Eleven simple changes that would make the English language so much easier to learn

As one of the most widely spoken languages in the world, it's a wonder how complicated English is.

The tongue of Shakespeare, the lingua franca of world business, one of the UN's official languages, is so full of quirks and idiosyncrasies as to be infuriating.

To remedy this, the Oxford Dictionaries team have collated 11 simplifications that could make English so much easier to master:

1. doughnut - donut

2. through - thru

3. though - tho

4. night - nite

5. borough - boro

6. rhyme - rime

7. photo(graph) - foto(graf)

8. friend - frend

9. bureaucrat - burocrat

10. doubt - dout

11. island - iland