Webster's choice of modifications has always puzzled me: he picked on perfectly harmless words like "defence" (but not it's cognate "fence") and that you'd struggle to mispronounce or misspell whilst leaving abominations like "Wednesday" alone, and reverting some of his better changes like "wimmen"
That said I think English would be much more useful as an auxiliary second language if someone as bold as Webster was willing to actively promote a distinctive "International English" with a more consistent orthography (I quite like Valerie Yule's, but even fixing though/through/tough/cough/bough would be a start)
That said I think English would be much more useful as an auxiliary second language if someone as bold as Webster was willing to actively promote a distinctive "International English" with a more consistent orthography (I quite like Valerie Yule's, but even fixing though/through/tough/cough/bough would be a start)