I'm a native speaker and I agree. English spelling carries a lot of history and context along with it, which would be lost in any spelling standardization. That richness is a good thing. A little complexity or inconsistency is good. It reflects that spelling is a fundementally imperfect encoding of a living language whose true form is the spoken word. And if you truly grapple with the tremendous diversity of spoken English, it is obvious that any One True Phonetic Orthography is impossible.

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