Spelling English

[PakledHostage]

In the German speaking countries it worked the other way around. Scientists (including dictionary makers like Duden) worked out the new rules and then went to the goverments, telling them they need to make a new law.

But we English speakers can't even agree amongst ourselves how to spell our words... There are English, Canadian, American, etc spellings for many words. Getting us to agree would be like trying to herd cats!

[cpast]

> there is no body that can make a law for English

You can change what language pupils have to learn in school and what language authorities have to use. And that's the only thing what the German goverment did. Of course you can't bind people by law to write "updated" English at home. That's entirely up to them.

Not really. English is spoken in a lot of countries, and in the US at least, there is no central authority that controls curricula. You can't force spelling change on schools. You have to deal with the lots of private schools that would want no part of it. There is no body that can force a spelling change on English; not in schools, not in administration, not anywhere. No one. You'd need hundreds of organizations to cooperate; while some might be willing to fall in line, you really couldn't expect large countries to fall in line with something decided by the government of one or two countries.

> the language is what people use, not what we decide it is

I described it in an earlier post. Scientist analyzed how people spoke and wrote German and changed the old grammar rules to fit that. The only "new" thing was that the new rules were used to change some words to provide consistence.

That's all. There was no decision, it was just an update for outdated rules. In another 50 years or so they'll probably do a reform again because the language changed in the mean time.

So did it not change anything, then? It updated some rules, but the rules were irrelevant and people were already writing like the new rules? If so, then English doesn't really have that situation; for starters, something that people habitually ignore is no longer considered a rule of the language, because there's no formal list of the rules. Outdated style guides might consider it a rule, but the dictionary and actual linguists are pretty quick about saying "no longer a rule" -- no formal process is necessary. If words change naturally, then they also change in schools.

If it did change something, we're back to "dictionary writers and similar don't consider their job to be deciding how language should work." If you go to a typical dictionary editor and say "these are better spellings, you should push for them," their reaction will be along the lines of "huh? Do people use them? If not, what's the point?"

[Sidereus]

But there is no body that can make a law for English, and English dictionary authors tend to have a view that "the language is what people use, not what we decide it is."

Right; English is descriptivist, not prescriptivist.

We've had attempts at spelling reforms before; only some of them took, and they took in different countries. Americans dropping the useless 'u' in color, honor, etc. (along with many other reforms) happened not too long after the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, and was helped along in part by anti-British sentiment, which is pretty much why we're the only English-speaking country that adopted it.

And then there are instances of what might be called "anti-reform", such as in Britain during the 19th century when a lot of their words picked up French spellings, which is why they have "programme" instead of the much more logical "program", and also the '-ise' ending instead of '-ize', like in recognize. '-ize' is closer to the original Greek, where as '-ise' is the French spelling.

- The 'kn' illustrates the problem of English orthography. At the beginning of a word, the 'k' in 'kn' is never pronounced, but there are potential situations where it could occur in the middle of a word, when the word is compound like 'bleakness', where the k is pronounced. And words like 'acknowledge' where the word 'know' is the root, but the 'k' is pronounced. But in words like 'foreknowledge', where 'know' is also the root it isn't. So you end up with a long list of rules and exceptions just for this one pair of consonants. All of English is like that.

I think in "acknowledge", you're not pronouncing the 'k', you're pronouncing the 'c'.

Edited February 12, 2015 by Sidereus

[cpast]

I think the "c" is actually there to indicate "pronounce the 'k' sound" - the word had the sound in it, but "aknowledge" would be pronounced without the hard 'k', so it's "acknowledge."

[*Aqua*]

But we English speakers can't even agree amongst ourselves how to spell our words... There are English, Canadian, American, etc spellings for many words. Getting us to agree would be like trying to herd cats!

They don't need to agree. As you said each one already have their own kind of English. I guess Candians speaking English also mix in some French. US Americans will probably mix in some Spanish. And the UK? I think they already have a unique kind of English. As a foreigner I can easily tell guys from the UK and the USA apart.

As for the German spelling reform: Switzerland only picked a few part and ignored the rest. They already have a variety of German (e. g. they don't have the ß).

Not really. English is spoken in a lot of countries, and in the US at least, there is no central authority that controls curricula. You can't force spelling change on schools. You have to deal with the lots of private schools that would want no part of it. There is no body that can force a spelling change on English; not in schools, not in administration, not anywhere. No one.

