French orthography annoys me. It manages to be based neither on the phonology nor on etymology.
For instance, Latin e has in many circumstances become /wa/ in French, but it’s neither written with a grapheme close to ‘e’ (such as ‘ë’) nor with one representing the phonemes (such as ‘oua’), but as ‘oi’.
It would be possible to design a new orthography that would at the same time take French closer to its sounds and to its Romance relatives.
Some examples:
- fleur -> flör (compare Spanish flor)
- trois -> trës (compare Spanish tres)
- autre -> a?tre (compare Italian altro)
- nous -> n?s (compare Latin nos)
- tu -> tü (compare Latin tu)
- aimez -> ämäts (compare Latin amatis)