Should some spellings be removed?

[Twilight_guy]

I'm for cleaning up the confusing mess that is the English language but I doubt if it will happen. People like there complicated convoluted mess as a standard. Personally I'm for a more refined elegant type of language but I'm a computer Scientist so that's part of the job.

 

[ntw3001]

They say English is one of the hardest languages to learn, would making it more simple really be that much of a deal?

I used to hear this in schoool, from other English people. I later found out that asking someone who has actually had to learn English as a second language gets you the opposite answer. In my own experience, it's unanimously agreed upon that English is just about the easiest language; of course the prevalence of English in pop culture has a big effect, but the grammar is also a hell of a lot simpler than, say, German.

Oh, and I'm not sure that homogenising spelling would help make the language easier to learn. When one is unfamiliar with a language, an abundance of homonyms doesn't make it easier to differentiate words. A sentence like 'there ball was there' requires the reader to have a sufficient grasp of English grammar to be able to suss out the meaning from context. The sum achievement of this change, from the perspective of a learner, would be to reduce the number of words necessary to learn by two. Given that a non-native speaker learns the definition and spelling of a word at the same time, this difference almost certainly makes these words easier to learn.

 

[omega 616]

So how about it, should there, where and which all be combined into just these (or which ever, I am not fussy)? I know this wont change anything in the real world, I am just asking for your opinions.

I don't mind the language evolving naturally to some degree, but I'm against modifying language intentionally because its not rational. Language is more than just a practical tool, its also part of our history and cultural heritage. Shakespeare is already almost incomprehensible to most kids these days, how much more great literature will be lost to future generations if we start meddling with English with no good reason other than to make it slightly easier to learn?

I don't mean the leader of every English speaking country comes out and orders by law that all there's, were's and which's be changed to one unifying spelling. I mean would it be better if language moved that way by it's own free will?

Hell, I bet 99% of every post on this site is in some way grammatically wrong. Misplaced full stops, things not be capitalized, sentences ending wrongly, people saying effect instead affect.

Watching this video makes me feel like I can't even speak correctly ...

 

[Cheeseman Muncher]

Why would you change the spellings when they mean completely different things? English already has many words that have the same spelling and different meanings and you want to make it "better" by making more of these just so you look a bit less stupid?

No thanks.

 

[omega 616]

So I always get grief about my weres, which and theres and not using the right one.

The way I see it is

Okay.. stop right there. This is where you run into problems -- in thinking that the way you see has any validity beyond your own self-obsession.

Hint: It doesn't.
The world is much larger than you, filled with billions of people who are not you, and who have an expectation of written communication being done in a certain manner. When it is not done in that matter, it takes these people extra time and effort to figure out what the hell it is you're trying to say.

So before you start thinking you can equate yourself with persons like Stephen Fry, who is a master of the language in much the way Oscar Wilde was, it would behoove you to master the damned language yourself and show your audience some respect.

Once you've done that and earned yourself respect on your ability to use the language, then and only then, should you consider abusing it. Doing otherwise suggests that you have either no respect for your reader, or are simply lacking the intelligence to be able to properly formulate a thought.

See, this is a forum. In forums we put our idea's across and since I didn't want to put a post about grammar in with "how do you choose your badges", I thought I would start my own thread and get some thoughts on my own thoughts ... is that okay with you? I think it would be a nice subject to talk about and as far as I know hasn't been done before ... which in these times of the internet is somewhat of a rarity, I think you would agree.

I think I put in my OP that I don't want to change anything and I know 1 silly little thread wont so, where is the problem?

Now kindly pull the stick from your arse and be polite. I don't consider myself to be on Mr. Fry or Mr Wilde's level ... shit, they are smarter than most people on this planet and anybody who consider themselves smarter than them is either very stupid or very smart!

 

[omega 616]

Actually, I COULD talk like Shakespeare. Or Goethe. Or Dante, for that matter. I don't in everyday conversation so that idiots can understand me. And who are you to judge the size of my active vocabulary? Have you ever had a conversation with me? So how do you get to make assumptions, especially since you say incredibly silly things like "dictionaries filled with millions of words", when English, being the language with the largest number of lexemes (small wonder, it being a bastard offspring of three vastly different language groups), has pretty much exactly one million of them.

You are very butt hurt over something that isn't yours or you didn't help to create. What do you think our language will be like in a million years? Do you think there will be a 50 odd languages or one unifying one? Do you think that one unifying language will be complex and contrived or the most simple and basic?

