There have been attempts to remedy this. Buchanan, Benjamin Franklin, and Noah Webster all proposed, with varying degrees of success, alternate spellings and alternate spelling systems that would bring the orthography of English more in line with its pronunciation. Only Webster succeeded, and his success was very limited: while Americans do use some of his spelling reforms, like “plow” for “plough” and “honor” in place of “honour,” his more extreme suggestions (“wimen” for “women” and “tung” for “tongue,” both of which show up in his 1828 dictionary) never caught on.
