonetic Phonemes
Dialect Differences
"Base Spelling on the Root Word"
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