Simplifying English Spelling

[TheNoNamedOne]

Many rules in English seem to be random, probably a reflection of the many words from the European continent that were absorbed into it.

For example, look at the word/sound "seed." With different spelling rules in English the same sound can be had --> sede, cede, sied.

But just look at these sentences:

He would not cede the argument to his opponent.

The seed for the upcoming planting season was eaten by rats.

In spoken English, we would have no confusion as to the meaning of each of these words. In that case, why not simplify the English language with many same sounding words into one spelling, for in most cases the meaning would still be clear.

See:

He wood not sed the argument to his opponent.

The sed for the upcoming planting seson was eten by rats.

Now, for perhaps one of you, I am not suggesting that my example is how the word spelling should be rendered, so don't infer that I have. Just saying that, would any of you see the benefits in simplifying spelling so that the rules of English would become more consistent?

When I first heard this many years ago I thought it would be a strange thing to do. But, now, I do think it has merit.

The biggest pitfall I would see would be forgetting how to read the spelling of today and making many old works not readily available to future generations. Just look how hard it is to read old English at times and completely comprehend it.

[socalheart]

I can see simplifying the way to learn English as a language, but not whittling it down like that. Seeing that English is based on mostly Latin, which is also the basis for the "romance" languages, I'd talk to them Latins first about fixing their language quirks. ;) Heh. I was always good at English, so became rather picky about it. I think that whittling down English leaves you with sub-culture languages like (but not limited to) ebonics (which annoys the piss out of me) and redneck (although amusing is also incomprehensible).

[DoctorP]

The last examples you posted (TP) remind me completely of ebonics. The problem with (American) English is that we have way too many loan words. The language could have been simplified 100's of years ago, but I doubt much could be done to help now.

[OCanadaOurHomeAndNativeLand]

Seeing that English is based on mostly Latin, which is also the basis for the "romance" languages, I'd talk to them Latins first about fixing their language quirks.
That's not quite true. If it were the case, then English would much more resemble Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, and French. The roots of English are rather more complicated. A nice compressed history can be found here (http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~kemmer/Words04/history/index.html). Well worth checking out for the chronology and additional links. Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_English_language) also covers the same subject matter, although in slightly less readable form.


The language we call English was first brought to the north sea coasts of England in the 5th and 6th centuries A.D., by seafaring people from Denmark and the northwestern coasts of present-day Germany and the Netherlands. These immigrants spoke a cluster of related dialects falling within the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family. Their language began to develop its own distinctive features in isolation from the continental Germanic languages, and by 600 A.D. had developed into what we call Old English or Anglo-Saxon, covering the territory of most of modern England.

New waves of Germanic invaders and settlers came from Norway and Denmark starting in the late 8th century. The more violent of these were known as Vikings, sea-faring plunderers who retained their ancient pagan gods and attacked settlements and churches for gold and silver. They spoke a northern Germanic dialect similar to, yet different in grammar from Anglo-Saxon. In the 11th century, the attacks became organized, state-sponsored military invasions and England was even ruled for a time by the kings of Denmark and Norway. The Scandinavian influence on the language was strongest in the north and lasted for a full 600 years, although English seems to have been adopted by the settlers fairly early on.

The Norman Invasion and Conquest of 1066 was a cataclysmic event that brought new rulers and new cultural, social and linguistic influences to the British Isles. The Norman French ruling minority dominated the church, government, legal, and educational systems for three centuries. The Norman establishment used French and Latin, leaving English as the language of the illiterate and powerless majority. During this period English adopted thousands of words from Norman French and from Latin, and its grammar changed rather radically. By the end of that time, however, the aristocracy had adopted English as their language and the use and importance of French gradually faded. The period from the Conquest to the reemergence of English as a full-fledged literary language is called Middle English. Geoffrey Chaucer wrote his masterpiece, The Canterbury Tales, in Middle English in the late 1300s.

William Caxton set up the first printing press in Britain at the end of the 15th century. The arrival of printing marks the point at which the language began to take the first steps toward standardization and its eventual role as a national language. The period from 1500 to about 1650 is called Early Modern English, a period during which notable sound changes, syntactic changes and lexical enrichment took place. The Great English Vowel Shift, which systematically shifted the phonetic values of all the long vowels in English, occurred during this period. Word order became more fixed in a subject-verb-object pattern, and English developed a complex auxiliary verb system. A rush of new vocabulary from the classical languages, the modern European languages, and more distant trading partners such as the countries of Asian minor and the Middle East entered the language as the renaissance influences of culture and trade and the emerging scientific community of Europe took root in England.

Shakespeare wrote prolifically during the late 1500s and early 1600s and, like Chaucer, took the language into new and creative literary territory. His influence on English drama and poetry continued to grow after his death in 1616 and he has never been surpassed as the best known and most read poet/playwright of modern English.

The King James Bible was published in 1611, the culmination of at least a century of efforts to bring a Bible written in the native language of the people into the Church establishment and into people's homes. Among the common people, whose contact with literature often did not go far past the Bible, the language of the scriptures as presented in this version commissioned by King James I was deeply influential, due in part to its religious significance, but also to its literary quality. Its simple style and use of native vocabulary had a surpassing beauty that still resonates today.

By the 1700s almost all of the modern syntactic patterns of English were in place and the language is easily readable by modern speakers. Colonization of new territories by the newly united Kingdom of Great Britain spread English to the far corners of the globe and brought cargoes of still more loanwords from those far-flung places. At this point English began to develop its major world dialectal varieties, some of which would develop into national standards for newly independent colonies. By the 21st century, as the language of international business, science, and popular culture, English has become the most important language on the planet

[atb35]

Dont think there is an easier language to learn then english. I mean seriously, we have 26 letters that make every word we speak. The grammer may not be that easy to pick up, but being able to communicate is simple with english. Of course I am biased because it is all I know, but 'trying' to learn French, Spanish, Japanese, and brief stint with Dutch...English is simple compared to them.

[P_chan]

you know they teach ebonics in some schools now? Thought that was kinda sad.

[Hollarey]

you know they teach ebonics in some schools now? Thought that was kinda sad.



do skoos fo real teach ebonics? I didnt know dat. - aww yea foo.

[DougP]

You know there is a problem with the English language when you realize that out of the 3 R's only one begins with an R.

[Isaak Brodsky]

Just a quick note to clear up a few points. English isn't a Romance language but a Germanic. It is the largest Germanic language on earth. As was already observed, spellings do change despite our efforts to codify the language. Even a word as standard as "whom" (now ignored largely for "who") is projected to fall entirely out of use within the next twenty years. Only small factions of nitpicky language mavens will probably try to hold on to it, but it will pass out of existence as sure as "ain't" fell out of favor two-hundred years ago.

Parts of my dissertation dealt with the politics of Ebonics. When we say that Ebonics is actually "taught," I think it mis-represents what language teachers are attempting to do in the classroom. If you're teaching, say, Japanese students how to speak and write English, you'll invariably have to use Japanese as a bridge to the new language - English.

So, the argument goes that Americans who speak a variety of English known as AAVE (African American Vernacular English) will need to use AAVE as a bridge to the new variety known as Standard American English.

The problem of spelling English words is likely the best method we have, given the range of homophones we have in the language. Spellings sure are confusing, at times, though. I wonder if Japanese and Chinese people have similar problems in rendering their thoughts into ideographs.