One problem with replacing all the schwas with ə in spelling is it would break the visual relationship between related words. (I don&#x27;t know if this problem outweighs the benefits that would be gained from otherwise easier-to-learn spelling.)<p>For example &quot;atom&quot; and &quot;atomic&quot; would be spelled &quot;atəm&quot; and &quot;ətomic&quot;. If you&#x27;re learning the language and you know &quot;atəm&quot; and then see the word &quot;ətomic&quot;, you might not know it&#x27;s related to &quot;atəm&quot;.<p>The situation would be even worse if we decided to spell consonants phonetically. In American English the t in &quot;atom&quot; sounds very different than the t in &quot;atomic&quot;. Suppose we introduce a letter ɾ (from IPA) to spell the sound of t in &quot;atom&quot;. Then it&#x27;s even less evident that &quot;aɾəm&quot; and &quot;ətomic&quot; are basically two forms of the same word.