I would pronounce "gray" slightly differently to "grey". The "a" would have a shorter sound. If one reads a little Chaucer or even Middle English, out loud, pronounced, the strange spellings of modern (UK) English suddenly start to make sense. The English language has got increasingly standardised since the second world war, as communications have increased across large distances. Twenty or thirty years ago, in Britain, one might write "hello", "hallo", "halloa", "hullo" or "hulloa". Even my spell check recognises three of these. (It is set to USA English which I havn't learned to change). This standardisation makes computer searches much simpler, but even as spelling is becoming standardised, (despite my frequent mistakes,) the trend is to ........ destroy grammar. [Sorry, even if it is now accepted, I can't bring myself to put an adjective in there.] Peter (UK) On Fri, Nov 25, 2011 at 5:18 PM, Jim McKenney <jamesamckenney@verizon.net>wrote: > Was > "gray" one of Noah Webster's orthographic innovations? The huge > disparity between the pronunciation of English and the spelling of English > makes our language a very difficult one to learn. Almost seventy years > have not > been enough for me to truly master English spelling. Yet most educated > people > seem to strenuously resist spelling reform (i.e. change to spelling which > reflects the pronunciation of words). I think I'm one of them: spelling > tells > us so much about the history of words. Folk etymology aside, it's a > worthwhile > and gratifying lifetime pursuit for me. > > >