I agree up to a point. While English words may be easier for English speakers, others may have little clue how to spell (write) them. Also, some words in the BIP39 dictionary are mistake-prone, e.g. chief and chef.
BIP39 offers other word lists in other languages though:
https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0039/bip-0039-wordlists.mdBut I agree, the early wordlists such as the English one lacked the strict rules to not include similar looking words so the list contains many of them. The newer ones like the Portuguese list are much better though.