How would you change the English language?

[bob bobato]

Don't mayk it kumpleetli fonetik. That wude bee stoopid, cuz evuriwun speeks difrintli (most pepul, uperintly say 'wimin' for 'women', for egzampil, but mi, pursoneli, acshoo-uli say 'women'). But thuh stoopid speleenz that no-wun yoozis enimor, liek 'knife', 'through', etc, shude bi chayngd, cuz no-wun pronownsiz the 'k' in 'gh' enimor. awso cuz kumpleetli fonetik spelin, liek thuh theen im yoozeeng now (thuh way ie speek, aat leest), looks oribul, en iz difikut too reed. wich baysiculy meens, i theenk, thet wi rihly yooz sofistikaytid hieroglifiks, naht uh reeyil alfubit, cuz yoo zhus recugniez thuh wurd-simbul- yoo dont reed it. eniwayz i forgaw wut ie wuz say'yn, cuz ie spent so much tiem speleen foneticuli...

 

[Arwon]

Hahaha you sound Frenchish.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Zita! Say it with me. ZZZZZZZZZZZ-ITA!

ز Say it with me, ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZAAAAAEEEEN!

 

[kulade]

Meik the Inglish leinguaj fonetik.

It iz tru dhat at taimz pronunsiashon chanjiz betwin grups ov Inglish spikrz, but leiguajiz such az Spanish get ulong fain, iven tho ther spich izn't olweiz dhe seim. If Inglish spikrz can understand ichodhr miuchuali olredi, hau much mur dificult iz it tu rid a conformd speling?

 

[theskald]

What is that from those imaginary eastern countries you're always on about Cheezy you should really stop living with your head in the clouds.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Why don't we just go back to the Latin alphabet and its pronunciation rules? Its even easier than pure phonetic spelling like you guys are trying to do.

 

[Arwon]

God, Australians are the only people who speak correctly.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

God, Australians are the only people who speak correctly.

...
"Son, did you come here to die?"

"No sir, I got here yesterdaye"

 

[kulade]

Why don't we just go back to the Latin alphabet and its pronunciation rules? Its even easier than pure phonetic spelling like you guys are trying to do.

That's what I was aiming for, well with some sh's and ch's.

 

[Zarn]

Stop complaining to divine powers, Arwon. No deity likes a whiner.

 

[scherbchen]

Why don't we just go back to the Latin alphabet ....

word of advice.... you ARE USING IT! as far as pronounciation goes, that has been tackled about, say, twenty times at least in this thread.

 

[Tomoyo]

Here's what I would do:

1) Add a second person plural pronoun. Anything will do. Currently I've taken to using "y'all." The increased unambiguity way outweighs sounding like a southerner.

2) Make the plural possessive of most nouns sound different from the singular possessive. What I do right now is try to pronounce that silent apostrophe by breathing a little heavier at the end of the word. Doesn't work. So what I usually do is say "(that's an s-apostrophe, not apostrophe-s, by the way)." And yes, I talk with parentheses.

3) Allow implied parts of a sentence to be omitted. For example, I want to be able to say "Have returned" instead of "I have returned."

4) Superlatives and comparatives for all parts of speech. For example, "I lovest you." (I love you more than anyone else in the world does) or "She's winnerring than him at life." (She is currently winning more at life than he does)

5) A subjunctive simple past. Seriously, I don't think English has one. There's the subjunctive present perfect (would have verbed), but it's annoying when I'm trying to come up with a short English translation for something in the subjunctive simple past.

As for spelling and pronunciation, I love it the way it is.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

word of advice.... you ARE USING IT! as far as pronounciation goes, that has been tackled about, say, twenty times at least in this thread.

There are several letters we use that are not in the Latin alphabet, and we most certainly do NOT follow their pronunciation rules.

 

[Kerozine]

There are several letters we use that are not in the Latin alphabet, and we most certainly do NOT follow their pronunciation rules.

I hope you're not talking about Roman numerals..

 

[scherbchen]

Here's what I would do:
3) Allow implied parts of a sentence to be omitted. For example, I want to be able to say "Have returned" instead of "I have returned."

why not go all the way? latin seems to be your language of choice (or some of the romance languages, yadda yadda).

that one diphthongue really that taxing?

 

[Tomoyo]

why not go all the way? latin seems to be your language of choice (or some of the romance languages, yadda yadda).

that one diphthongue really that taxing?

Actually, I was thinking of some East Asian languages that don't inflect for person but do for tense and aspect, since in Latin, there's really no way to say "have returned (redii) without saying "I."

And in that case, the one diphthong isn't taxing, of course. Especially since you can shorten it to "I've returned." But what about something like "I don't wanna go to bed." That's two whole syllables we can save by saying "I don't want to bed." (Inspired by the German way -- Ich will nicht ins Bett)

 

[scherbchen]

ah, well but then (when we are talking aboot German!)you would have to deal with

auf das bett
unter das bett
unter dem bett
neben dem bett
über das bett
wegen des bettes! (do we even use that and is that how it is spelled? I confess I have no idea)
durch das bett

and all other kinds of shennanigans!

love the diphthong!

 

[theskald]

Here's what I would do:

1) Add a second person plural pronoun. Anything will do. Currently I've taken to using "y'all." The increased unambiguity way outweighs sounding like a southerner.

You got that backwards. Keep "you" as the plural and bring back "thou."

2) Make the plural possessive of most nouns sound different from the singular possessive. What I do right now is try to pronounce that silent apostrophe by breathing a little heavier at the end of the word. Doesn't work. So what I usually do is say "(that's an s-apostrophe, not apostrophe-s, by the way)." And yes, I talk with parentheses.

That seems unnecessary, it's not that hard to tell when a word is plural possessive just from the context, and if you want less ambiguity you can just do it the Latin way and say "[possessed noun] of [plural noun]."

3) Allow implied parts of a sentence to be omitted. For example, I want to be able to say "Have returned" instead of "I have returned."

We'd need more specific conjugations for your example to work, but I don't understand why "I" is such a bother. You could always say "I'm back," that's shorter.

4) Superlatives and comparatives for all parts of speech. For example, "I lovest you." (I love you more than anyone else in the world does) or "She's winnerring than him at life." (She is currently winning more at life than he does)

If we're gonna do that, I say we take "-issimo" from Italian, it sounds better.

5) A subjunctive simple past. Seriously, I don't think English has one. There's the subjunctive present perfect (would have verbed), but it's annoying when I'm trying to come up with a short English translation for something in the subjunctive simple past.

We have no subjunctive conjugation, just a mood, and that mood can be used with a simple past verb in the independent clause. "Would have [verbed]" is the past conditional. You can say "I wish you were here" and "I wished you were here." Unfortunately this is falling out of use, and that's very sad...

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

I hope you're not talking about Roman numerals..

No, I mean G, K, U, W, Y, Z.

 

[kulade]

All of those save W were in the Classical Latin alphabet; they were just latecomers.