How would you improve the English language?

I would forbid people from England, Australia and Massachussettessttessettteeestsests from speaking it.

Gender neutral pronouns and separate inclusive/exclusive first person plurals are good ideas.

We have the regionalisms “youse”, “y’all”, and “y’ins” for the second person plural - everybody everywhere gets to decide which one they want to use.

Phonetic spelling might be a mess, but accents over vowels could address the inconsistencies without specifying exact IPA equivalents - comb, bomb, and tomb might become cóm, bôm, and töm.

All silent and double letters are out.

The letter C can have the sound of SH, and for heaven’s sake people if you must pronounce CH with a T sound then spell it with a T.

English uses the letter S for pluralization and posession - one of them has got to get assigned a different letter.

Make all verbs and noun pluralizations regular - no longer will we have spoke of oxen, but speaked of oxes.

Johnny LA, is this the joke you were referring to?

Why? Does our perfect command of the English language cause you to feel inferior? :slight_smile:

But that’s the point - feasibility isn’t a criterion. If it were, I would never have posted.

Or in my new dialect: “But it is point - feasibility is not criterion. If it was, I was past if not post.” :wink:

I agree with this one, especially as in this day and age we are often forced to say “double-u, double-u, double-u” to denote the beginning of a web address (even though I rarely say this part of the address among even semi-computer literate folks, as this part is generally understood).

As for the alphabet song, this is easy to overcome Just stretch out the “woo” to span the notes covered by “double-u.”

My big change would be to eliminate the use of the letters OUGH and substitute them by their phonetic equivalents. There are too many sounds that these four letters represent and it must be hell for foreign people learning English to keep these words straight. Here are some examples:

rough -> ruff
through -> thru
though -> tho
thought -.> thot
cough -> coff
bough -> bow (the current word “bow” would become “boaw”).

To agree with Middlecase and Little Nemo , we need an Us but not you pronoun. I’ve thought about this for years.

I see June gave alot of thought to the OP’s premise - but where are the ‘th’ sounds made in the words ‘the’ and ‘thick’ pronounced differently?

It’s easier to refer to it as “world wide web”. Why, would you pronounce it “woo-woo-woo”? :dubious:

thawt
cawff

We’ve been over the o/aw thing already. :wink:

“Valley girl” dialects would be removed. One of my pet peeves is my little sister speaking as though she was raised on the beaches of California. The word “like” for comparisons like the one just made. It is not for, like, inserting into a, like, sentence so that, like, your brain can, like, catch up with your tongue. (I apalogize that I have no idea how to punctuate that last sentence).

The use of a semi-colon would not be used in sentences. This is just for me as I have never been taught how and when to use it.

How about a single term to declare relation. I can’t be bothered to follow twists and turns of relations. I don’t care if my twice removed great-aunt’s sister’s cousin’s dog’s sire’s master’s niece’s grand-daughter was in my class at school.
I too, would be up for a gender neutral pronoun.

I would have said that was a Victor Borge routine called Phonetic Punctuation. Maybe they both did versions of same basic gag, but I don’t know who did it first.

And “lover” doesn’t work because it implies (to a lot of people) an extramarital relationship.

I think we need a few different words:

First, we need a word for “being in a relationship with someone.” “Dating” or “seeing” doesn’t really work except maybe for a casual relationship. And “going out with” is confusing, because you can go out somewhere with someone you’re not going out with.

One word for a person who you’re seeing casually, but one or both of you is either seeing other people or is willing to entertain the idea. Boyfriend/girlfriend might fit here.

One word for an exclusive long-term dating relationship where you aren’t engaged and don’t live together, but you don’t consider yourselves available for dating other people.

One word for a relationship where you live together, with the mortgage, etc.

Another word it would be nice to have is a word to describe the relationship status of someone who isn’t married or engaged, but who has an exclusive partner and is not available for another relationship. “Taken” is the word I used to use, but I wish there were a better one.

That’s the one! :slight_smile: