potato ghoughpteighbteau

A few days ago, I presented in this blog an 1895 Eighth grade final exam which included a section called Orthography - a word that is meaningless for most Americans. I recognized it only because each chapter in my recently purchased German 101 text included a section on Orthography. You'll recognize how much Orthography you studied in school when I say that it includes the topics of spelling, phonetics, and sentence structure (remember diagramming sentences?)

I was reminded of this again recently when I saw a headline that said:

You write potato,

I write ghoughpteighbteau

If you don't see the equivalence, here's the clue:
The last word can be broken down into gh - ough - pt - eigh - bt - eau where
gh is pronounced like the final letters in hiccough;
ough is pronounced like the same letters in dough;
pt is pronounced like the beginning of ptomaine;
eigh is pronounced like the first part of eight;
bt is pronounced like the end of doubt;
and eau is pronounced like the end of beau.

I learned in my German class that the Germans have a body of language experts who are assigned the task of reviewing spelling and pronunciation from time to time to simplify the language and make it more logical. Spain has such a system as well but because of the many countries where Spanish is spoken, it is more difficult to enforce.

Suggestions for changes in English would be impossible to enforce, but if they make sense and are looked at as alternatives, my guess is they would survive by natural selection. Soon the archaic would be look at as exactly that and we would soon be spelling in a more logical fashion. Consider that hiccup has already replaced hiccough .