Why is "go" spelled with the same vowel as "do" and "to" since it is pronounced differently?

Solution 1:

The question posed

Why is “go” spelled with the same vowel as “do” and “to” since it is pronounced differently?

makes an incorrect presupposition. That's the cause of the problem.
Deny the presupposition and the problem goes away.

That presupposition is that

English spelling represents English pronunciation.

This is False.

The fact is that the spelling of modern English words does not give more than a vague guide to their pronunciation.

Vowels, especially, are terribly inconsistent, because there are fourteen phonemic vowels in American English (see the list here -- there are even more in other dialects), all represented by only five vowel letters, in many traditional ways, all inconsistent. Each way was designed centuries ago by people who knew no phonetics, spoke many languages and dialects (not all of them English), and thought they were writing Latin.

Any dictionary will tell you the spelling of English words. A good dictionary (which American dictionaries are not, alas) will also give the pronunciation in IPA or Kenyon-Knott. Spelling and pronunciation are separate, and should be learned separately, like the singular and plural forms of German nouns.

So the answer is that go is spelled with the same vowel as do and to because that's how they're spelled. There is no other reason. No matter what your English teacher told you. Sorry; it's not their fault, though -- they were taught this lie, too.

Solution 2:

How do we decide pronunciation for english words?

Pronunciation of many (probably all) English words has varied over time and from place to place.

As you have noted, spelling is not a foolproof guide to current pronunciation in any specific place. This is particularly true as spelling currently varies from place to place (e.g. color and colour).

We decide how to pronounce a written word in any of the following ways.

• By hearing how people around us pronounce the word.
• By looking in a dictionary that provides a guide to pronunciation.
• By guessing based on how we most often pronounce other words with a similar spelling.

The result may be judged correct in some places at some times yet be judged incorrect elsewhere or elsewhen.

Why 'go' pronounce as 'go' and not 'goo' [as in 'do']?

The idea of standardised spelling is a relatively modern one. Shakespeare quite happily wrote his name using many different spellings. It was only with the advent of dictionaries that spelling gradually became frozen in whatever choice of letters the dictionary compilers selected. The early compilers do not appear to have been especially concerned about consistency between spelling and pronunciation. Noah Webster was a bit of an exception.

Words that today have similar spellings may have, in the past, had spellings that differed more widely and which reflected different pronunciations. Such words may have originated in different languages and have spellings adopted from those differing languages - which may have had different rules of pronunciation.

So the contradictions you identify might arise from an unfortunate convergence of spelling changes or from a difference in source language or even from an arbitrary change in pronunciation (e.g. in "the great vowel shift").

Solution 3:

As Reg Dwight said in a comment, they have different historical pronunciations:

the "o" in go was originally an /ɑː/, while the "o" in do and to was originally an /oː/. So they were always different to begin with, and even the Great Vowel Shift could do nothing about it, because different vowels shifted into different directions.

Go and do happen to be spelled the same because in Middle English, the time period when much of the current English spelling system was formed, their vowels were fairly similar (/ɔː/ and /oː/ respectively), and there are not as many vowel letters in the alphabet as there are vowel sounds in English. But they have never been pronounced the same.