If you notice, the &lt;e&gt; of people&#x2F;peple is &#x2F;i&#x2F;, which is different from the &lt;e&gt; of edible&#x2F;edbl that is &#x2F;e&#x2F;.<p>The general rule of English taught in kindergartem is that the silent &lt;e&gt; makes a vowel letter &quot;say its name&quot;. That&#x27;s the difference between &quot;mat&quot; and &quot;mate&quot; or &quot;kit&quot; and &quot;kite&quot; (or &quot;nit&quot; and &quot;nite&quot;). Similarly, doubled consonants make the preceding vowel &quot;short&quot;, as in &quot;holy&quot; and &quot;holly&quot;, where the former vowel says its name and the latter does not. Not to endorse Cutspel at all, but these are ordinary rules of English spelling that are taught to everyone at the beginning of elementary school. Cutspel looks very inconsistent, yes.<p>Another problem with English is that by college, educated people have so internalized its eccentricities that they have forgotten how difficult it is for kindergarteners to learn ;) The big advantage of spelling reform would be teaching children to read faster and more easily, so that more classroom instructional time could be spent on actual content rather than something as ridiculous as spelling. Spelling is now mostly a tool to reify social class. <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theatlantic.com&#x2F;education&#x2F;archive&#x2F;2015&#x2F;02&#x2F;how-the-english-language-is-holding-kids-back&#x2F;385291&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theatlantic.com&#x2F;education&#x2F;archive&#x2F;2015&#x2F;02&#x2F;how-the...</a><p>Spelling reform isn&#x27;t going to be solved by a browser extension replacing words, because some of the benefits of spelling reform involve things like disambiguating words that are spelled the same, like the noun &quot;moderate&quot; and the verb &quot;moderate&quot;. <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;phonetic-blog.blogspot.com&#x2F;2010&#x2F;09&#x2F;luv-u-giv.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;phonetic-blog.blogspot.com&#x2F;2010&#x2F;09&#x2F;luv-u-giv.html</a>