> I often see people demanding that English be written phonetically. Many of those people seem to be unaware that their own languages also have dialects and that they would be equally unable to write phonetically in a way that would satisfy all users of that language.

Spanish is largely written as it's spoken. Even with its many accents and dialects, holding a spelling bee would be ridiculous because of how easy it is to deduct writing from pronunciation.

That being said, if it was reformed to the point where it absolutely was written as spoken, it would become very ugly.