Irregularly spelt short e

Improving the irregular spellings of the short e and u sounds would most help to improve the literacy progress of young children. They cause more reading and spelling difficulties than the variant spellings for a, i or o, because they are more numerous and occur in more everyday English words.

The short a of ‘sad cat’ and ‘rang’ is spelt differently in just ‘plaid, plait’ and ‘meringue. The short o of ‘on hot spot’ is spelt mostly predictably too. It has the exceptions ‘cough, trough, laurel’ and ‘sausage’ and is made slightly more complex by its sub-patterns wa and qua (swap, squat), but these are almost entirely regular (except ‘wont’ and ‘wonted’).

Short i is irregular in 53 words, but predominantly in relatively uncommon ones, 45 of which use y:
Abyss, crypt, crystal, cyclical, cygnet, cymbals, cyst, eucalyptus, gym, hymn, hypnotise, lynch, lynx, mystery, myth, Olympics, rhythm, syllable, symbol, symmetry, sympathy, symptom, synchronise, syndicate, syndrome, synthesis, system - all with a stressed i-sound; and unstressed y for i in: Analysis, bicycle, chrysanthemum, hysterical, pyjamas, platypus, synopsis, syringe.

Among the other 8 irregular spelling for short i, only 7 occur in high frequency words:
Build, built, busy, English, pretty, sieve, women. 
The less common vineyard has a surplus e (cf. vine).
The irregular spellings for short i create some difficulties in learning to read (cyclical cycle) and to write (winning women), but not nearly as many as those for e and u.

The short e of ‘bed, men, then’ is spelt irregularly in 64 words, including some extremely high frequency ones (said, any, many), with 16 of them having a missing doubled consonant as well:
Any, many; bury, jeopardy, leopard; heifer.
Already, ready, steady; jealous, pleasant; meadow, peasant, pheasant, weapon, zealous.
The other 47 are:
Bread, breadth, dead, dread, head, leadx2, readx2, spread, thread, breast, breath, deaf, dealt, death, health, realm, wealth, dreamt, leant, meant, leapt, sweat, threat.
Breakfast, cleanliness, cleanse, endeavour, feather, heather, heaven, heavy, instead, leather, measure, stealthy, treacherous, treadmill, treasure, weather.                                                            
Every, friend, said, says, seven, Wednesday, against; leisure,
lieutenant [‘leftenant’ in UK].

The main alternative spelling for short e is ea (49 /63). This causes considerable difficulties for children learning to read, because the main pronunciation of ea is ee (each, speak, teach... in 152 words), with other pronunciations in a further 12 (great, break, steak; bear, pear, swear, wear; heart, hearth; create, theatre, reality). Reducing some of this confusion would clearly be of great help with learning to read and write.

Of the 63 irregular spellings for short e, 61could easily be improved (preferably with rule-governed
the consonant doubling too):
Alreddy, reddy, jellous, meddow, pezzant, phezzant, plezzant, steddy, weppon, zellous.
Enny, menny, jeppardy, leppard, berry, heffer.
And:
Agenst, evry, frend, sed, ses, Wensday.
Bred, bredth, ded, dred, hed, led, red, spred, thred, brest, breth, def, delt, deth, helth, relm, welth, dremt, lent, ment, lept, swet, thret.
Brekfast, clenliness, clense, endevour, fether, hether, hevn, hevvy, insted, lether, mesure, stelthy, sevn, trecherous, tredmill, tresure, wether.

This regularisation would conflate the four currently different spellings of bred/bread, bury/berry, led/lead and red/read. But anyone worried about this, should remember that over 2000 English words have just one spelling for several different meaning (e.g. mean, lean, arm, bank, bar...), without ever causing problems.

‘Lead’ and ‘read’, on the other hand, which are both used for spelling two completely different words (as in ‘lead me’ and ‘lead weights’, and ‘learn to read’ and ‘read yesterday’) cause considerable reading and spelling difficulties for children. Reducing such impediments to learning would certainly help to make both learning to read and write easier.

Harry Lindgren suggested in 1969 that merely improving the spelling consistency of short e would be a worthwhile first regularisation of English spelling. Although undoubtedly beneficial, making just 63 irregularly spelt words out of 3695 better is very little. That’s why I am offering several other improvements for consideration as well.