If you could change a language ...

[Rashiminos]

Add tongue-clicking.

 

[Borachio]

And teeth sucking. Also whistling. And hiccoughing.

I would add to the criminal offences the use of other language words when there is allready one in the language is being used.

Ah, a purist. I sympathize.

 

[Veles]

For English - a more phonetic grammar. Local languages can afford the romanticism of having and etymology-based grammar. A world-wide lungua franca - not so much. For the sake of the simplicity for ~7 billion people it should be reformed. One distinctive character per one sound, as mentioned above.

Also, Latin should be reformed, standartized and made a mandatory second language in all the schools in the world. Eventually, it must replace English as a language of world communication. Then English can has its weird grammer back.

As for Russian - some things of 1918 spelling reform should be reversed, particularily the &#1089;/&#1079; rule, that breeds to many annoying '&#1089;&#1089;' combinations. The 'umlaut' in &#1105; should be made mandatory, not optional. Also a dot should be required above the stressed syllable's vowel, it will ease up reading a good deal more. Purge the language of all the fakking loanwords, that got into it during the last millenia. But the first thing to do is to rid the divine Russian language of all the recent foreign impurites, like the aforementioned 'menedjer', 'marketing', 'supervaizer' and other abominations >.<

For other Slavic languages - ban the heretical and wrong Latin script, reinstate the God-given superior Cyrilic.

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.
Deutxland doesn't look bad at all. And what's with "s" for "z" and "z" for "ts"? How is "c" not used for "ts"? So z can be z and s - s. Makes miles more sense. Also, is using capitals in every noun really necessary?

For French... *sigh* So much could be done. "Reno", "Pego", "o" for "eau" (water), a feckton more of upronounced vowels.

For Irish... Nevermind. It's almost hopeless. The Irish monks were apparently very very high on mushrooms, when they tried to adopt the Latin script for Gaeilge (that reads "goo-EL-geh" btw). The result is grammar that looks cool and ancient. And insane. No wonder the people of Eire aren't too keen on learning it. Meh, leave it as it is, begorrah.

That article thing Winner mentiones is actually a big deal. Since the concept of having to add an additional word in front of every noun to signify whether you mean a particular object or an object in general is (thankfully) alien to our languages, it's not at all easy and intuitive to understand.

 

[Borachio]

Trying to change a language is like wrestling with a snake on acid.

Hopelessly impractical and you're going to get bitten.

 

[Veles]

A man can dream...

 

[Valka D'Ur]

It's not really a matter of learning metric. I suppose it might be a bit of a chore to re-visualize distances/heights/weights when talking about people or drive times. It's more an issue of needing to take things apart and do small repair on household/agricultural stuff without having to own two entirely different toolsets.

"Is this a 9mm or a 3/8?" "How many nuts have I rounded off today?" "Screw it, the only tool I have that has access to that point that fits is a vice grip." That sort of thing. It would be nice if all your metric using countries would take it easier on me and just stahp it. I'll give your our apostrophes in trade.

It's just a fact of life. I own metric and imperial rulers and tape measures, metric and imperial kitchen measuring stuff (spoons, cups, etc.), I know how to mentally translate miles and kilometers back and forth (essential when navigating for my imperial-speaking father when the only available roadmap is in metric)... and so on.


Maybe we should just learn Lolspeak. After all, the Old/New Testaments have been translated into that language...

 

[Borachio]

And I thought you were joking.

Boreded Ceiling Cat makinkgz Urf n stuffs

1 Oh hai. In teh beginnin Ceiling Cat maded teh skiez An da Urfs, but he did not eated dem.

2 Da Urfs no had shapez An haded dark face, An Ceiling Cat rode invisible bike over teh waterz.

3 At start, no has lyte. An Ceiling Cat sayz, i can haz lite? An lite wuz.

4 An Ceiling Cat sawed teh lite, to seez stuffs, An splitted teh lite from dark but taht wuz ok cuz kittehs can see in teh dark An not tripz over nethin.

5 An Ceiling Cat sayed light Day An dark no Day. It were FURST!!!1

Brilliant!

 

[King Kalmah]

You should see how many silly words now exist in Polish that have been borged from English.

Our word for manager used to be this - "kierownik"

Now? The word has turned into "mened&#380;er" - something that sounds exactly like the English "manager"

Mental retardation all around..

Better then spanish.The spanish word for gay is gay....and so on and so on...

 

[warpus]

That's pretty gay

 

[TheLastOne36]

For other Slavic languages - ban the heretical and wrong Latin script, reinstate the God-given superior Cyrilic.

I wish Belarussians adopted the Latinka alphabet like in the old days.

 

[_random_]

Make all English everywhere conform to the standards of the Midwestern United States. Screw your silly accent and idiotic spelling variations.

 

[Leoreth]

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.

That's the worst suggestion I've ever heard. I could get behind an English-style sh though.

And what's with "s" for "z" and "z" for "ts"? How is "c" not used for "ts"? So z can be z and s - s. Makes miles more sense.

Interestingly, c was even widely used for the ts sound for Latin loanwords (i.e. all Latin loanwords with a c before e or i were pronounced as ts), until spelling reforms at the beginning of the 20th century (I think?) changed that. And you're right, it makes more sense.

Also, is using capitals in every noun really necessary?

Yep, it's cooler. [Insert God-given justifications here] It also makes large swathes of text look more structured.

 

[Angst]

Hey. It's all rational and sorted out. It's just that it's... complicated.

In other ways it's all extremely simple.

Nonono it's not rational and sorted out. There's a good swath of things you have to teach yourself by heart - ie grammar rules that don't count in all circumstances.

