> Fixing this is difficult, not just because people are resistant to change, but also because the variations in accents.
The relevance of accents is greatly overstated. The argument is of the form "we should let the perfect be the enemy of the good, and therefore it's impossible". There are a great many words in English whose pronunciation is irregular: these are the ones we should fix. For these, accent is irrelevant; you can pronounce your r's hard or your a's broad, and it doesn't matter: "bury" is pronounced to rhyme with "merry" in probably every accent of English that's ever been, from Old English (ic byrge vs myrge) on. You could just fix 100 words like "bury" and "could" and "are" whose spellings are either wrong or etymological but don't reflect extant variants, and the spelling would be reformed, children's lives would be improved, and it wouldn't be a problem from any perspective of accent variation or etymology or anything.
The relevance of accents is greatly overstated. The argument is of the form "we should let the perfect be the enemy of the good, and therefore it's impossible". There are a great many words in English whose pronunciation is irregular: these are the ones we should fix. For these, accent is irrelevant; you can pronounce your r's hard or your a's broad, and it doesn't matter: "bury" is pronounced to rhyme with "merry" in probably every accent of English that's ever been, from Old English (ic byrge vs myrge) on. You could just fix 100 words like "bury" and "could" and "are" whose spellings are either wrong or etymological but don't reflect extant variants, and the spelling would be reformed, children's lives would be improved, and it wouldn't be a problem from any perspective of accent variation or etymology or anything.