Comment by noosphr

This is the argument that Chinese use for keeping their characters. It's ultimate expression is defending electric motor to be written as "lighting clouds power tree table" because if we didn't then it would be anarchy.

English is intelligible enough that someone from Vancouver can easily talk to someone from Sydney and every other major population center in between.

That someone in a two sheep village in Scotland might have trouble reading War and Peace isn't a reason to abuse every child for a decade before they too develop the same brain damage as the adults who abused them.