 

[Mango Elephant]

I remember an example from Sophie's Choice of English being weird. Sophie said something like, "making me to bloom like a rose," which of course isn't correct but it seems like it should be.

 

[Veles]

I wish Belarussians adopted the Latinka alphabet like in the old days.

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.

 

[cardgame]

Nonono it's not rational and sorted out. There's a good swath of things you have to teach yourself by heart - ie grammar rules that don't count in all circumstances.

There are no rules, only mostly arbitrary right and wrong

 

[sophie]

So what? Accents/dialects exist in every language. We're talking about creating a standard spelling that would be more in line with how the language is supposed to be pronounced.

That's the problem. There's no one way English is pronounced. Do you go with the rhotic r as it is in American English? Or do you clip it off as it is in British English? How do you handle the &#603;-&#618; (pen-pin) dichotomy, which exists in some variations of English, but doesn't in others, such as Californian English. What do you do about the &#593;-&#596; dichotomy, which again exists in some forms of English such as many of the British dialects, but is wholly imperceptible to the average Californian English speaker? How would you spell peninsula?

p&#603;n&#618;nsjul&#601;, p&#603;n&#618;ns&#601;l&#601;, or p&#603;n&#618;n&#643;&#601;l&#601;.

Or what about a word like button?

Would you write it with a flap, as you would if you were going by how my girlfriend tends to handle "tt" words in English

b&#601;&#638;&#603;n

Or would you write it with a glottal stop as you would if you were going by traditional Californian English

b&#601;&#660;n

Or would you write it as a plain old t, as you would if you were going by a "standard" (whatever that means) British English?

but&#596;n

And again, that's looking specifically at how the "tt" is pronounced in that word. That's leaving aside the fact that in the first two examples the "u" is pronounced as a schwa and in British English it is pronounced as a proper u, or that in my gf's version of English the "o" is pronounced as an open mid-front unrounded, in my version the "o" is clipped as the glottal stop moves into the alveolar nasal, and in British English it is pronounced as an open mid-back rounded vowel.

The problem isn't just a matter of vowels, it's a matter of it being a language that developed more or less independently in 5 different continents over a period of several hundred years, and as such is pronounced wholly differently depending on where you are. Merely picking one dialect as "proper" and sticking to that one would be disputed by every other dialect and thereby be completely meaningless as a "universal reform", and just going based on how people say it (something akin to IPA) would be overly complex and entirely too difficult to be passable as a plebeian orthography.

 

[Leoreth]

But it's surely better to have a spelling consistent with one dialect, no matter how constructed and arbitrary it may be (Oxford English), than with none?

 

[Winner]

That's the problem. There's no one way English is pronounced. Do you go with the rhotic r as it is in American English? Or do you clip it off as it is in British English? How do you handle the &#603;-&#618; (pen-pin) dichotomy, which exists in some variations of English, but doesn't in others, such as Californian English. What do you do about the &#593;-&#596; dichotomy, which again exists in some forms of English such as many of the British dialects, but is wholly imperceptible to the average Californian English speaker? How would you spell peninsula?

Clearly you have to pick one variant and stick with it. I assume it would be the lowest common denominator, so SAE for North America and R.P. for Britain. Devising a new orthography for each dialectal group would be impractical.

In my language, we have "spisovná &#269;eština" as the standard. You can of course pronounce it weirdly if you insist on sticking with your local accent, but everybody is capable of reading it with the right pronunciation, it's almost fully phonetic, and it serves as an anchor for the language as a whole (so I can tell the Bohemians to frak off when they mangle it). Now, Czech is of course a very small language with some 10-11 million speakers. It naturally evolves towards greater homogeneousness. English is now the global lingua franca, and different accents/dialects are already undermining this role. It seems to me that having a pronunciation standard 'embedded' in the orthography would help protect it from diverging too much.

But then again, I don't care that much, it's not my native language.

p&#603;n&#618;nsjul&#601;, p&#603;n&#618;ns&#601;l&#601;, or p&#603;n&#618;n&#643;&#601;l&#601;.

p&#601;n&#618;nsjul&#601;

Or what about a word like button?

Would you write it with a flap, as you would if you were going by how my girlfriend tends to handle "tt" words in English

b&#601;&#638;&#603;n

Or would you write it with a glottal stop as you would if you were going by traditional Californian English

b&#601;&#660;n

Or would you write it as a plain old t, as you would if you were going by a "standard" (whatever that means) British English?

but&#596;n

b&#652;tn

And again, that's looking specifically at how the "tt" is pronounced in that word. That's leaving aside the fact that in the first two examples the "u" is pronounced as a schwa and in British English it is pronounced as a proper u, or that in my gf's version of English the "o" is pronounced as an open mid-front unrounded, in my version the "o" is clipped as the glottal stop moves into the alveolar nasal, and in British English it is pronounced as an open mid-back rounded vowel.

There are many ways of pronouncing English, we all get it. Not that I don't find what you're saying informative and pretty interesting, but it's kind of besides the point.

The problem isn't just a matter of vowels, it's a matter of it being a language that developed more or less independently in 5 different continents over a period of several hundred years, and as such is pronounced wholly differently depending on where you are. Merely picking one dialect as "proper" and sticking to that one would be disputed by every other dialect and thereby be completely meaningless as a "universal reform", and just going based on how people say it (something akin to IPA) would be overly complex and entirely too difficult to be passable as a plebeian orthography.

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.

 

[Borachio]

so SAE for North America and R.P. for Britain.

You are joking, of course.

I suppose there's some point to Standard American (though I wouldn't know). But RP really? Do me a favour. It's certainly not the lowest common denominator by any means. And it's not even a stable accent over time.