The US goverment has no control of all the schools? That's surprising. I wonder how they make sure everybody gets basic education.

So did it not change anything, then? It updated some rules, but the rules were irrelevant and people were already writing like the new rules?

It's a bit different. You may not know about this. The Duden is the dictionary of the German language. If someone is in doubt about a word or a rule, a look in it will clear things up. When compared to other dictionaries the Duden is always considered to be right! But at the same time the dictionary is not the official standard of the language, it's somekind of de facto standard.

This poses a problem. If a lot of people around you speak something different to what's in the Duden they are both right and wrong. Because a language changes over time people will come up new words and grammar. At the same time the new words and grammar is considered to be wrong by the dictionary and therefore other people will say "What you are writing is wrong! Use the Duden!" This lead to two kinds of German: A German you speak and a German you write.

They solved that problem by adjusting the written language.

Scientists pointed out what's difficult, obsolete or not logical. Examples: "ph" is spoken like an "f" or sometimes people have difficulty to write a specific word because it's borrowed from a foreign language or some rules are too complicated, etc.

And then they reworked that. "Photographie" can now be spelled "Fotografie", the insane number of comma rules, which nobody could remember, are greatly reduced to an amount you can remember and difficult words like "Portemonaies" (French for purse, wallet) can now be written like a German speaks it, "Portmonee".

In my opinion the English language needs the same kind of threatment because it has the same kind of problems German had.

There doesn't have to be an international agreement of what and how to change. It would already help if one country like the UK implements a reform. The other countries will introduce a change eventually. And no, I don't expect for every country to change the language in the same way because they all already speak a different English.

In my country in the schools they already point out some differences between American and British English (AE & BE). They try to get around this by teaching "Basic English", a subset of English which is similiar to AE and BE in most cases. Unfortunately even with that there are problems, e. g. the word color/colour.

Edited February 12, 2015 by *Aqua*

[Sidereus]

The US goverment has no control of all the schools? That's surprising. I wonder how they make sure everybody gets basic education.

The US is a federal system. We have three to four layers of government, generally: (from top to bottom) Federal, State, County, and Municipality. The federal government has no overarching control over the education system, although they can influence things by putting conditions on funding. Most schools are controlled at the state, county, and/or municipality level. And then there are private schools that aren't controlled by any government at all.

There doesn't have to be an international agreement of what and how to change. It would already help if one country like the UK implements a reform. The other countries will introduce a change eventually.

That's...unlikely. See my previous post about the spelling reforms that happened in America. Almost none of them have filtered back to Britain in the almost 200 years since they've been implemented. Hell, they went the other way by implementing crazy French spellings.

Edited February 12, 2015 by Sidereus

[Newt]

The US goverment has no control of all the schools? That's surprising. I wonder how they make sure everybody gets basic education.

US education is largely run by states; the central governments attempts to direct education is often met with resistance.

This lead to two kinds of German: A German you speak and a German you write.

Reminds me of French, with some words that have been entirely dropped in the spoken form, yet are retained in writing.

In my opinion the English language needs the same kind of threatment because it has the same kind of problems German had.

There doesn't have to be an international agreement of what and how to change. It would already help if one country like the UK implements a reform. The other countries will introduce a change eventually. And no, I don't expect for every country to change the language in the same way because they all already speak a different English.

This would probably work, if it could be effectively implemented. However, I remain skeptical that it could be. English is spoken as a primary language in several very large countries, and is spoken as the lingua franca in many international applications. It does not have a perfect alignment going from California to Scottland to Punjab, but it remains very similar, especially in writing. The last part is important because writing is how much communication is done, especially in formal contexts it is essential to have a common understanding of what is being said. If the Indian government demarcates its own English blend, with perhaps a base of Devanagari characters, and different word meanings/spellings in formal contexts, it will cause difficulties for Indian's to do business with the rest of the standard English writing world. German is more used than some languages, but not the user base of English, by any means, and as such it was a lot easier for the Germans to rework spellings and character usage, just as it was practical for the Romanians to switch alphabets, and to continue tweaking certain usages, than it would be for the USA/UK/Canada/Australia/India/bunch of other smaller nations to tweek English. There are to many people to have a consensus beyond that, that which we have works, and we should not mess it up.

[cpast]

That's the biggest aspect: English works. It has lots of quirks, but it generally functions as a language. That has just about always been the design principle of the language (i.e. "if you understand this it's perfectly valid").

