One problem with the phonetic spelling idea is that words often have different pronunciations in different parts of the English speaking world.

When beginning Esperanto, I came across one source that said that the pronunciation of the Esperanto E was like e in get. The problem is, at one extreme, I've heard get pronounced so that it rhymes with bit and at the other extreme, I've heard it pronounced so that it comes close to gate. English speakers simply don't speak with consistent pronunciation in all parts of the world. In some cases pronunciation can differ within a relatively small area.

Mustelvulpo:One problem with the phonetic spelling idea is that words often have different pronunciations in different parts of the English speaking world.

When beginning Esperanto, I came across one source that said that the pronunciation of the Esperanto E was like e in get. The problem is, at one extreme, I've heard get pronounced so that it rhymes with bit and at the other extreme. I've heard it pronounced so that it comes close to gate. English speakers simply don't speak with consistent pronunciation in all parts of the world. In some cases pronunciation can differ within a relatively small area.

Then you can read British writing with a British accent in your mind.

I am presently reading a book that uses British spelling. Though I do understand, it trips me up all the time and slows my reading down. I read using sight words - just as Alkanadi noted. We do not read words in English, we recognize them in the same way that Chinese recognize characters without analyzing every stroke when reading. But when the spelling is different, it takes a fraction of a second longer to recognize the word - and all of those fractions add up.
I sincerely dislike having to read in British. In some texts it is minimal but in the text I am reading now there are several words in each sentence - and expressions, etc. The world is being harnessed with orthographic stupidity due to the English language in general. In reality, it costs the world billions of __________ (fill in whichever currency you want, you still will get it right)! And it costs time and confusion.
One of the culprits in this boondoggle is the pathetic British Council which started sending men out as missionaries of the (British) English language (yes, only men...) starting right after the second big war in 1945. They consciously decided to conquer the world linguistically - and they are doing a pretty good job - well, like 40% - while my compatriots are doing the rest. Yuck!

robbkvasnak:I am presently reading a book that uses British spelling. Though I do understand, it trips me up all the time and slows my reading down.

Perhaps this is due to reading the BBC and watching British programming from a young age, but I feel equally comfortable with both orthographies. In fact, I often use Britishisms myself - a liability in my American academic setting! This does tend to lead people to ask where I'm from (such as when I use "bloody" as an intensifier, or pronounce "tresspassing" with a schwa).

The joke's on them, though - nobody guesses that English is technically L2 for me ...

Mustelvulpo:One problem with the phonetic spelling idea is that words often have different pronunciations in different parts of the English speaking world.

When beginning Esperanto, I came across one source that said that the pronunciation of the Esperanto E was like e in get. The problem is, at one extreme, I've heard get pronounced so that it rhymes with bit and at the other extreme. I've heard it pronounced so that it comes close to gate. English speakers simply don't speak with consistent pronunciation in all parts of the world. In some cases pronunciation can differ within a relatively small area.

Could this not be compensated for by changing the (still phonetic) sounds depending on region? In its current state the words are (for the most part) still spelled identically, so a phonetic spelling would not really matter here. I'm thinking something more like the slight variations in Spanish depending on region. I suppose there are probably corner cases where the pronunciation is not different in a consistent/constant way between dialects for some words, but then again we already have words like aluminum and aluminium anyways. Learning a relatively small subset of spelling variations would be far superior to our current non-phonetic system (essentially requiring rote memorization).

Mustelvulpo:One problem with the phonetic spelling idea is that words often have different pronunciations in different parts of the English speaking world.

When beginning Esperanto, I came across one source that said that the pronunciation of the Esperanto E was like e in get. The problem is, at one extreme, I've heard get pronounced so that it rhymes with bit and at the other extreme. I've heard it pronounced so that it comes close to gate. English speakers simply don't speak with consistent pronunciation in all parts of the world. In some cases pronunciation can differ within a relatively small area.

In that case it just needs to be a rule that says, "however you say the "e" in "get" this is how you spell that sound" much like the policy of the Cornish revival.

A reform of English has been long-overdue. There are almost no orthographical rules - everything has to be learned by rote.

The problem is how to do it. Phonetic spellings won't always so well, because there are far more phonemes in English than letters to represent them, especially the vowels. Adding new letters to the alphabet would be prohibitive - think of all the computers that would need to be readjusted ...

English orthography is as irregular as Russian inflections and stress placement. In both cases, unless you are an educated native speaker, you have almost no hope of mastering the language.

Fear not.
After only one hundred years of discussion The English Spelling Society has decided to "fix" English spelling.
Hopefully that means repaired and not "fixed" the way a male dog is fixed.
All they need is for you to send them money.

Tempodivalse:The problem is how to do it. Phonetic spellings won't always so well, because there are far more phonemes in English than letters to represent them, especially the vowels. Adding new letters to the alphabet would be prohibitive

First, we have to decide who gets to decide how the language is written. I think that the Education ministries are probably the ones who set the standards.

Then these people could slowly make changes year by year to at least make English more phonetic. I don't think a drastic change would work.

But we could start by changing words like "would" and "could" to "wud" and "kud". Year after year, they can make some subtle changes.

Maybe, they could start with the most used English words. Then as students learn the new way of written, it will naturally be applied the rest of the lexicon.

I think the changes would have to be more widespread, especially if one is aiming for more or less phonetic consistency ...

Consider the words "bother" and "father". The initial vowel sound is the same. If we want consistency, which spelling of that sound should take precedence? And what about "bather" and "lather", which all use different starting vowels?

There's probably a clever workaround for some of this that involves using doubled letters to express one vowel (like ae, oe, ue in German for ä, ö, ü). That way you could represent most of the 13 so vowels in English. The consonants are less of a problem.

Then the purist crowd will come into play and accuse you of "defacing" the language, despite the current orthography having almost no redeeming value to the learner, used only because of centuries of historical precedent.

(OK, so I'm projecting a bit in that last sentence. )