If you had the opportunity to change the English language in some way (and all the English speakers of the world had agreed to accept your changes), what changes would you make? You can choose whatever rationale you want for these changes – to make the language easier to learn, to remove ambiguity, to make it possible to express certain kinds of ideas more clearly, etc?
I’d probably try to eliminate certain ambiguities that just get on my nerves. For instance:
(1) I’d add a gender-neutral pronoun. Some people find it perfectly acceptable to use masculine pronouns exclusively in cases where the gender is unknown or unspecified, and others find this objectionable. But regardless of what side you wall on in that debate, it’s pretty clear that there are times where the lack of a gender neutral pronoun raises questions of whether a person is trying to specify a gender or not. For instance: “I can’t tell you who the witness is, but let me give you this hint: he’s someone very famous.” Is part of the hint that the person is a he, or not? As the language stands today, it’s unclear.
(2) I’d add more words for the different kinds of in-laws. Is my sister-in-law my wife’s sister? Or my brother’s wife? Or my wife’s brother’s wife? Who knows? (According to dictionary.com, it can mean all three.)
(3) I’d add some grouping symbols, like the way parentheses function in math. In English, of course, parentheses just indicate an aside – they aren’t used to denote “order of operations.” I’m looking for a way to distinguish sentences like the following (found on this page):
*The {old men} and women left the room.
The old {men and women} left the room.
Bill sold the invisible {man's hat}.
Bill sold the {invisible man}'s hat.
They {don't smoke} or drink.
They don't {smoke or drink.}
I said {I would see you on Tuesday}.
{I said I would see you} on Tuesday.
Students {hate annoying} professors.
Students hate {annoying professors}.
Sue adores men who love {women who don't smoke}.
Sue adores {men who love women} who don't smoke.
They hit {the man with a cane}.
They {hit the man} with a cane.*
I like the gender-neutral pronoun idea. The tension that builds up when one is forced to choose between typing/saying “he or she” or “her or him” or having some jack-booted grammar enforcers kick one’s shins for using “they” in a singular construction is enough to put one off one’s feed for a week.
Similarly, the distinction between the second person singular and plural should be easily discerned, whether by “y’all,” “youse,” or “y’in.”
I’d like to see an improved orthography with the (re-)introduction of edh (uppercase Ð and lowercase ð) for the phoneme at the beginning of “this” and of thorn (uppercase Þ and lowercase þ) for the phoneme at the beginning of “thin.”
While there’s much to be desired in English orthography, I feel that adding the edh and thorn symbols is probably of least concern (well, speaking as a native speaker at least). Regularizing vowel sounds and elimimanting silents letters would be so much more useful - to both native and non-native speakers. The Great Vowel Shift just scewed shit up.
Gender neutral term for Aunt or Uncle and Niece or Nephew
Gender selective term for male-cousin or female-cousin
“opt”, being the coolest sounding word in the English language must be used at least 3 times a day. “Select” and “choose” and other synonyms are acceptable as long as the manditory 3 "opt"s a day are used.
The word “of” will be replaced by “o’”. As in, a gaggle o’ geese, a bunch o’ bananas.
Another vote for the third-person gender-unspecified pronoun. It would certainly save embarassment around here. I use the “ey, eir, em, emself” series.
I like more words for the inlaws and the new grouping symbols as well. While we’re at it, let’s distinguish between aunts and uncles and cousins on the mother’s side, and those on the father’s side. And how about something less klunky that that “second cousin twice removed” stuff? I can never keep that straight.
And how about precise terms for the difference between birth parent and nurturing parent. Biodad and biomom seem to do for the first, but what about a specific single word for the second?
I was reading an article today about an experiment in gender separation at a Toronto-area school, and one of the first things I thought was, “Where are they going to put the transgendered kids”? Those gender-nonspecific pronouns come in handy here too.
-add the sounds /a/, /y/, /x/, /G/, /4/, /?/, /c/ /J/ and /L/
-and /p_>/, just to have a completely random ejective. Ejectives are nifty.
-“Nifty” replaces “cool”, “rad”, “sweet”, etc.
