Editing Spelling reform (section)

===English===
{{Main|English-language spelling reform}}
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| caption1          = An 1879 bulletin by the US Spelling Reform Association, written mostly using reformed spellings
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| caption2          = An 1880 bulletin, written wholly in reformed spelling
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[[English orthography|English spelling]] contains [[English orthography#Spelling irregularities|many irregularities]] for various reasons. English has generally preserved the original spelling when borrowing words; and even more importantly, English began to be widely written and printed during the [[Middle English]] period: the later development of [[modern English]] included a [[Great Vowel Shift]] and many other changes in [[phonology]], yet the older spellings, which are no longer phonetic, have been kept. On the other hand, many words were refashioned to reflect their Latin or Greek [[etymology]]. For example, for "debt" early [[Middle English]] wrote ''det/dette'', with the ''b'' being standardized in spelling in the 16th century, after its Latin etymon ''debitum''; similarly for ''quer/quere'', which was respelled as ''choir'' in the 17th century, modelled on Greek χορός ''chorus''; in both cases, the pronunciation was not changed.<ref>''[[Oxford English Dictionary]]'', 1st edition, ''ss.vv.''</ref>

[[File:A few shots at the king's English. Theodore Roosevelt spelling reform cartoon.JPG|thumb|290px|President Theodore Roosevelt was criticized for supporting the simplified spelling campaign of [[Andrew Carnegie]] in 1906.]]

Modern English has anywhere from 14 to 22 [[vowel]] and [[diphthong]] [[phoneme]]s, depending on [[dialect]], and 26 or 27 [[consonant]] phonemes. A simple phoneme-letter representation of this language within the 26 letters of the [[English alphabet]] is impossible. Therefore, most spelling reform proposals include multi-letter [[grapheme]]s, as does current English spelling (for example the first two phonemes of "sheep" {{IPAc-en|ˈ|ʃ|i:|p}} are represented by the [[Digraph (orthography)|digraphs]] {{angbr|sh}}, {{IPAc-en|ʃ}}, and {{angbr|ee}}, {{IPAc-en|i:}}, respectively). [[Diacritic]] marks and use of new letter shapes like Ʒʒ have also formed part of spelling reform proposals. The most radical approaches suggest replacing the Latin alphabet with a writing system designed for English, such as the [[Deseret alphabet]] or [[Shavian alphabet]].

Critics have claimed that a consistent phonemically based system would be impractical: for example, phoneme distribution differs between [[British English]] and [[American English]]; furthermore, while English [[Received Pronunciation]] features about 20 vowels, some non-native dialects of English have 10 or even fewer. A phonemic system would therefore not be universal.

A number of proposals have been made to reform English spelling. Some were proposed by [[Noah Webster]] early in the 19th century. He was in part concerned to distinguish American from British usage. Some of his suggestions resulted in the [[American and British English spelling differences|differences between American and British spelling]].