Where do the idiosyncrasies in the spellings of English words come from and why do they survive?

Solution 1:

This is an interesting excerpt from Wikipedia:

After the invention of the printing press in the 1440s, English spelling began to become fixed. This took place gradually through printing houses, whereby the master printer would choose the spellings "that most pleased his fancy". These spellings then became the "house style". Many of the earliest printing houses that printed English were staffed by Hollanders, who changed many spellings to match their Dutch orthography. Examples include the silent "h" in "ghost" (to match Dutch "gheest", which later became "geest"), "aghast", "ghastly" and "gherkin". The silent "h" in other words — such as "ghospel", "ghossip" and "ghizzard" — was later removed.

It reminded me of an article I came across years ago, which explained the disparity between the pronunciation and the spelling of the English language, something not happening in other European languages I know, at least not to this extent. In essence, it claimed it is difficult for written forms of the language to change and follow the spoken changes, especially in English. I don't remember the reasons why, but this explanation was enough for me to understand why there are practically no rules for pronunciation.

As to why these odd spellings haven't been replaced yet, I know there are suggestions for it (not only about English, mind you, a big debate has been going on in France about the simplification of French spelling), but no decisions have been made so far.

Solution 2:

Speling korekshun or simplifikashun has bin propozed manee times. It has never cot on.

The Danes ask, "What do you call someone who cannot spell Danish? They then answer, "A Norwegian." (Danish spelling is irregular, but Norwegian, derived directly from Danish, is not.)

The Norwegians however, contend that there is only one Scandinavian language. Unfortunately, they say, the Danes cannot spell it, and the Swedes cannot pronounce it.

The heritage of English and its tremendous body of extant literature make it difficult to contemplate "simplifikashun" of the orthography. Indeed, some people consider the complications of English to be beautiful. This approach is similar to the Japanese view of the difficulties inherent in Japanese, which also is a language of several origins.