How would you change the English language?

[Sharwood]

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

As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5 year phase in plan that would be 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 favor of the "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 the "f".
This will make words like "fotograf" 20% shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expected 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 horible mes of the silent "e"s in the languag is disgrasful, and they should go away.

By the 4th year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v". During ze fifz year, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.

After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech ozer.

ZE DREM VIL FINALI KUM TRU!!
And zen ve vil take over ze vorld!!!

This is the greatest post I have ever seen.

 

[bhsup]

Nothing. Keep it as it is and get rid of the rest of the world's languages so they won't have the audacity to suggest changes to ours.

 

[Arwon]

Personally I'd have "youse" or "yous" accepted as the standard second-person plural pronoun. I'm tired of being told my usage is somehow wrong. There's nothing wrong with "how are yous doing?" or "where are yous?" It eliminates ambiguity in many sentences.

Apart from that I'd probably just bring in a bunch of literally translated Spanish expressions for my own amusement, like "to make piss" and "I have hunger."

- get rid of that multitude of tenses. Use only three tenses, one for the present, one for the past and one for the future. If it's enough in my language, I don't see a reason why it shouldn't be enough in other languages too.

You know, we really only have two tenses - past and present. Future is just a modal verb or expressed with the present, the rest are just the perfective and progressive aspects. I would have thought that it'd be easier to add some more tenses and reduce the reliance on auxiliary words and modal verbs.

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

As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5 year phase in plan that would be 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 favor of the "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 the "f".
This will make words like "fotograf" 20% shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expected 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 horible mes of the silent "e"s in the languag is disgrasful, and they should go away.

By the 4th year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v". During ze fifz year, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.

After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech ozer.

ZE DREM VIL FINALI KUM TRU!!
And zen ve vil take over ze vorld!!!

The problem with that is that by getting rid of double vowels and vowel combinations actually adds ambiguity. You can't represent 16 vowel sounds with 5 letters!

Likewise, the elimination of certain double consonants like "al" for "all" would remove hints about which vowel is being used. And the silent "e" is what stops "language" being read as ending in a hard G.

Dammit people, the spelling is hard but it's not entirely arbitrary! There's reasons for some of these things.

 

[Arwon]

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[Mise]

I change the language all the time lol

 

[Algeroth]

Reintroduce the double negative. No one of you don't know what you all are missing. Really!

 

[jessiecat]

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

As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5 year phase in plan that would be known as "Euro-English"

After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech ozer.

ZE DREM VIL FINALI KUM TRU!!
And zen ve vil take over ze vorld!!!

Great! So we'll all end up talking like the cast in Young Frankenstein. Just what we need.

 

[philippe]

Great! So we'll all end up talking like the cast in Young Frankenstein. Just what we need.

iz sems ze ar rely gut integratin jah, zu hatte keines gefuhl für humor. Toppie!

 

[Brighteye]

If you could change the English language, what modifications would you make? Would you add grammatical genders? Would you change verbs so that they must be conjugated to fit the subject (like in Spanish, French, Italian, etc.). Would you add tones to distinguish between words that sound the same? Would you want to make it simpler or more complex?

Some of the changes I would make:

-Change the spelling system to make it phonetic
-Add grammatical genders for people and animals (e.g. two separate words for "male cousin" and "female cousin")

We already have words for some of these. Dog and . .. .. .. .. . spring to mind, but there are others, such as fox and vixen.
Why don't you pronounce it the way it's spelt, and then start complaining about everyone else?

- get rid of that multitude of tenses. Use only three tenses, one for the present, one for the past and one for the future. If it's enough in my language, I don't see a reason why it shouldn't be enough in other languages too.
- reduce the number of irregular verbs
- start using commas properly

I like our mix-and-match system of tenses. That's the beauty of constructing tenses from multiple words, rather than having set endings; the number of endings to learn is small, but the number of possible tenses large.
It's a beautiful solution. Getting rid of it would be like vandalising a great work of art.

Of course you could just take Received Pronounciation as the standard but that would merely replace one counterintuitive system of spelling with another for everybody who is not a BBC news anchor.

Actually, you make changing our spelling sound appealing. Perhaps people will start to speak properly.

Personally I'd have "youse" or "yous" accepted as the standard second-person plural pronoun. I'm tired of being told my usage is somehow wrong. There's nothing wrong with "how are yous doing?" or "where are yous?" It eliminates ambiguity in many sentences.

Dammit people, the spelling is hard but it's not entirely arbitrary! There's reasons for some of these things.

Why not reintroduce thou, thee and thy?

I like the spelling just the way it is.
If I could change the language, I'd eliminate all text-speak and 'fashionable'/'youthful' spellings. No more 'cum kwik pls' for me!

 

[REDY]

I would remove all tenses and change word order to make it logical

 

[Sharwood]

Why not reintroduce thou, thee and thy?

I like the spelling just the way it is.
If I could change the language, I'd eliminate all text-speak and 'fashionable'/'youthful' spellings. No more 'cum kwik pls' for me!

I say thou, thee and thy all the time. Of course, I also say it in hyperbolic Samuel Jackson-style speech, but that just makes it even better.

And I would execute people for text message speak.

 

[Arwon]

Why not reintroduce thou, thee and thy?

I don't use them, that's why!

 

[Mise]

I'd eliminate all text-speak and 'fashionable'/'youthful' spellings. No more 'cum kwik pls' for me!

I think it would take a lot more than that for her to stop saying that to you.

 

[jessiecat]

We already have words for some of these. Dog and . .. .. .. .. . spring to mind, but there are others, such as fox and vixen.
Why don't you pronounce it the way it's spelt, and then start complaining about everyone else?

I like our mix-and-match system of tenses. That's the beauty of constructing tenses from multiple words, rather than having set endings; the number of endings to learn is small, but the number of possible tenses large.
It's a beautiful solution. Getting rid of it would be like vandalising a great work of art.

Actually, you make changing our spelling sound appealing. Perhaps people will start to speak properly.

Why not reintroduce thou, thee and thy?

I like the spelling just the way it is.
If I could change the language, I'd eliminate all text-speak and 'fashionable'/'youthful' spellings. No more 'cum kwik pls' for me!

What do you mean "reintroduce"? That depends where you hail from, me lad.

But I agree with you. The English language has evolved for over a millennia quite happily on its own. No need to change it to conform to someone else's standards. If other countries find it tough, I'm sorry, but tough titties!
And BTW text-speak should be a capital offence.

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

Add a few more . . . persons? Like, a formal second person plural (not just "y'all") and make 2 first person plurals ("I and you" plus "I and them") like in Quechua.

 

[Sharwood]

I think it would take a lot more than that for her to stop saying that to you.

Don't they usually tell you not to come quick? That's been my experience.

 

[Brighteye]

Don't they usually tell you not to come quick? That's been my experience.

I feel sorry for you.

 

[Mise]

Don't they usually tell you not to come quick? That's been my experience.

That would probably have made a better punchline.

 

[Arwon]

Add a few more . . . persons? Like, a formal second person plural (not just "y'all") and make 2 first person plurals ("I and you" plus "I and them") like in Quechua.

What's wrong with yous/youse?

I'd also like an inclusive and exclusive we, well done!

 

[RedRalph]

youse is an everyday word here... I suspect we may have invented it, no one else seems to use it