With out getting too political what I hate more is when history books are rewritten to eliminate out what is not considered political correct today.
named Webster produced an official speller. As a result, there are no spelling rules, and not many grammar rules either. And, loads of silent letters.Especially silent e's in many words. One simply has to memorize; memorize; memorize.
I teach free English classes to neighbor kids here in the mountains. I am not saying there are no spelling problems in Spanish. For example, they interchange v and b because they sound the same. And, 'll' and y sometimes gets reversed. But, in general in Spanish, every letter is pronounced, and in general even some 8 year old kids spell and read almost perfectly.
I tell my students that English is a language of barbarians.
You should try to teach spelling in English. I don't even try to defend English as a language. I tell them many years ago, there were no standards at all on spelling in the USA. And, a heavy duty cocaine user,
Not just the trailing e's that end so many words. as in trace or lace or like. But, also in words like walked, pronounced walkd. They tend to pronounce the silent e's, for example walked would be pronounced walk-ed. Yet, in some cases those e's are pronounced. Waited would be an example.
I told them Webster's speller was so universally accepted (not a silent e) that schools had major public competitions in spelling. And, the winner(s) were considered to be outstanding students.
Yet, today college entry students are barely literate. I tell them the Mexicans do the work because most of US are lazy. And, in the future they may be doing the brain work as well if we do not have a cultural renaissance.
Almost all my English students are girls. My wife asked me why I had mostly girl students. I smirked and answered, "Strictly coincidence." But, the real reason is the girls here are much more ambitious than the boys are. I don't really know why, yet.
always liked P-nu-mone-ya a in school 
