How would you change the English language?

[theskald]

-Either we:

1. Change our writing system to be phonetic.
2. Decide once and for all whether we'll use "silent e"s, double vowels (ee, oo), or paired vowels (ae, ou) to change vowel sounds or...
3. Just retool all spelling to be more consistent.

Other than that the other changes I can think of would make the language unrecognizable, i.e. either make all verbs composed of a verb and a preposition non-splittable/splittable ("turn off" can be split by the object: turn off the TV/turn the TV off, but "go off" cannot) or just get rid of them altogether and just add Latin-based prefixes and suffixes. I rather like those verbs though, despite how difficult they can be for ESL students.

I think all linguists should be hit in the head with hammers, (with the possible exception of Noam Chomsky, of course).

That's the most bizarre opinion I've heard in some time...

 

[Brighteye]

Spelling should not be reformed: pronunciation should.
Or else we should remove all the curiosities that hide the etymology of a word but not necessarily abolish 'odd' spellings entirely: just change some to represent the 'original' word more closely.
I'm fond of etymology. Words like paedophile, pedophile and peedofil are very different.

I also like the way that spelling more often shows links between words than not.

 

[Luckymoose]

Get rid of silent letters.

Kuh-nife.

 

[Zarn]

That will just make it worse and English speakers more obnoxius about silent letters in other languages.

 

[Bigfoot3814]

Change it so I don't sound stupid.

 

[Squarg]

I can't believe no one has not mentioned getting rid of double consonants. If you want to tell the difference between supper and super supper should be spelled super and super should be spelled sooper. having double s's in success is redundant, it should be spelled (another one, whats wrong with speled?) succes (the c's have different(another!) sounds so they should be kept in there).
Anyone else think this?

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

I can't believe no one has not mentioned getting rid of double consonants . . . Anyone else think this?

get rid of all those damn double letters

Apparently.

 

[Squarg]

Oh never mind then. I just usually(bah!) never read 1 line posts.

 

[Bill3000]

That will just make it worse and English speakers more obnoxius about silent letters in other languages.

French is due for a spelling reform too, buddy.

Double consonents are good to indicate gemination, but that's rare in english nowadays; so it's good for words like unnamed. But probably more importantly it's one of the few ways to indicate short vowels. (...which was also obsolete due to the great vowel shift, so it at least gives the vowel there)

Conclusion: MORE VOWEL LETTERS PLEASE

 

[Princeps]

That's the most bizarre opinion I've heard in some time...

I try my best.

 

[holy king]

Dutch is bastardized German.

german is bastardized old high german.

 

[scherbchen]

german is bastardized old high german.

which is infinitely inferior to low German (Plattdeutsch) which, incidentally, has many phonetic similarities to late Old / early Middle English. coincidence?? I think not! (just kidding, of course it is not a coincidence)

 

[History_Buff]

Bah, adding genders to words be the worst choice you could possibly make. If any changes could be made to English, it would be the elimination of dialects. We shall all speak the Queen's English, accent and all. The Americans can suck it up.

 

[bhsup]

Bah, adding genders to words be the worst choice you could possibly make. If any changes could be made to English, it would be the elimination of dialects. We shall all speak the Queen's English, accent and all. The Americans can suck it up.

As the modern dominant world power, we need to usurp the name, call it American or Columbian or NewWorldian and the Brits can suck it up. Start calling a hood a hood and not a bonnet, for starters.

 

[History_Buff]

As the modern dominant world power, we need to usurp the name, call it American or Columbian or NewWorldian and the Brits can suck it up. Start calling a hood a hood and not a bonnet, for starters.

You silly Yanks can go do that if you want, and then the more civilized portions of the Commonwealth will retain the better version

 

[Dachs]

You silly Yanks can go do that if you want, and then the more civilized portions of the Commonwealth will retain the better version

So what will Canada and the UK end up doing?

 

[Rossiya]

I speake
You speakst
He speakt
We speaken
You speaket
They speaken

Looks pretty good, much better than speako, speaki, speaka, speakiamo, speakate, speakano.

 

[holy king]

Looks pretty good, much better than speako, speaki, speaka, speakiamo, speakate, speakano.

that may be because english isnt a romance language.

 

[aronnax]

that may be because english isnt a romance language.

And thank god for that.. I dont want to speak a language where I have to grunt and roll all my R's cant do it. I simply cant.

 

[Globex]

Conclusion: MORE VOWEL LETTERS PLEASE

Indeed, I would either add more vowel symbols or use accent marks to represent various vowel sounds and make the representation of vowels in writing consistent so we don't have words like "cough" "though" and "bough" that have similar spellings but different vowel sounds or words like "bait" "rate" and "straight" that have the same vowel sounds and different spelling.

I would also replace all hard c's with k's, all soft c's with s's and all ch's with c's so that "cat" becomes "kat", "century" becomes "sentury" and "China" becomes "Cina".