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New language idea (similar to English).
- Thread starter kabunaru
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It's also going to make it very difficult for pirates to remember where they buried their loot...How on earth will anyone ever vote or mark the spot ever again?
If I was king of the world, there are at least a few English spellings I'd change. Maybe not as many as the original poster, but here are a few that have to go:
neighbor
enough
knock
debt
damn
vacuum
restaurant
bureau
business
...
Actually, the more I type the more I agree with OP.
neighbor
enough
knock
debt
damn
vacuum
restaurant
bureau
business
...
Actually, the more I type the more I agree with OP.
Since "neighbor" is American, "vacuum" is Latin, and "restaurant" and "bureau" are French, that's a pretty poor list of complaints.
vacuum doesn't have any silent letters. The double U is there for emphasis on the syllable. If it only had one U, then it would be vacum, which sounds nothing like the original. That said, you could use a silent E at the end to emphasise the U, making it vacume... but then we're back to the original argument.
A vast majority of english words are spelt like they are for a reason. F has a different sound to TH, so MATH sounds different to MAF. The only people who use F instead of TH are babies, people with deformed mouths, or cockneys. Maybe the OP is a cockney?
^^How about "ph" and "f"? Is there a need for that? Why not use "k" instead of the hard "c" sound, and "s" for the softer "c" sound?
Some of the things people complain about actually make sense, and there's a reason words are spelt the way they are. However, I also feel that a lot of the English language doesn't make sense, particularly with pronunciation and spelling.
Some of the things people complain about actually make sense, and there's a reason words are spelt the way they are. However, I also feel that a lot of the English language doesn't make sense, particularly with pronunciation and spelling.
To be fair English is not the only one most (all?) languages have their idiosyncracies.
Ever wondered why the French word for ninety is four times twenty plus ten?
I'm still trying to figure out why the numbers 11-19 are spoken in such a unique way. The numbers 1-10 are kind of expected to be the base of our counting system, and all numbers greater than 10 are said in a certain way, using a certain system. Except 11-19.
If you really want to know how messed up English is, ask an exchange student or International student who had to study and learn English. They'll tell you things about your language that you didn't even think about.
If you really want to know how messed up English is, ask an exchange student or International student who had to study and learn English. They'll tell you things about your language that you didn't even think about.
^ Well, you could say 'tenny one, tenny two, tenny three' but that's far too close to 'twenty', so we just stuck with eleven and twelve, and then invented _teen.
The Germans do a similar thing. Up until 20 it's irregular, and from then on it follows a pattern.
The Germans do a similar thing. Up until 20 it's irregular, and from then on it follows a pattern.
It is because the English language has in effect two parallel vocabularies, one Anglo-Saxon and the other Romance. "k"-words are derived either from Greek or Teutonic roots, "ph"-words are from Greek, the soft "c" is from Latin via French, and so on. The diverse etymology is built into the language, giving it an unparallelled richness. It makes perfect sense. A good example is with farm animals: when the Normans arrived, they used their own, Latin-derived words for the butchered and cooked meat they were served by their Anglo-Saxon tenants, whereas the Anglo-Saxon farmers used their own Anglo-Saxon words for the live animals, hence pig/pork (porc), cow/beef (boeuf), sheep/mutton (mouton).
No, the two "u"s are both pronounced separately.
Simple: the Celtic, Saxons and Nordic peoples used a duodecimal system, hence twelve hours, twelve pennies in a shilling, twelve inches in a foot: in both English and German languages (and actually in French and other Romance languages as well) the numbers 1-12 predate the decimal system.
This is also apparently a problem for primary school kids here; which is why they are now taught:
1-10 (as you would expect)
but then;
1-T-1 for eleven
1-T-2 for twelve
etc. etc.
2-T-8 for twenty eight
etc. etc.
How they're expected to transition in a few years I'm not sure. Should make for some interesting school leaver job interviews in about 1years.
Dick van Dyke made his own dialect of English. Now you just need to make a movie/musical that only makes sense while on acid and includes lots of subtitles and you are good to go.
sidenotes:
My pronunciation is quite odd from those around me so some slight problems arise when I go ahead spell things phonetically when away from wordfixer xyz
sidenotes:
My pronunciation is quite odd from those around me so some slight problems arise when I go ahead spell things phonetically when away from wordfixer xyz
Honestly, most of those didn't make sense at all. The premise that you already speak a certain English dialect and are trying to form a new one based upon it that everyone should somehow accept is absurd. I don't mean to insult your dialect now, but who the flying **** says "wakyum"? And what's with your silent "P" in "dept", your alternative spelling for debt? I thought you just said silent letters were useless. Are you half-retarded?
[/rant]
Why does that make it a poor list of complaints? Isn't that the point? As Skunk points out, English carries a history which makes the spelling all crazy. Why not reconcile them now? The words came out of different languages, but now they're all English. So why not make the spelling consistent?
It's a fun question, even if it will never happen. I think about the character reform in Chinese and Japanese during the 1940s when they consolidated the character set and eliminated a degree of complexity from them to make them easier to teach. We in the English speaking world could do the same thing.
(and eliminate the penny!)
I gave up on the new language but I propose that Americans should change to this. I want American English and British English to be separate as possible:
was ----waz
is---iz
besides----besidez
blank-----blanc
blanket---blancet
purple---purpol
lightning--litening
light---lite
night----nite
preposition----prepozition
position----pozition
opposition----oppozition
treasure----treazure
treason---- treazon
knight---knite
fight---fite
tight---tite
flight---flite
lightly---litely
lighten---liten
lighthouse---litehouse
tongue---tung
advertise-----advertize
advise-----advize
apprise----apprize
arise-----arize
chastise----chastise
circumsise----circumsize
incise----incize
excise----excize
comprise---comprize
compromise-----compromize
demise----demize
despise---despize
devise-----devize
disguise----disguize
exercise-----exercize
franchise----franchize
improvise---improvize
merchandise-----merchandize
revise----revize
supervise----supervize
surmise-----surmize
surprise----surprize
televise----televize
To be fair English is not the only one most (all?) languages have their idiosyncracies.
Ever wondered why the French word for ninety is four times twenty plus ten?
Actually 90 would be "quatre vingt dix" (four twenty ten). I never really thought about it until now.
Ever wondered why the French word for ninety is four times twenty plus ten?
Quatre-vingt-dix. Worst spelling for a numerical value. Do you know how carefully you have to listen when someone asks you for $X.9X in French when you're not fluent? I want to know what group of lazy Frenchmen decided we should have to do math to understand what number is being spoken about (I love the French and France, but not whoever decided speaking the words 70, 80, and 90 should involve math).
And I want a billion dollars. You won't see me itemizing everything I'd buy if I had it, though.
Listening for 90 is pretty tough as a beginner. It's different (and makes more sense, in my opinion) with Swiss and Belgian French
Swiss French:
septante - seventy
nonante - ninety
huitante - eighty
Belgian French uses the same words for seventy and ninety, but they stick with the traditional quatre-vingts for eighty.