I am not "butt hurt". I am righteously indignant. Learn the difference. As for your feeble question, "a million years"? Homo Sapiens has existed for less than 1/4 of that period, and written language is only about 6,000 years old? And at any rate, if your glorious future of unintelligent children conversing exclusively in retard-speak comes to pass, I am very happy that I shall be long dead by then.

They say English is one of the hardest languages to learn, would making it more simple really be that much of a deal?

I wouldn't know, it's my second language and it's manifestly obvious that my mastery of it is rather superior to yours. As for it being hard to learn, all you do is prove your ignorance. English is very hard to MASTER, because the very erosion of its grammar has made it very reliant on idiomatic expressions. However, out of the Indo-European languages I know about, it is by far the most easy to learn in a basic fashion. Compared to, say, German or French, there is very little conjunction and declension, making grammatical agreement ridiculously easy. Anybody with a basic vocab can construct a correct sentence in English. You try that in French or German. Since the difference between a possessive pronoun and a contraction of a personal pronound and a verb is lost on you, I shall laugh at the very thought.

I asked should all the "theres" should be spelled the same, you think that is the same as making two opposites mean the same? Now who is the dense one?

Yes, I am dense. Have you ever written or said "you/they are" in your life? Because that is what "they're" means. Explain to me how this sentence makes any more sense than 4-1=5:

"there not very bright, but, for Pete's sake, they are arrogant about it."

The prosecution rests, and hopes to God that you're not older than 16.

I bet you are a riot at parties! Please, flex your epeen more! It's amazing you are pulling up on things like exaggeration and sarcasm, as if I was been accurate or serious ... all the while bragging about how smart you are.

I am not looking to change language or anything, I am simply asking a question that might not have been asked much on the internet ... which to be honest, I think is a rare thing these days. Most of the time it's the same threads coming and going, I thought it would be a nice break.

I guess I have deeply upset your very strict upbringing, I feel sorry for any children you will have ... they will lead truly boring lives.

Sorry, let me just add. You can say I bow to your argument and I am stupid 'cos I never rebutted anything you said, go ahead ... I don't care. I made this thread to make people think a little, you took it WAY too seriously! Then show off just how smart you are and actually think I give a damn about how smart 1 person out of near enough 7 billion is ... you don't matter and all that you have learned means nothing to everybody but you. Being arrogant about will just make people who know you, hate you.

So, no need to quote me back.

 

[NathLines]

Because it would mean that the people too lazy to learn proper spelling would win. Might as well make "dieing" replace "dying".

Also, where and were are pronounced differently.

 

[Mikeyfell]

Because removing such creates ambiguities in the language?

I shot an elephant wearing my pajamas.
I don't know how it got into my pajamas, but I shot it anyway.

There's already plenty of ambiguity in language.

snip

Back on topic.

Taking away the "privilege" for ponces to automatically disregard anything you say just because you used 'ware' in stead of 'where' or the wrong their or to would be a good thing.

Not that I think eliminating the different spellings among homophones is the best way to go about this, mind.

I use memory tricks to remember most of the spellings like: you hear with your ear as apposed to here. Or my personal favorite: too many o's as apposed to 'to' or 'two'

For me the case is different on punctuation. I type the words that I would normally say if I was talking, so I don't always concentrate on what the proper punctuation is. I put periods at the end of thoughts and commas at breaks in my thoughts, whether (as apposed to weather) they're correct or not. I try to use apostrophes correctly (mostly) the worst thing for me is when I see 'dont' or 'cant' or other contractions without apostrophes, and before possessive s's (just ignore that last word) but those are the only punctuation marks I use. (asides from colons and parentheses)

P.S. awesome video

 

[EternalFacepalm]

Because removing such creates ambiguities in the language?

This.

If we just had 'were' as a cover all word for where, were, we're etc, it would be confusing as hell.

Would it? I doubt it. You can quite easily distinguish between them in spoken language from the context of which they are used so why not in text?

John and Jill where clothes. John and Jill where at home. Where are John and Jill. Where john and Jill.

Are you telling me these confuse you? That you can't tell what each where supposed to mean?

What about "There ball was there" is that also confusing even though the either there can only have one meaning based on it's context?

What I bolded confused me.
So I say don't change it.

