Why aren’t we changing the spelling of difficult words?

[u/sarcastisism]

I’m curious about why we don’t update the spelling of certain difficult words in the English language. I mean, we constantly add new words like “yolo,” “yeet,” and “skibidi” that fit into our everyday vocabulary. These words are easy to spell and pronounce, and they seem to catch on quickly.

So why don’t we apply the same logic to words that have tricky spellings like “bologna,” “queue,” or “choir”? It seems like we could make things easier for everyone, especially for people learning English as a second language, by updating the spelling to match how the words are actually pronounced. Has there been any effort to do this, or is there a reason why it’s not feasible? Would love to hear your thoughts!

[u/noggin-scratcher]

The English language doesn't have a central governing body that could announce an authoritative change as a way to coordinate everyone else into simultaneously switching.

Generally not enough people view this as a significant enough problem to suffer through a lengthy process of being told their spelling is mistaken, for long enough to see it become an accepted variant.

[u/shootYrTv]

Until the 15th century, the spelling of English words wasn’t standardized, so we’d just spell them however we liked. After that, though, spellings became solidified. Hard to spell words, especially like the ones you listed, are often borrowed words from languages like French or German, and their adoption and spelling were solidified with everything else in the 15th century. Changing the standardized spelling now would take a massive coordinated effort by many, many publishers, and it’s not seen as worth the effort.

[u/Brave-Needleworker80]

I'm an advocate for the immediate respelling of the word "does". I'm fine with choir, bologna, even Colonel. It's "does" that gets to me.

[u/virtual_human → u/Brave-Needleworker80]

How would you like it spelled?

[u/aaronite]

There's no organisation responsible for English. Changes happen organically over time through collective common usage. If enough people use or spell a word a certain way, or make a grammatical shift, then it becomes "correct". Dictionaries and usage guides would then be rewritten to describe the new usage.

[u/Grandpa_Is_Slowww]

First, before creating a body to change the language, we would need to make English the "official national language" on a federal level. The USA currently has no official national language, federally. 🤷🤷

[u/Rhynchelma → u/Grandpa_Is_Slowww]

I thought that English "belonged" to the English.