English is said to have such chaotic spelling largely due to French. I'm inclined to agree with that, except that the two don't coincide 100% of the cases. Take English marriage, rhythm and rhyme. French has mariage, rythme and rime, respectively. Whenever I have to spell these words, I have to stop and think which language requires an h here, which language takes a y there. Crazy! Marriage and mariage go back to Latin marito, maritare, meaning to get married; rhythm and rythme to Latin rhythmus, ultimately from Greek ῥυθμός; rhyme and rime have ρίμα in Modern Greek. Wikipedia says rhyme (for original rime) was introduced at the beginning of the Modern English period, due to a learnèd (but incorrect) association with Greek ῥυθμός (rhythmos). Everybody with a half braincell knows that Greek ῥ becomes rh in English and French, but why did the French flout that?
Another pair that drives me insane is Portuguese estender and Spanish extender. Why on Earth do we have to spell estender with an s in Portuguese, given that Latin extendo, extendere is written with an x!? And the worst is that we have to spell extensão with an x, so we're stuck with an illogical set estender extensão.
Maybe we should go back to smoke signals. Now I wonder if they also cleave to orthographical rules.
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The pair that causes me headache is independance F. vs. independence E.
Another odd pair is French autorisation and English authorization/authorisation.
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