Why are the Americans ruining our language?

Factual Questions
1

Whilst I think that this website is interesting, I object to Cecil’s final comments about the usage of ‘different to’ as opposed to ‘different from’ and the way that he admonishes English speakers in the United Kingdom.

The misleading assertion that ‘logic demands the former’ is unjustified within the context of language. Webster sought to make the English language logical (a concept that is inconceivable, except for Microsoft) and I am not aware of a worthy justification for his desecration of the process of the evolution of language. I have heard two excuses: 1) Webster, and the other philistines, did it to make writing English simpler, 2) He did it because he wanted to distance the Americans from the English by changing the spelling of certain words. Neither of these reasons justifies the desecration of the heritage bestowed on those of us lucky enough to speak such a beautiful language. The American ‘logicising’ of English is the linguistic equivalent of the Taliban’s destruction of Buddhist temples in Afghanistan.

English is a language, like many others, that has evolved over a great many hundreds of years. During this evolution it has developed countless idiosyncracies that define its beauty and diversity as a language. I am not suggesting that we develop an equivalent to the French Academy, which seeks to cling on to redundancies purely because they are French. The evolution of language must be allowed to occur but this should not be dictated by individuals.

Americans, under the banner of simplification, make words such as paedophile (from the Greek) into a combination of Latin and Greek that actually means ‘foot lover’ (pedophile). Is this because Americans are incapable of coping with two juxtaposed vowels because I fail to see how this arbitrary removal of letters could be regarded as ‘simplification’? In the United States, one talks of ‘aluminum’. Consider sodium, calcium, barium, lithium, potassium, magnesium, titanium, uranium, gallium, germanium, cadmium, rubidium etc.? Where is this supposed ‘logic’. Name one other element that ends in simply ‘um’. Surely Caesium should be renamed ‘Cesum’.

Grammar and spelling are derived from language, which is a function of human expression. It is as fatuous to try to simplify language as it is to try to simplify human expression.

I appeal for the return to writing and speaking an unhomogonised, unpasteurised and uncorrupted language in America.

2

And I appeal for more people reading the forum descriptions. Where is the General Question here?
[Barenaked Ladies]
If I were a moderator…
I’d close this!
[/BNL]

3

Looks and smells like a debate, Great or otherwise.

4

Nah, I catch a distinct whiff of BBQ sauce from the thread title.

5

How about Comments on Cecil’s Columns?

6

Hey! Anyone who starts out their post with “whilst” is a “weenie.”

Whatever thou gettest in this post, thou deserveth!

7

We never changed paedophile to pedophile.

We changed pædophile to pedophile because you kept charging a surtax on our ashes.

8

I wonder what the British word for “Troll” is?

9

Had I a guess, Rick, I might suggest “trolle.” Either that, or “troceille,” the cei being naturally silent. :smiley:

10

I appeal for the return to writing and speaking an unhomogonized, unpasteurized and uncorrupted Middle English in Britain. What’s happened to the language during the last 500 years has been astounding. I’m surprised the Germanic peoples weren’t on the case 400 years ago.

Better yet, I appeal for the return to writing and speaking an unhomogonized, unpasteurized and uncorrupted series of monosyllabic utterances, grunts, hand signals, whistles, and various pictographs for all of humanity. Why bother with structured language? We’ll never get it right!

By the way, Is it a new rule that all trolls must include a jab at Microsoft in the OP?

11

I accept that this question could equally have been posted on the ‘Cecil General Comments’ and ‘Great Debates’ boards and have ammended this oversight by posting it there too. Nevertheless, the question of why Americans are ruining our language still stands.

Evilhanz does not, of course, realise that the Germans were on the case 400 years ago, 300 years ago, 200 years ago, 100 years ago and more specifically, 83 and 56 years ago. Just keep trying - you might get there eventually.

Here is a recent example of the Germany’s repeated attempts to conquer the world:

The European Union Commissioners have announced that agreement has been reached to adopt English as the preferred language for European communications, rather than German, which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty’s Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a five-year phased plan for what will be known as EuroEnglish (Euro for short). In the first year, ‘s’ will be used instead of the soft ‘c’. Sertainly, sivil servants will resieve this news with joy. Also the hard ‘c’ will be replaced with the ‘k’. Not only will this klear up konfusion, but typewriters kan have one less letter. There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome ‘ph’ will be replace by ‘f’. This will make words like ‘fotograf’ 20 per sent shorter. In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of silen 'e’s in the languag is disgrasful and they would go. By the fourth rear, peopl wil be reseptiv t steps such as replasing ‘th’ by ‘z’ and ‘W’ by ‘V’. During ze fifz year, ze unesesary ‘o’ kan be dropd from vords kontaining ‘ou’, and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters. After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech ozer. Ze drem vil finali kum tru.

