The spelling of English is not logical or consistent.
We spell 'kite' fairly logically, but the spelling of 'night' is more closely related to how the word used to be pronounced a thousand years ago, rather than to how it is pronounced now.
We spell 'red' fairly logically, using the letter 'e' to represent the "short e" sound - but in some other words we represent this same sound with other spellings such as in 'head', 'many' and 'said'.
Illogical and inconsistent spelling means that it is difficult for children to learn to read. For example, they have to work very hard to remember the spellings 'bum', 'thumb' and 'come' - whereas with a logical spelling system (such as 'bum', ‘thum', and 'cum') it would be very easy.
So our children spend about twice as much time learning to spell as they would if the system was logical and consistent. And this learning process is frustrating, and hinders a child's interest in learning about the world just when the brain is in its most receptive state.
In 1762 in France, a body known as the French Academy changed the spellings of a quarter of the words of the French language. The new spellings were designed to be consistent, based on the sounds of the words.
In the 1920’s the writing of Turkish was changed so that it uses the English (Roman) alphabet, plus a few extra letters with special distinguishing marks. Turkish spelling is based on the sounds of the words, and is very consistent.
In the 1940’s, spelling systems for Malay and Indonesian were developed so that these languages could be written using the English alphabet. These spelling systems are also very regular and consistent.
The Danish spelling system was modified in 1948 in order to simplify the spelling and make it more consistent. Danish is written using the English alphabet, plus a few special, modified letters.
Just recently (2000), Germany undertook a major change to the spelling of a considerable proportion of German words. For several years Germans had the option of using either the old spellings or the new ones - but the new versions have now been made compulsory in schools and newspapers etc. And German dictionaries have been re-written to use the new spellings. The new spellings are designed to be logical and consistent, with each sound represented consistently by the same letter or letters.
In 1997 Spain also made great strides towards rationalising the spelling of Spanish words, completely eliminating the use of two letters. This was done with a degree of co-ordination with all the Spanish-speaking countries in South America - and shows that spelling reform is not impossible for English.
English-speaking people must compete with these countries in the world market. But they are wasting about two years or more of schooling, and unnecessary and frustrating teaching time, in getting their young students to spell 'night' with a 'gh'.
It is time for us to realise that the spelling 'night' is a bad way to
represent the word. A spelling such as 'nite' would be much better.
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