[DanaC]

Originally Posted by Kingswood

I venture that the word shapes of the ough words is not actually that useful for word recognition, as in some words one must look carefully at the other letters in the word just to work out which of ten different pronunciations to use for the ough. Which is easier to read: tough, though, through, trough, thorough, or tuff, tho, thru, troff or thurro?

Well...except I don't pronounce 'thorough' as 'thorro'. I am from the North of England; I pronounce it 'thoruh'. And in some accents 'trough' is not troff, it's truff.

Which 'accent' and indeed which 'version' of English are we going to privelege in our spelling reforms? There is very little parity of pronunciation. Between countries it varies enormously. Between the regions (and indeed between towns and villages within those regions) of my tiny little island there is huge variance in pronunciation. Even the rhythms and stresses of speech are different region to region. And indeed, class to class (we have the famed North South Divide. This stuff matters).

What about 'schedule'? It has two pronunciations: skedule and shhedule. Which do we privelege? 'Almond' is pronounced 'allmond' and 'ahhmond' depending where in the UK you live. Indeed it can also be pronounced allmund or allmond.

Who decides which accent is 'correct' ?

Your point about some people being worse off is important. However, if changes were done with care, the number of people made worse off would be substantially fewer than those who would benefit.

How do you know this? What figures do you have that you can point to that in any way back up your assertion that substantially fewer people would be disadvantaged? How can you possibly know this?