For standardization: If German has a dictionary which is the written language, that's nothing at all like English. There is no standard English dictionary; there aren't even standard spellings worldwide. Webster succeeded in a partial spelling reform (confined to the US), which worked because that was around when spelling was standardizing anyway. Furthermore, the most standard English dictionaries (the OED and Merriam-Webster, for [tweaked] BrE/historical evolution and AmE respectively) are fully descriptive, and frequently update to reflect actual usage; even then, the OED has a couple quirks that people feel free to ignore (they prefer -ize to -ise, while BrE tends to use -ise; just because -ize is in the OED doesn't mean people automatically treat it as correct and -ise as incorrect). The concept that "this is the standard written language, and here is the standard dictionary that's official and controls how you actually write" is just not there in English; dictionaries are used as reference, but they follow how people write (and speak), not vice versa.

[Kryten]

There aren't even any official national varieties as far as I can see. Not even in nations like India where other national languages do have official standards.

[*Aqua*]

The US is a federal system. We have three to four layers of government, generally: (from top to bottom) Federal, State, County, and Municipality. The federal government has no overarching control over the education system, although they can influence things by putting conditions on funding. Most schools are controlled at the state, county, and/or municipality level. And then there are private schools that aren't controlled by any government at all.

It's a bit similiar to how it works in Germany. There are three layers: Federal, state and county. The schools are run and financed by the states and make sure everybody gets a basic education as stated in a federal law. The counties don't have any saying but usually work together with the local schools.

The last time I read about our education system there were some discomfort with that. Maybe there will be some classes which will be the same in every state by a federal order. So far the states one agreed to use the same set of school books in the most important subjects (math, German and maybe some others).

This would probably work, if it could be effectively implemented. However, I remain skeptical that it could be. English is spoken as a primary language in several very large countries, and is spoken as the lingua franca in many international applications. It does not have a perfect alignment going from California to Scottland to Punjab, but it remains very similar, especially in writing.

English can still be the lingua franca, that's no problem. You can strip it down to something like the Basic English I mentioned. It consists of a few thousand common words and the most important grammar rules without all that fancy stuff which is specific to a country.

That's the biggest aspect: English works. It has lots of quirks, but it generally functions as a language. That has just about always been the design principle of the language (i.e. "if you understand this it's perfectly valid").

[...]

There is no standard English dictionary; there aren't even standard spellings worldwide.

Like I wrote to Newt, strip English down to the essentials needed for international and business communication. Do another one which is only used by the people of a country (e. g. UK). Both are still varieties of English and speakers of one of the varieties will still be able to communicate to the other one.

There are about 375 - 400 native English speakers and about 1.5 billion which use it as a second language. The later ones will appreciate a simpler version while the first ones finally get their a modern written language.

As for the quirks what should I say? I still don't why you speak the "i" in "I" differently compared to the "i" in "still". And I don't know why the "I" is usually capitalized while almost all other words aren't.

If you're allowed to modify the language as much as you like as long as someone still understand it, it will lead to chaos. Because what can be done, will be done.

I repeat: The English speaking countries already have different dialects or varieties (not sure which word a language scientists would use). The pronounciation are completely different. Indian English is unintelligible for me while British English often is easy to understand. American English is in between (sounds like a lot of mumbling to me).

You as native English speakers may not know about this but in other non-English speaking countries there are some efforts for a standarized business English. It's impossible to teach them the English because there is none.

[cantab]

I don't believe the British government attempting to change British English would be met well. Simplifying spellings, like American English has done, would already be met by decrying the "dumbing down" of children's education. Anything much beyond that runs into issues with accents like I mentioned before, and making spelling reflect a "standard" accent would be regarded as classist and south-centric (the south being richer than the north in England).

As far as teaching English abroad goes, sure there's interest in some sort of a standard. But it necessarily can't conflict too much with native US, and to an extent UK, usage, which severely restricts it from changing anything. It's more just a formalisation of what to teach (and by implication what not to).

Edited February 12, 2015 by cantab

[Mr Shifty]

American English is in between (sounds like a lot of mumbling to me).

You as native English speakers may not know about this but in other non-English speaking countries there are some efforts for a standarized business English. It's impossible to teach them the English because there is none.

