Over the centuries the pronunciation of English has moved farther away from the spelling. Many languages have reformed their spelling to adjust to such changes, but English has not. Traditional English spelling therefore makes the task for learners more difficult and results in a lower level of literacy. The Simplified Spelling Society (SSS), founded in 1908, promotes the cause of reforming the spelling of English words.

Moast peepl doant kno, doant wont tu kno or hav for­gotten that English spelling wos made rotten by stupid munks, selfish printers, struggling French-speeking scribes and the inept lexico­grapher S Johnson english­spelling­problems.blog­spot.co.uk/2012/12/history-of-english-spelling.html. We need tu start thinking about making it better.

Back in 1978, spelling reform advocate Abraham Citron, from Wayne State University, vehemently attacked our system of spelling, as well as tradition educational methods […]. He described spelling as “difficult, irrational, deceptive, inconsistent, clumsy, frustrating and wasteful.” He called it “one of the basic sources of academic discouragement and failure.” Godfrey Dewey, a chairman of the national Phonemic Spelling Council, found that Americans use 561 different spellings for the 41 separate sounds that make up our spoken language. The 26 letters of our alphabet are pronounced in 92 different ways. English spelling rules are so irregular, rote memory is the educational strategy of choice. If mathematics was organized in the same haphazard manner, our society would have screeched to a halt long ago.

Stets revoltierte das gemeine Volk, auch wenn es darum ging, unnütze, weil stumme Buchstaben zu verbannen – wie das »k« in knee , das »b« in debt oder das »e« in infinite. Nur einmal gelang eine bescheidene Straffung, als Noah Webster 1828 in seinem American English Dictionary (ausgeprochen: »dikshunairee«) verfügte, eine Reihe von »u« zu verstoßen; so aus den Wörtern harbour oder labour.

[…] im englischen Sprach­raum ist die Legasthe­nie doppelt so weit ver­breitet.