Reminds me always of Mark Twain’s hilarious Plan for improvement of English spelling. https://faculty.georgetown.edu/jod/texts/twain.html
Actual source: A letter to The Economist (16 January 1971), written by one M.J. Shields (or M.J. Yilz, by the end of the letter). The letter is quoted in full in one of Willard Espy's Words at Play books. This was a modified version of a piece "Meihem in ce Klasrum", published in the September 1946 issue of Astounding Science Fiction magazine.
[0] https://faculty.georgetown.edu/jod/texts/twain.german.html
(it actually originates in a 1946 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. Sometimes the truth is stranger than astounding science fiction)
> What does this mean?
> Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.
>> This text seems to be an example of a proposed spelling reform for the English language. The author has purposefully misspelled words to demonstrate how this reform would change the current spelling system. Here is a translation of the text into standard English:
>> "Finally, then, after some 20 years of orthographic reform, we would have a logical, coherent spelling in use throughout the English-speaking world."
>> The text suggests that after 20 years of implementing changes to the spelling system, the English-speaking world would have a more logical and coherent spelling system.
Edit: wow, over twenty actually https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X#Other_languages
linguistics nerd flex
Similarly, the y in 'finally' makes an i sound (as in the i in 'machine'), while the y in 'tyrant' makes a different i sound (as in the i in 'finally'), and of course the y in 'year' makes yet another totally different sound. And then of course you have 'lye' and 'lie', which sound the same but with very different meanings.
That is what these jokes were about, simplifying so that each letter has only one sound and a spoken word can only be spelled one way while a written word can only be pronounced one way.
It doesn't work and is silly because letters take their sounds from context, combination, and position, as does the y in 'year'. And there aren't enough letters for all the sounds in English.