-get rid of the sounds [{~] and /U/
-gender neutral third person singular pronoun /Guntr=SItI/, “Gmñttlx4sss”
-dual-number distinction in pronouns (say, “voakkll”, “shoob45a” and “lck123l”-/Lup@/, for “I” “you” and “Gmñttlx4sss”
-the spelling system would be made completely and utterly illogical, in such a way as to make French orthography look as regular as Spanish.
-uppercase and lowercase letters would have completely different meanings; “Loòbna” would sound completely different from “loobNa”
-smilies would become official words appearing in Websters, and using “;)” on a formal essay would be completely acceptable
-áçcênts wõüld bè randömlÿ plàced òvér vowéls. They would make no difference in meaning, and
-random words would be replaced with borrowings from Basque, Swahili, and !Xhosa
-“fnoodle” would mean “to strike rapidly”, coliq. “to masturbate”
Same dat. In NZ it’s you’s {hey, you’s guys}, which is scorned as uneducated but makes complete sense. English really needs more pronouns: I’d add another to distinguish “we” {you and I are going out, but they’re not coming} from “we” {we’re all going out}.
change the Roman Alphabet so that each letter would only correspond to a single english phoneme, and no two letters could represent the same phoneme. Also, eliminate case.
(substitute symbols for your own made-up letters):
A - as in “apple”
= - “a” as in “same”
% - “u” in “up”
B - same
D - same
E - as in “egg”
~ - “ee” in “speed”
F - as in “far”
G - as in “gum”
“ng” in “ring”
H - same
I - as in “in”
J - “s” in “measure”
K - same
L - same
M - same
N - same
O - as in “top”
@ - “oa” in “boat”
P - same
R - same
S - same
$ - “sh” in “shame”
T - same
- “th” as in “the”
: - “th” as in “thick”
U - as in “tube”
V - same
Z - same
Spell all words phonetically. The following sentence: “I want to go to the store and buy some eggs and a measuring cup so I can make fresh pancakes” would be spelled: “O~ UONT TU GO TU #% ST@R AND BO~ SUM EGZ AND E MEJ%RI+ KUP S@ O~ KAN MEK FRE$ PANKEKS.”
This would eliminate spelling ambiguity and increase the efficiency of the written language.
Add a gender neutral pronoun (duh!).
Eliminate all irregular verbs. No more “drink/drank/drunk” nonsense. Example: “He drinked a beer last night, after he eated some chicken”.
Eliminate all split verbs, participles, etc. Instead, create new postfixes for each of the different verb tenses and moods.
Some possible examples:
“She has called me” = “She callef me”
"She had called me = “She callen me”
“She would have called me” = “She callek me.”
“She will have called me” - “She callev me”.
“She will call me” - “she callep me”
Eliminate all adverbs and allow adjectives to modify verbs as well as nouns. Example: “He eated fast”.
Eliminate articles. “Let’s buy a car at the store” would be: “Let’s buy one car at store.”
“Its” really should be spelled “it’s”. Find some other way of representing contractions without resorting to an apostrophe. How about a hyphen? “It-s a nice day, don-t you think?”
Simplify the negation of verbs to a single function word (“not” works fine). “He does not like chicken” would become: “He likes not chicken”.
#AT-Z OL O~ KAN :I+K %V NOU. TU BAD N@U%N KUNSOLTID M~ UEN #E DIZO~ND E+GLI$!
Don’t like the current spelling system in English? Hey, I’m not too crazy about it, either.
BUT - if you went to a phonetic spelling system you’d STILL have problems because how I pronounce words here in NW Indiana is markedly different from the way the Aussie Dopers pronounce things, or the British Dopers, or the Indian Dopers, or…
For that matter, many people in the greater Chicago area speak dialects different that the Midwest American standard dialect, and a number of people over the years have noted my pronunciation of certains words differs significantly from what is common in Chicago (I’m not a native to this area - sometimes it shows)
I read a joke a few years ago, where English spelling would be simplified/improved. By the end of the joke, everything was in faux-German. Anyone else see that, and have a link?
I believe we need the Endlish Language Police – actual humans, heavily armed, highly trained in assault and assassination tactics. They will not be in uniform, but in plain clothes. They should be authorized to use lethal force to stop assaults against the English language.
People would be a lot more careful what they say and write.
