No one can pretend that English spelling is easy. French and Italian lose letters that are not pronounced, but are otherwise phonetic. German and Welsh are phonetic. We marvel that those whose first language does not even use English characters ever learn to spell in English. There have been efforts over the years to simplify English spelling, but none has succeeded; nor will they – and nor should they, but this is not the place to present the arguments. Bill Bryson writes of spelling reform (see reference books) that, ‘It is hard to say which is the more remarkable, the number of influential people who became interested in spelling reform or the little effect they had on it.’ According to George Bernard Shaw, the Irish playwright who on his death in 1950 left a bequest to help to reform English spelling, the letters ghoti spelled fish. The bequest had no effect whatsoever, and how ghoti spells fish is revealed at the end of this section. British spelling of English may slowly lose out to American spelling, but that is a different matter. Both spellings occur in this book (see layout of fourth edition), and there are comments where appropriate in the text, as well as a glossary (see appendix).