"lose is word" a spelling spinoff thread

Which reminds me of this:

Actually some people could argue that the language of Shakespeare has been already butchered enough by americans... Who could do a better work?

I don't think its a matter of stupidity. I think this is how languages have grown and changed since cavemen first grunted. We are losing (or loosing, if you will) "whom" because so few people know how to use it, but moreover, because the vast majority of people find nothing wrong with "to who are you speaking?" If people understand the message imparted by that incorrect utterance, then the grammatical objection becomes irrelevant. I agree that its all a bit sad, and it makes my skin crawl to see Drive-Thrus everywhere (agh! My kingdom for a Drive-Through!), but thats the way it is, and I don't think that the language we speak should be some rarefied artefact of shakespeare (I mean, Elizabethans didn't talk like Shakespeare, the man was a poet). I do also agree that legislating this kind of thing is nonsense. People will talk whichever way works good for them to communicate their meaning.

On the contrary, the societies of the modern world which speak most close to Elizabethan english are actually some insular african american communities of the south, with roots in the caribbean. Their local idiom has changed little since the times of the slave trade. I remember reading something by a linguist talking about how Shakespeare, when performed to a group of these people, was fully comprehensible, sans all the Cliff's Notes and plot summaries usually relied upon by audiences struggling to parse all that "Zounds!" "thee" and "thou" stuff.

Also, don't forget, we have the most irregular verbs of any "major" language.

"The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility.

As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan that would become known as "Euro-English".

In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of "k". This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter. There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f". This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent "e" in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away.

By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v".

During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru.

Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas."



There is a lively discussion on this topic over at slashdot:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/07/06/1631211

Actually, the french language was changed a while back (a few times). It's pretty interesting stuff to know if you try to learn the language; for example, the 'little hat' accent (circumflex) usually denotes that there used to be an 's' adjacent to the accented letter, but it was deleted in the course of history.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_...of_the_.22s.22


Here's a history of changes to the language itself:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reforms...ch_orthography

It's good to hear someone interested in such a rich language

-ben

here we are in full-on agreement, Indie! While Im not into legislating america's national language, or legislating what is "proper english" or legislating to reform english, I am fully hawkish on using any force necessary to get the french to trim down on unpronounced letters. Its just vulgar, such wastefulness. A word can be like 10 letters but just one syllable. Tsk tsk tsk.

But if the monumentally unpopular german spelling reforms of a few years ago are any guide, folks don't take too kindly to the guv'ment messing with they talkin.

I strongly disagree! From the language I know, English (or American) has probably the most regular verbs! Have you ever learned a bit of Italian, Spanish or French? Their verbs are strongly irregular, starting from to be and to have...

That's right; also, we don't have noun genders.

French is ridiculous! Sure, English is a bit silly, with it's silent letters and occasional craziness, but French is plain nuts! Without knowing French or hearing people actually talk about every niche scent there is, it is damn near impossible to pronounce most niche fragrances with any decent amount of accuracy.

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Please report to room 101 in the Minitrue for prehabilitation.