English spelling is the way it is because of our long history masha which we are quite fond of
Most people have no idea how English spelling ended up as it is. If they did, they might not be so fond of it.
Until 1430, when English became the official language of England again, English spelling was as consistent as other European writing systems, apart from the use of o for u next to m, n and v which had been adopted by monastic scribes as early as the 9th C, because they did not like having lots of short strokes next to each other (e.g. munth).
When after nearly centuries of Norman rule English became the official language of England again around 1430, the court scribes who had to switch from French and Latin to English very not very happy. They gave vent to their anger about having to change to this previously despised, lowly language by messing up English spelling.
They deliberately destroyed earlier phonetic distinctions, such as ‘mene – ment, rede - red’, by adopting ‘mean, meant’ and ‘read now / read yesterday’. They deliberately wrecked the earlier consistent spelling of the long ee sound (nere, here, speke, beleve, reson) and made short e less regular at the same time (bed head, fret threat, went meant...).
In the 16th century, English spelling was messed up still further by early printers.
Firstly, by the foreign printers who printed the first English bibles without speaking a word of English. - Tyndale's translation of the New Testament (the most popular book of the 16C) was first published in Belgium in 1526, because in England the printing of English bibles remained illegal until 1539.
Additionally, early English printers were paid by the line and were therefore fond of making words longer. They inserted extra letters simply to earn more money or to make margins neater: olde, worlde, shoppe, hadde, fissche ...
The pamphleteers of the English Civil War (1642-9) wanted to squeeze the maximum of information onto a single page and dropped most surplus letters again (old, had, shop), but many (-e especially) are still with us (are, have, imagine, promise, delicate) and undermine words in which -e has a useful role (care, save, define, surprise, inflate).
Sam Johnson then gave English spelling consistency a final hefty blow with his dictionary of 1755. He more or less destroyed the English short and long vowel spelling system, as in 'bit – bite – bitten'.
Because he had far more respect for Latin than English, he removed doubled letters from many words of Latin origin which earlier had been spelt with them (e.g. Lattine, pittie, cittie, verray...) – to show their short vowels - and inserted them where they serve no phonic purpose (arrive, account, afford...)
Masha Bell