This seems pretty reasonable to me. What's odd is that English actually has a pretty regular formal grammar (leaving aside idiom and casual communication) as do most languages. This means that grammatical rules should be relatively easy to learn. But I would be far more forgiving (subconsciously) of grammatical errors in a non-native speaker's writing than I would spelling errors, even though English spelling is probably more irregular and thus harder to learn.

And yeah, we mumble. It often strikes me that 'standard' American English (let's call this Hollywood English, to distinguish it from other American dialects and accents) is an attempt to speak the language while moving the mouth as little as possible.

[Jouni]

But I would be far more forgiving (subconsciously) of grammatical errors in a non-native speaker's writing than I would spelling errors, even though English spelling is probably more irregular and thus harder to learn.

From a non-native speaker's perspective, it's the pronunciation that's irregular, while the spelling is just what it is. When you're learning a new language, you rely a lot on written material, and the written language often becomes the primary form of the language.

[Newt]

English can still be the lingua franca, that's no problem. You can strip it down to something like the Basic English I mentioned. It consists of a few thousand common words and the most important grammar rules without all that fancy stuff which is specific to a country.

Oh yes, Basic English. We could go that route, but we could go a bunch of other Auxiliary Language routes, too. Basic English is really not that easy for people who already speak English, as, while it shares some similarities, it has a lot of differences, and a speaker of both has to keep two languages, with very overlapping vocabularies (but with many differences and restrictions on one), and two grammars straight, so that full English does not spill over into Basic English dealings. There are heaps of other Auxiliary Languages that would also be simpler to learn for most people, in my opinion anyway. These include Esperanto, the Esperantidoj, Interlingua, Occidental, Volapuk, et cetera. Some are rather easy to learn if one puts effort into it. There is no particular, valid reason that makes Basic English better than any of these.

We should employ, ideally, some language --not Basic English, for the above described reasons -- but some language that could take the role of Lingua Franca, but not let it be a national language, and probably we should not encourage its extensive use in everyday speech; if suddenly, everyone's home language becomes Toki Pona, it would take a matter of hours for serious differences to emerge between different groups, and before long there would be many different versions of language again, making there be a need to use the elusive standard Toki Pona for international communication. If all speak Toki Pona, but use it sparingly, to practice on occasion or to deal with a foreigner, changes will happen far less frequently, as the foreigners with whom it will be used will not pick up on regional developments, and there will be little opportunity for such mutations to occur, as people will speak it sparingly. If Toki Pona were a useful language for complicated discussion, that is.

Edited February 13, 2015 by Newt
failure to properly deploy quot tags repaired

[*Aqua*]

Simplifying spellings, like American English has done, would already be met by decrying the "dumbing down" of children's education. Anything much beyond that runs into issues with accents like I mentioned before, and making spelling reflect a "standard" accent would be regarded as classist and south-centric (the south being richer than the north in England).

It could work if you use the same development of Standard German. In fact it's a constructed language made of approximately 50 German dialects which were the most important ones about 150 years ago.

There are still states in Germany where pupils have to learn Standard German like a foreign language even if they know most of the words and grammar. And it works. At home they speak in their dialect and to other Germans they speak in Standard German. And the most important fact: People know that this kind of system is necessary. If you don't want to give up your local language but still want be able to communicate to others you'll have to learn additional languages.

This seems pretty reasonable to me. What's odd is that English actually has a pretty regular formal grammar (leaving aside idiom and casual communication) as do most languages. This means that grammatical rules should be relatively easy to learn.

I think that depends on where the pupil comes from. Asians have huge problems with English because its structure (lots of consonants, over 1000 possible different syllables, letter alphabet, a lot of tenses) is completely foreign to them (usually almost no consonants, fixed number of syllables [around 40-50], syllables alphabet, small number of times [often only present and past tenses]). The cultural differences don't make it easier. Did you know that the Japanese language has over 50 words for "I"? They pick one of them depending on their gender, age, rank, if they want to be formal or informal, nice or rude, if they speak to a superior or a minor, family member or foreigner, etc.

From a non-native speaker's perspective, it's the pronunciation that's irregular, while the spelling is just what it is. When you're learning a new language, you rely a lot on written material, and the written language often becomes the primary form of the language.

I still remember that the last pages of my English learning book always had a few pages of irregular verbs. By the end of the year every pupil must have memorized them.

