The advent of printing 500 years ago created some standards, but countless anomalies survived. The 40-odd sounds of English can be spelled in hundreds of ways, and one spelling can represent many sounds. Simple words like once, who defy all logic. The same ending has different spellings in burglar, teacher, actor, glamour, acre, murmur, injure, martyr . Letters are inserted for no good reason, eg, C in scythe , G in foreign , P in ptarmigan , S in island .
Several forms compete in loanwords like borshch, lychee, popadum, yoghourt .
Inconsistency is rife because English has no strategy for ensuring consistency. No other language tolerates such alphabetic chaos. The price we pay Y et learners must decode this chaos for reading, and memorize it for writing. Non-native speakers face the further hazard of mispronouncing, eg, who sounded as woe, heart aligned with heard , or own rhymed with town . The human, social and economic cost of today's spelling is incalculable.