If you could change a language ...

[Farm Boy]

I think national US broadcast news already tends to pick "Midwestern" pronunciation most of the time. I doubt it's due to any specific merit, other than it tends to make the least amount of people confused.

 

[TheLastOne36]

In other words, you support degradation, not evolution. Well, Jesus doesn't want that to happen, thankfully. The people of Belarus', in their wisdom, have chose the path of progress. With the help of their Russian brethren, protecting them from the corrupting influence of West.

Anyway, fun fact. Both Polish and Belarussian has in the past been written in the Arabic writing script!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belarusian_Arabic_alphabet

 

[Leoreth]

I'm realizing more and more that the kyrillic script is to Russians what the imperial system is to Americans.

 

[Farm Boy]

I'm realizing more and more that the kyrillic script is to Russians what the imperial system is to Americans.

Ouch. The imperial system is widely recognized by everyone at least I know as inferior in about every way, but we really just don't want to be assed with changing it.

 

[Leoreth]

That's what I meant to imply about the kyrillic script, not very seriously of course

 

[Ice_Tyrant]

I would change the world "Sheeple" I would make it so that saying that word is as painful as possible. I'm not sure how that would work though.

 

[Borachio]

It is extremely painful already. But to the listener, not necessarily the speaker.

 

[Farm Boy]

Anytime somebody backhandedly refers to me as a sheeple I have to suppress the very real desire to show them how sheep behave by baaah-ing and headbutting them in the jimmies.

 

[Borachio]

Somebody does that to me, I start erecting scaffolding and climbing up them. (Steeples?)

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

Anytime somebody backhandedly refers to me as a sheeple I have to suppress the very real desire to show them how sheep behave by baaah-ing and headbutting them in the jimmies.

I'm quite sure the term "sheeple" refers to ovine flocking and follow-the-leader behaviour, not necessarily whether they are aggressive or not.

 

[Angst]

Anyway, fun fact. Both Polish and Belarussian has in the past been written in the Arabic writing script!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belarusian_Arabic_alphabet

Ofc Polish things have been written in Arabic. North Africa is an Arabic region.

 

[Farm Boy]

I'm quite sure the term "sheeple" refers to ovine flocking and follow-the-leader behaviour, not necessarily whether they are aggressive or not.

Well, you have to take an animal with all its constituent parts. Don't want to be headbutted in the balls? Don't present them to a sheep.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

But the subject of the discussion was a word that doesn't necessarily capture all the characteristics of the subject. When I call someone a "star", I don't expect them to explode in a supernova or collapse into a black hole at some point in the future. Though that would be pretty interesting if it did happen.

 

[say1988]

Well, you have to take an animal with all its constituent parts. Don't want to be headbutted in the balls? Don't present them to a sheep.

I admit I have rarely dealt with rams (because you generally don't want many intact males around), but I have never had a sheep try to headbut me. Pretty much the only time they would contact me is if they hit me while trying to run past.
No goats, those things can be evil.

 

[Farm Boy]

But the subject of the discussion was a word that doesn't necessarily capture all the characteristics of the subject. When I call someone a "star", I don't expect them to explode in a supernova or collapse into a black hole at some point in the future. Though that would be pretty interesting if it did happen.

True enough, but if somebody is asinine to call a person a sheeple to their face, I think they've earned a nutclutching timeout.

 

[warpus]

See above. English speakers need to get over their exceptionalism complex. It's a language like any other, and it should strive to achieve at least some degree of standardization, especially if it's supposed to serve as the global language of choice for the foreseeable future. Having a spelling-pronunciation disconnect of this magnitude is a recipe for future misunderstanding. That's just my humble opinion as a non-native speaker.

In my opinion (as someone who learned English as a 3rd language), one of the advantages of the English language is that it's so versatile..

Advantages in what way? Since it's so all over the place and non-standardized in terms of pronunciation vs spelling, it's easier to adapt to Jamaica, India, south-eastern Asia, or wherever else.

It's sort of a language you can mold into many things. That leads to the problems you describe, but perhaps having 1 language with 1 set of rules for the globe wouldn't work that well... At least not yet.

It's an annoying language to learn because it's so irregular, but I think as a result of that you get both benefits as well as disadvantages.

 

[Veles]

By the way, one more thing that needs to be changed is the transcription of Russian Cyrillic into Latin script, which should be entirely phonetic, to prevent atrocities like "Khrushchev" or "Yushchenko". Also Latin "k" looks less aesthetically pleasing than Cyrillic "к", so it should be rendered as "c", like in Irish or Romanian. Should be Hrooshof, Iushenco, Moscva, Crasnoiarsc, Cremlin etc.

That's what I meant to imply about the kyrillic script, not very seriously of course

u wot m8

The thing is Cirilic is super super effective for rendering Slavic phonetics and retaining etymology (well not so much for Belarusians, but they do it on purpose), which is a fun addition. It is strictly one distinctive sound per letter, it contains no excessive diactric signs (only ё and &#1081 and it looks interesting.

You try to adapt Latin to Slavic phonetics, you get things like Czech, Szczeczyn, vrt and so on. You get a ton of different adopted alphabets with varying degree of ridiculousness, which are still unreadable to unprepared speaker of other Latin script based language. "C" can be read in dozen of ways, as well as "Y". So if it doesn't help foreigners to read it outright, then what's the point? There are some sounds foreigners would have hard times to pronounce anyway. Most of the English speakers for example can't produce palatalized consonants. Also the sound that is rendered as "ы" in Cirilic and "y" in Polish. And also the difference between ш and щ (sz and szcz in Polish).

And most importantly - Cirilic was made by God personally, and He inspired the Holy Fathers of Preslav school in Bulgaria, who put this divine enlightenment in written form. They all were later beatified and thus approved by St. Peter. As opposed to Latin which was combined by the pagan Quirites. God's opinion on Latin script (and I quote): "Meh".

But seriously, Latin script is great. For Latin language. Which I fully endorse as the world-wide lingua franca. But keep your dirty hands away from the divine gift of Cirilic alphabet, which is a all progressive and cool-looking.

 

[metatron]

I think English still has more vowel sounds than German,

Vowels of your native language: Usually more numerous than you'd have thought.

For German: 'sch' for a very common sound looks a bit excessive. Perhaps since 'x' isn't properly used, it could be a substitue, like in Mesoamerican transcription - Tlaxcala, Mexica, Xochicalco.

Let me testdrive that: Xulxluss.

Brilliant! Yes, we should totally do that.

(The other stuff with the s and z and c and whatnot doesn't really work.)

 

[Leoreth]

Vowels of your native language: Usually more numerous than you'd have thought.

You're right of course. But at least German manages a consistent injective sound -> symbol mapping with only one diacritic symbol (or three extra letters, depending on how you look at it), for the Standard German accent at least. No ambiguous ea or ou digraphs or something like that.

And most importantly - Cirilic was made by God personally, and He inspired the Holy Fathers of Preslav school in Bulgaria, who put this divine enlightenment in written form. They all were later beatified and thus approved by St. Peter. As opposed to Latin which was combined by the pagan Quirites. God's opinion on Latin script (and I quote): "Meh".

Did you conference with LightSpectra if the magisterium received any Holy Orders on that or something?

 

[TheLastOne36]

Ofc Polish things have been written in Arabic. North Africa is an Arabic region.

Damn, now we got empirical evidence to support that claim.