columngollum: the mongrality of English is loved so greatly by many is because it aptly reflects the history of Britain and its empire.
I think it is mainly because they have no idea how English spelling has ended up as it is. I'll paste in my summary of the main causes again.
English spelling was mostly deliberately messed up.
Until 1430, when after nearly three centuries of Norman rule English became the official language of England again, English spelling was as consistent as other European orthographies, 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).
Around 1430, official scribes (or Chancery clerks) were obliged to switch from French and Latin to the previously despised, lowly English. It may have been because they were angry about this that they destroyed much of the earlier English spelling consistency.
They deliberately changed Chaucer's previously consistent spellings for long and short e (nere, here, speke, beleve, reson - frend, erly, lern). They deliberately not only made learning to spell English more difficult (bed head, send friend, but learning to read too (‘mean, meant’; ‘read now / read yesterday’.
The next blow to English spelling consistency was dealt by the arrival of printing in 1476.
Firstly, because the Belgian assistants who helped Caxton set up in business spoke no or little English.
Secondly, because early printers were paid by the line, and therefore liked to make words longer: olde, worlde, shoppe, hadde, fissche ... .
Thirdly, because the most bought early English book, Tyndale's 1526 translation of the New Testament, was first published in Belgium and typeset by people who spoke no English. - Because in England the printing of English bibles was illegal until 1539.
The pamphleteers of the English Civil War (1642-9) wanted to squeeze the maximum of information onto a single page dropped most of the earlier deliberately inserted surplus letters again (old, had, shop). But many SURPLUS letters (especially '-e' endings) are still in use today (arE, havE, imaginE, promisE, delicatE) and the useful vowel-lenghtening role of '-e' (care, save, define, surprise, inflate).
Sam Johnson's dictionary of 1755 dealt the last major blow to English spelling consistency. He virtually destroyed the English short and long vowel spelling system, as in 'bit – bite – bitten' because of his reverence for ancient Greek and Latin. - He removed doubled letters from many words of Latin origin which earlier had been spelt with English rules (e.g. Lattine, pittie, cittie, verray...) and inserted them where they serve no phonic purpose (arrive, account, afford...) - to indicate defunct Latin prefixes. It is mainly to him that we owe the hundreds of illogical doubling inconsistencies like 'rabbit – habit, ballad – salad, poppy – copy'.
The very worst of all English spelling difficulties, the totally needless use of heterographs, such as 'its/it's', 'there/their', was also standardised mainly by Johnson. Earlier those words simply had different spellings, used variably by different writers. It was Johnson who linked them to different meanings and made learning to learn English much harder than need be (see englishspellingproblems.blogspot.co.uk ).
The identical sounds of words with different meanings never, ever cause the slightest difficulties in speech. In writing, thousands of English words with different meanings also get by perfectly well with just one spelling (bar, bear, found, sound, ground, mean, lean....). The 335 singled out for special treatment by Johnson do nothing but make learning to write gratuitously harder.
Masha Bell