English spelling looks broken because pronunciation moved and spelling didn't

Words like 'name', 'meet' and 'bite' are spelled the way they were pronounced around Chaucer's time, before the Great Vowel Shift quietly changed how English speakers said nearly every long vowel over the following two centuries. Printing arrived just as the shift began, freezing spellings in place while the spoken language kept moving — a big part of why English spelling and pronunciation now disagree so often.

— David Crystal, The Stories of English — Penguin, 2004
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