If you could change a language ...

[Mango Elephant]

See the possessive apostrophe is useful. How would you know whether "greengrocers apostrophes" referred to a single greengrocer or multiple greengrocers?

Many languages have problems with ambiguity. What you could say is -

A couple of greengrocers apostrophes, or

This one greengrocers apostrophes

When speaking, we DO say that, because apostrophes don't translate into spoken words.

 

[Tycho Brahe]

Reintroduce "thou" as a second person singular pronoun.

In danish, I would introduce the word "please". We need it!

 

[warpus]

I use "an 'istoric" not "a historic". Really whether a leading "h" is pronounced varies quite a bit between words, locations, and people.

If you don't say the h, then "an 'istoric" is what you should be saying

However, I come across people saying "an historic" quite frequently and the h is not silent. It just sounds so.. INCREDIBLY wrong..

Seems to be a British thing - I've never come across it here in North America.

 

[Crezth]

Introduce a gender-neutral pronoun.

 

[Mango Elephant]

Speaking of using the wrong adjective, I've read books that've said "an hero". Screw that.

 

[Arwon]

Make everyone accept "youse" as a standard second person plural pronoun.

 

[say1988]

If you don't say the h, then "an 'istoric" is what you should be saying

However, I come across people saying "an historic" quite frequently and the h is not silent. It just sounds so.. INCREDIBLY wrong..

Seems to be a British thing - I've never come across it here in North America.

I thought the British were big on the silent "h" thing. At least bigger than North America, where my usage seems pretty uncommon in many words (of course you have words like "hour" where it is consistenly a silent "h").

Speaking of using the wrong adjective, I've read books that've said "an hero". Screw that.

For you it might be wrong, but for others it is right. In many cases

I will not pronounce the "h" in that phrasing but will pronounce it otherwise (i.e. "an 'ero" but "this hero").
Just a quirk I have, though I aknowledge I speak funny to begin with tending towards older regional pronunciations in many cases (for example I usually pronounce "Toronto" closer to "Turona").

I have seen plenty of foreigners who were confused with the structure (along with the pronounciation of "the") for words with a leading "h" because they want consistency.

 

[cardgame]

Speaking of using the wrong adjective, I've read books that've said "an hero". Screw that.

TIL books get inspiration from /b/

 

[Mango Elephant]

TIL books get inspiration from /b/

Oh, I remember reading it somewhere, I just assumed it was a book.

 

[Arakhor]

It sounds obvious, but as a native English speaker, my first reaction to Winner's post was, "but they're not insane". After all, we only have one form of 'you', virtually no gendered words or declensions (I hate Welsh for its front-end declensions) and written English doesn't sprain the eye like Gaelic.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I would make it go back to being a declined language, and make it be even more regular than Latin. I'd want each case ending to be unique, to reduce confusion.


I would include a sort of audible, declinable quotation marks, so you could quote words or phrases (especially foreign ones) exactly without changing their form but while still being clear as to how you mean to use them in a sentence.

I'd add a fourth person form of verbs and pronouns, to be used when the agent is unknown or irrelevant. I'd also add a fourth grammatical gender, for when it is unknown or irrelevant whether the referent is masculine, feminine, or neuter, or when there are multiple referents of differing gender.


I'd reform the alphabet to have a a one-symbol-per-sound correspondence.

 

[warpus]

I thought the British were big on the silent "h" thing. At least bigger than North America, where my usage seems pretty uncommon in many words (of course you have words like "hour" where it is consistenly a silent "h").

I think what's going on is there is a part of Britain where the h in historic is not pronounced.. and parts of Britain where it is. But everyone adopted the same spelling, for whatever reason.

Or maybe it was a lot more common hundreds of years ago, and it stuck? Who knows.. I could easily look this up, but quite frankly I don't really care to know anymore.

Who cares! It looks and sounds annoying. It's like an unbalanced set of brackets or someone scratching their nails on the chalkboard, at least in my mind.

Honestly, I'm not sure why it annoys me so much. Probably because I had to learn 2 languages early on in life, and the 2nd one of those was English. So by the point when I was learning English I had already experienced learning a new language (German), so I had a much better grasp of the idea of a language.. and so I think English was engrained faster & better in my mind than when I was learning German in terms of not only the vocabulary but also the structure of the language (syntax, grammar, etc.) and the way meaning is encoded.

Anyway, screw an history

 

[Arakhor]

"An history" definitely sounds wrong.

 

[mangxema]

(1) Abolish the insane system of tenses you have in English; (2) make the use of articles consistent; (3) do something to rationalize phrasal verbs and prepositions; (4) and when I am at it, make the spelling of English relate to its pronunciation.

#4 is my vote (although it is handy being able to shamelessly steal any word you see an have it fit in to your sentence). #3 I agree with as well. For the first two, I have no idea what you're talking about.

 

[civver_764]

Introduce a gender-neutral pronoun.

"They"?

 

[Mango Elephant]

"They"?

That's improper if there's only one person.

 

[Leoreth]

I'd like to see people's suggestions for an English spelling reform. Will we invent tons of new vowel symbols? Will ð and þ make their return?

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Personally I'm not a big fan of ð but I do like þ.

 

[Leoreth]

Well, if you want to reform things, you should do it right. And that means different symbols for the voiced and unvoiced dental fricatives. Do you know a better symbol than eth? The alternative would be going the Tolkien route and using the dh and th digraphs.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Oh, I'd use separate letters. I'm no fan of digraphs. I just don't find the look of Ð/ð very aesthetically pleasing. There is also the risk that people would forget to cross their Eths, making them too easy to confuse for Ds. A letter that can be written in a single pen stroke is preferable.

I'd probably go with Δ/δ, as Delta typically makes the same sound as Eth in Modern Greek.