All the way back in 2013, I declared the spelling of the past tense of the verb lead, which is standardly spelt led, dead. Or ded. I'd noticed it being misspelt as lead so many times, including on the BBC news website, that I thought it was probably simply prolonging its agony to try to preserve led. Of course it's still around, because inexplicably I'm not in charge, and written language doesn't change that fast. But I was reminded about it the other day and was frustrated all over again by the fact that this one is actually one that has sensible spelling and pronunciation, unlike most of our irregular past tenses.
Lead is pronounced with an 'ee' sound, like read, and led is pronounced like red, so it really ought to be totally transparent and memorable and unproblematic. The problem with lead/led is, though, that we also have read/read, which is not spelt red, though we have another word that is. Oh and we also have the word lead, for the metal, which is pronounced like led. All of which obscures the fact that lead and led are pronounced more or less as they're spelt, unlike read (past tense) and lead (the metal).
I feel bad for it, I really do, but I also think it would just be simpler to let it slip quietly away.
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