Basic English is really not that easy for people who already speak English

As mentioned before in this post, in Germany it works at least since WW2. Edited February 13, 2015 by *Aqua*

[Robotengineer]

+1 for having a standard English, at least in the USA. Some of our accents and dialects are impossible to understand even in our own country.

[PakledHostage]

+1 for having a standard English, at least in the USA. Some of our accents and dialects are impossible to understand even in our own country.

On a lighter note, someone once told me that you can tell how far south you are in the US by how many e's there are between the h and the i in the four letter word for "excrement"...

[Mr Shifty]

On a lighter note, someone once told me that you can tell how far south you are in the US by how many e's there are between the h and the i in the four letter word for "excrement"...

Either that or how close to

you are:)

[PB666]

Im not sure why you consider this to be Science.

English hard, true, but if you know English you don't need to know any other language to get most places in the world.

Suppose you are born in Papua New Guinea, you have to learn your household tongue, those in the neighboring villages, then English, maybe Portuguese if you travel west . . . . . . .

Philippines Taugalag, Spanish, English.

Guatamala Queche, Spanish, . . . . . . English

Some people will complain about anything.

[PakledHostage]

Some people will complain about anything.

Pot calling the kettle black?

I don't think the original point of the thread was to complain. The point was to discuss whether or not encouraging children to learn other languages as well as English (for children who's first language is English) would enable them to learn English, and particularly English spelling, more readily.

[Mr Shifty]

I don't think the original point of the thread was to complain. The point was to discuss whether or not encouraging children to learn other languages as well as English (for children who's first language is English) would enable them to learn English, and particularly English spelling, more readily.

Indeed. I'm more interested in the developmental processes involved in learning literacy. English provides a useful test case because its spelling is highly idiosyncratic and... well... I speak it natively. The original article caught my attention because it talked about how people who learn English as adults tend to sight-read, rather than learn to 'sound out' words. This matches my daughter's experience; she's learning spelling and phonetics in Spanish, but can read in English fluently even though she can't 'sound out' words at all. I conjectured at the beginning that this may be because the difficult part of literacy is conceptualizing it, not necessarily the mechanics of it, and by making the mechanics easier so that kids (and adults?) can focus on the concepts, it may be possible to make learning to read easier. This is a science discussion for two reasons: 1) It's about learning as a developmental process and 2) Where else would it go?

[cantab]

The original article caught my attention because it talked about how people who learn English as adults tend to sight-read, rather than learn to 'sound out' words.

Yet more reason to be concerned at the UK and other governments that have gone to a phonics-only approach to teaching reading - to the point that English children are now tested on their ability to read aloud nonsense non-words like "spron, fape and thazz". It seems effective at teaching young children to read in that they can see a written word and pronounce it, but I know of no studies into how skills develop with age.

[Lohan2008]

Also because English is used as the International standard of communication, makes it change on a regular bases.

[Newt]

As mentioned before in this post, in Germany it works at least since WW2.

Standard German is not directly analogous, by any means, to Basic English. The German Language has many words, much diversity and complexity, many of the reforms were in regard to spelling and consistency. Basic English, has a vocabulary of 850 words, including 18 verbs. I am not sure how many verbs are found in either English or German, but it is far more than 18, even far more than 850. Basic English's best use is to facilitate international communication on a relatively simple level, it might be extreme to compare it to Toki Pona, (120 words), but I believe that there are similarities between the two in their quickly approaching practical limits as to what exactly can be said.

It is not that English reform is bad, it should just be taken differently, standard spelling to match with some consistent pronunciation rules, and other changes would be welcomed by me. But Basic English, is not the way to do it.

We have been talking a bunch about German, and its reforms. Even the relatively minor and drawn out changes that occurred in that language have garnered no small amount of frustration from the public, people publishing alternate spellings to Duden, and otherwise disregarding these changes. Many of the reforms started during WWII really did not get that far (as the German government looking to implement them was busy building weapons), and parts of that reform centered on the removal of non-German originating forms of spelling. some reforms were attempted earlier still, in the early 20th century, but these too did not get too far, some changes were made, but despite the desire by many people to implement further still changes, there was not a really significant development before 1996.

As for the other discussion, linguistics is science, and I do not think that we are just complaining, we are discussing language reform (which includes a dose of complaining, I agree).

[Wallygator]

Having lived in Bath, I can tell you that it is pronounced differently IN Bath vs the rest of England ;-) must be the West Country accents!