This is probably because of a different dialect or something. Basing it all on one dialect is simply stupid, and that's something that *must* be done to do this. I, for one, don't pronounce "you're" and "your" the same. It would confuse me if they were, as well.

 

[SckizoBoy]

snip

What's to say that it isn't already happening (though perhaps not exactly as how you've detailed)? For the last two hundred years, American and British English have steadily diverged in sound, vocabulary, spelling and even definitions of certain words (even as recently as the turn of the 20th century, residents of New England spoke what Brits would identify as RP English).

Unlike some other languages (e.g. French with the Academie francaise) English has no central linguistic arbitator and the way it is spoken is influenced primarily by place of birth and the prejudices of those that teach it. There is literally nothing to stop us (the users of the English language) from changing it. The reason we don't is because it is difficult to introduce, propagate, enforce and sustain changes to a language within a lifetime except through sheer luck or force of media.

Really? Well hasn't text speak become it's own language and that is the height of simplified.

Ah, now you're talking not of the language itself, but what the language signifies. It's true that as far as communication is concerned, we (humans) have the complex form. And English is the most common of the spoken/written languages. However, the complexity is almost always required to convey not so much the definition of words, but the intent. The diversity of the vocabulary (which is yet another factor contributing to the complexity of English) is often used to demonstrate levels of the emotive, the intellectual and the objective. Should you wish to simplify English, start with removing homonyms... because English has a fuckton of them, more than any other language.

As for your perceived homophones, inflections and contractions that form said words effectively negate the necessity or possibility to introduce identical spelling for them. Besides, I'm sure that the 'Campaign for Proper English' or whatever it's called will get their backs up about it and it'll be decried as a low prestige dialect.

Chinese has three different pronunciations, we have three different spellings.

Three?! Is that it?! Good grief, what kind of Chinese do you speak?! =P

snip

...!! Marry me...!!

 

[omega 616]

See, this is a forum. In forums we put our idea's across and since I didn't want to put a post about grammar in with "how do you choose your badges", I thought I would start my own thread and get some thoughts on my own thoughts ... is that okay with you? I think it would be a nice subject to talk about and as far as I know hasn't been done before ... which in these times of the internet is somewhat of a rarity, I think you would agree.

I think I put in my OP that I don't want to change anything and I know 1 silly little thread wont so, where is the problem?

Now kindly pull the stick from your arse and be polite. I don't consider myself to be on Mr. Fry or Mr Wilde's level ... shit, they are smarter than most people on this planet and anybody who consider themselves smarter than them is either very stupid or very smart!

When you post stupid crap, don't be surprised if people call you stupid for doing so.

You say stupid crap, I say it's something to have a little think about ... called an opinion.

I don't see how that comment was helpful in putting your thoughts about the subject across, so why post it?

 

[Buzz Killington_v1legacy]

Are you still going on about this stupid "they're all pronounced the same" bullshit you were spouting back in April [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/jump/18.276340.10760968]?

As long as we're recycling old posts, I'm going to dredge up what I said to you back then--that "we're", "were", "where", and "war" (which you also brought up at the time) are pronounced completely differently:

we're /wɪər/
were /wər/
where /wɛər/ (optionally aspirated: /ʰwɛər/)
war /wɔr/

(IPA key here [http://www.dicts.info/ipa.php].)

 

[Woodsey]

I would love to hear you pronounce them, I don't mean record yourself for this exact purpose but just in general life. Record yourself saying these words in normal conversations and listen to them back, I can pretty much guarantee that unless you are rubbing elbows with the queen of England that you will pronounce every were, there and which all the same way.

Where rhymes with air, were rhymes with slur, and we're rhymes with peer. If you are saying them all in the same way, then there are a lot of people who are going to be trying not to piss themselves laughing every time you open your mouth.



OT: They're written differently so we can understand what you're saying.

Because removing such creates ambiguities in the language?

This.

If we just had 'were' as a cover all word for where, were, we're etc, it would be confusing as hell.

Would it? I doubt it. You can quite easily distinguish between them in spoken language from the context of which they are used so why not in text?

John and Jill where clothes. John and Jill where at home. Where are John and Jill. Where john and Jill.

Are you telling me these confuse you? That you can't tell what each where supposed to mean?

What about "There ball was there" is that also confusing even though the either there can only have one meaning based on it's context?

Not another one...

They're not pronounced the fucking same. You would at least have a case with where/wear, but not with words that are pronounced differently. Where and were? Where and we're? Seriously?

