[zeugma]

Studying for a spelling be is more than just memorizing a bunch of words. You learn the etymology and learn to appreciate the English language. Vocabulary is expanded. English can take words from any language and use them everyday. When learning the origins of the words, you learn aspects of German, French, Japanese, Greek and Latin. Many times you'll pick up some history along the way.

If we were to reform our spelling, we would lose much meaning. How would you differentiate between sight, site, cite, and cyte?

 Well said. English is an exceptionally powerful language because we're not sticklers on where words come from, or their history, or some silly list of rules of how things "should" be done. If we find a word that better describes something than what we had available to us, we take it and make it our own.

Witness the French obsession with their language. You see, they have nothing left. We have bigger horizons.
 

[ReignOfError]

Well said. English is an exceptionally powerful language because we're not sticklers on where words come from, or their history, or some silly list of rules of how things "should" be done. If we find a word that better describes something than what we had available to us, we take it and make it our own.

"It's a pretty poor writer who only knows one way to spell a word." -- Mark Twain

Witness the French obsession with their language.

I have to chuckle every time the Academie Française pops up with something silly like "un ordinateur" instead of the term everyone was already using, "un PC." Even the French tend to tune out, light a Galoise, and say "Quoi?"

Not to mention that they have an amazingly silly system for cardinal numbers 70 and up. The system used by French-speaking Swiss is much more sensible.

[TomSmedley]

Well said. English is an exceptionally powerful language because we're not sticklers on where words come from, or their history, or some silly list of rules of how things "should" be done. If we find a word that better describes something than what we had available to us, we take it and make it our own.

We've imported one word from Malay -- but it has two correct spellings, and is always combined with the English verb "to run."

Foreigners often conclude that English is an easy language to learn, since we have NO rules of grammar! (actually, we have them, but they're in1visible. The hardest word for a non-native speaker to master is -- the.

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The Malay word, BTW is amok or amuck.