12

Interestingly, bmerton, you had to steal a routine from an American humorist to try to make your point.

13

Spoofs on English Spelling

14

OP- I appeal to an unhomogEnized use of language. U faruhnurz hoo kant spel turn something that originally meant “unsimilar in origin” to “Not like testicles.” I didn’t read this article of which you speak but my guess is it’s just typical american xenophobic monkeyshines, not an American language-changing cabal to assert our imperialism. I didnt know you guys spelled what we spell as aluminum, aluminium. I’ve traded metals on the LME and it wasn’t spelled that way (I dont think). I thought you just pronounced it aphonetically.
Your right about “Different to” vs. Different from, but i think you’ll admit that that change wasnt made in the name of phonetic expediency. Language evolves non-linearly. If it was just evolved for maximum labial, glottal, and gutteral efficiency…well…Im not sure what would happen. Problem use the word “Om” alot. But there are plenty of anecdotes in the annals of linguistic history that illustrate language chg is a process more akin to natural selection and particularly of mutation, not eugenics. Like the previous poster said, if language didnt evolve we would still be grunting. I still am. The fact that we have changed spellings and meanings of certain words is just evidence of our progression. Don’t worry though, you guys will catch up soon enough.

15

Maybe you should get mad at the Romance languages for changing the Latin dipthongs to reflect pronunciation:

Aurum - oro
caesium - queso
Same thing Webster did. Language changes as does orthography (orthography is slower to change though). Also, etymology doesnt necessarily mean it’s any more efficient either.

16

Thae mussen necht neue Worten auf Aengalesh addiert!

That better, Bmerton? Languages change over time, and dialects develop when population groups are seperated from each other.

In the case of Great Britian and the US, the British made changes to spelling and pronunciation after the US gained its independence, so the changes never became standard in the US, which used the older spelling and pronunciation. For example, in Britain, the older spelling “center” became “centre”, the old word “theater” became “theatre”, “labor” became “labour”, and other words changed pronunciation. Laboratory, for example, became stressed on the second syllable, instead of the first. Far from these being American innovations, they are British ones, and, in fact, an 18th century Briton would spell and pronounce words more like a modern American than a modern Briton.

As for Americans replacing “ae” with “e”, the letter “ae” is not found in English, is only used in words that English borred from Latin, and is pronounced in English as “e”. Therefore, replacing “paedophile” with “pedophile” and “aether” with “ether” are attempts to anglicize the Latin words.

Webster, while standardizing some spellings, wrote down those spellings that were most commonly accepted at the time. Rather than an innovater, Webster, in his dictionary, wrote the English language as it was spoken at the time.

To turn your question on its head, the question could just as easily be asked, “Why are the British ruining our language?”, because it is British English that is innovative. Of course, the question, however it is phrased, is meaningless. Languages aren’t “ruined”, so long as they are spoken and serve to communicate information. However, they do, in the course of their history, change as the needs of those who speak them change. Both American and British English (as well as Australian, Canadian, South African, and all the other variations of English) developed into what they are now because their speakers desired it so, and in so doing, expanded the tapestry which is the English language.

17

Middle English was already corrupted, what with all that French! Barring grunts and hand signals, we’ll just have to go back to Old English. That’s got plenty of æs. :wink:

[sub](Plus it means you can use thorn to your heart’s content. ;))[/sub]

18

And Brits can seldom be troubled to employ the subjunctive mood, often preferring constructions involving lots of “shoulds,” and they eschew the past participle “gotten” (among, well, lots of others) for the simpler form, “got.” Let’s not even discuss the rules (from synthetic languages) that British linguists smooshed on English ('s modern analytic) syntax blah blah

blah blah blah

I see your point; I’ll even volunteer that Received Pronunciation (spoken by like 2% or some such number) is much more euphonous than those accents of middle-America; but for the love of God, keep the haughtiness in check svp. It is so unbecoming.

Yes, our neural pathways shut down. We are spending billions of dollars trying to eliminate that scourge, the dipthong. The cure for cancer can find itself.

19

And, FYI, " æ " is called a ligature.

20

One word refutes your argument. Gaol.