The need to modernize Spelling is a system of letters giving words recognizable written form. However, the spelling of words may become out of date as pronunciation changes thru the ages, and literacy then becomes more difficult. To avoid this, spelling needs to be updated to ensure sounds and letters still match. Many languages have updated their spelling in the past 100 years, but English has not done so systematically in the past 1000. English spelling today is therefore so antiquated that it presents a serious obstacle to education.
English spelling is full of contradictions.
Letters may stand for the wrong sound, like o in woman or u in busy or gh in cough , and most are sometimes silent, like b in doubt or s in island . Success in the modern world depends on literacy, yet English spelling is so disordered that after 10 or more years schooling many people still have only a shaky command of it, and millions are functionally illiterate. Even in the hands of professional writers it is an uncertain and clumsy instrument. As a medium of world communication, English is learnt by hundreds of millions of non-native speakers, yet their access to the language is likewise obstructed by the mismatch between speech and writing, which arouses anger, ridicule and frustration. Native and non-native users alike would gain from simpler, more regular, more predictable spellings.