 

[Dimitriov]

As a side note : tools we use change the way we're acting, sorry, we act, we think, we approach our reality. And language is, wel, it's just another tool. So, following all language rules to the letter we're becoming slaves of yet another ofour own inventions. Sadly. :|






(That doesn't have anything to do with my skill in English. I am aware that my usage of this language is closer to abattoir than to speech

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Spoken language has always evolved over time, but for the most part, it's a streamlined process. Suddenly dropping the various spelling for different words is only going to confuse people.

I definitely agree with that and, more to the point, if language is changed it ought to be for the better, not the worse. I really hate it when those people too lazy to learn to write properly try to justify their position by saying that language evolves. Yes it does, but we generally have tried to improve language and make it clearer rather than turn it into a confusing mess.

Does the OP know that people used to just write whatever damn spelling they felt like? We stopped doing that because it hindered communication. Better language allows for better communication, and it even allows more complex thoughts.

Also, to address the other argument for simplifying the spelling of words, the various spellings of words tend to reflect their etymology, an understanding of which allows for more subtle and nuanced meanings. Removing those differences that allow us to understand the evolution of language would do a great disservice to both our ability to communicate and our basic understanding of language itself.

 

[someonehairy-ish]

Spelling something differently does make a difference though. For example, you kept saying 'were' and throughout it I was thinking to myself; but there are no other words like 'were' to get confused with. It was only after seeing another post I realised that people might get it mixed up with 'we're' and 'where.'
The reason being that, to me, those words are all utterly different. They mean different things and they are pronounced differently so why should they have the same spelling?

Spelling is mutable, for example judgement and judgment are both ok. But there is no reason to start saying 'all words which are spelt vaguely similar to each other should just be spelt the same.'

As for speech, there is no 'proper' way of saying anything. Glottalising is not lazy (it takes more physical effort to do it) and saying things like 'we was walking' is also fine.

The reason being that in speech you can easily clarify your meaning if things become confused, whilst in written communication you generally cannot.


Another thought: Good language is able to communicate precise thoughts in a short space. That is all. This is why waffley writing that uses lots of words but never gets to the point is just as annoying as really simple writing that communicates no depth at all.

 

[omega 616]

I would love to hear you pronounce them, I don't mean record yourself for this exact purpose but just in general life. Record yourself saying these words in normal conversations and listen to them back, I can pretty much guarantee that unless you are rubbing elbows with the queen of England that you will pronounce every were, there and which all the same way.

Where rhymes with air, were rhymes with slur, and we're rhymes with peer. If you are saying them all in the same way, then there are a lot of people who are going to be trying not to piss themselves laughing every time you open your mouth.

OT: They're written differently so we can understand what you're saying.

Nope, I have moved around and no matter where I hear it, it always sounds the same. Unless I hear some American actor trying to do a British accent then I always hear "were" said the same, as you put it the one that rhymes with peer.

Although to me air and slur rhyme...

 

[Jodah]

Sure lets make it easier rather than educating people. That's the problem with everything these days, rather than trying to fucking educate themselves people demand things are made easier. If people want to look like a moron on the internet let them, I just can't wait for them to try that shit on a job application or university report.

 

[ultimateownage]

Chinese has three different pronunciations, we have three different spellings.

Three?! Is that it?! Good grief, what kind of Chinese do you speak?! =P

Okay, 4 tones and neutral. It's been years since I learnt Chinese, I can't remember any of it. Whoops.
That just emphasises my point, though.

 

[Woodsey]

I would love to hear you pronounce them, I don't mean record yourself for this exact purpose but just in general life. Record yourself saying these words in normal conversations and listen to them back, I can pretty much guarantee that unless you are rubbing elbows with the queen of England that you will pronounce every were, there and which all the same way.

Where rhymes with air, were rhymes with slur, and we're rhymes with peer. If you are saying them all in the same way, then there are a lot of people who are going to be trying not to piss themselves laughing every time you open your mouth.

OT: They're written differently so we can understand what you're saying.

Nope, I have moved around and no matter where I hear it, it always sounds the same. Unless I hear some American actor trying to do a British accent then I always hear "were" said the same, as you put it the one that rhymes with peer.

Although to me air and slur rhyme...

Well then I recommend a speech coach.

 

[Odbarc]

I heard/read somewhere that the amount of words people know today is like half or a quarter of what people USED to know.

Could you imagine knowing 4X as many English words as you do now? I love my vernacular.