Auther, Authur, Author, Other

Two misspellings, then correct spelling ("author") led me to think of "other". Although directly unrelated to auther/authur/author, "other" letters spell like they could have been pronounced with a short "o" and unvoiced "th". It also seems illogical that the "o" is pronounced as a short "u". These thoughts nudged me to write about some language items, such as some older English-language letters, consonant pairs, silent letters, vowels, and the schwa. Read the entire article and comment there, please.