Re-Spelling English: Silent Letters or Accent Marks

There are 14 vowel sounds in English but only 5 vowel letters in the familiar alphabet. Any attempt to make spelling more consistent and logical must grapple with this inherent problem. There are two broad strategies, both of which involve assigning two sounds to each vowel letter which are often referred to as "long" and "short." The first tactic relies primarily or wholly on adding silent letters to influence the length of the vowels to which they are adjacent. This often means: 1) doubling single consonants to shorten vowels which would otherwise be long, e.g. "mopping" vs. "moping," or 2) using special letter combinations to stand for long vowels wherever a single letter would imply a short one, e.g. "cost" vs. "coast." The second tactic relies primarily or wholly on diacritics (a.k.a. "accent marks") placed usually over long vowels in order to mark their length. For instance, the examples above might become "moping" vs. "mo:ping" and "cost" vs. "co:st" (dots placed beside rather than above the pertinent letter due to encoding problems). A possible third option would be a hybrid of the two mentioned above, perhaps using doubled consonants to shorten vowels which would otherwise be long but diacritics to lengthen vowels which would otherwise be short. In such a system, the example words already given would become "mopping," "moping," "cost," and "co:st." For a brief sample of each option with properly displayed marks, please peruse http://www.hsmespanol.com/SpellingSurvey.pdf