kalmar wrote:
There was a news story on at the weekend, I just caught a bit of it, some education person proclaiming that the english language must be allowed to "evolve" to modify difficult words to simpler ones, as children today don't have the capacity or interest to learn the trickier bits, and schools don't have the resources to force it into them. Disgust.
I think that's tabloid alarmism. A thousand years of constant changes in English have made it one of the richest languages on Earth, and it's pre-eminence in modern business communication across the world can be traced to its flexibility as a language, its willingness to change and mutate and borrow words. Sure, some number of words might be becoming simpler. Meanwhile, other words will be taking on new meanings, new words are introduced, and as a whole simply changes, all the time. I think that's breathtakingly excellent. I don't see any serious academic linguists wringing their hands about the state of modern English, and I suspect most of the examples of this sort of thing the tabloids draw on come from a barely-literate underclass of children who were always barely literate, but it's more obvious now.
Malabar Front wrote:
There was an article posted a long time ago where some woman was pushing for the 'redundant' letters in words to be phased out, and their shorter versions accepted. It was pretty much like reading a teenager's text message.
Was it at all like this one:
ZOMG Spoiler! Click here to view!
A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling
For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet.
The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later.
Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.
Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants.
Bai iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" — bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez — tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli.
Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.
which was of course written by
ZOMG Spoiler! Click here to view!
Mark Twain
a hundred years ago?
Or how about that research paper a few months back that shows startling similarities between text speak and the truncated, phoentic English used for a lot of personal letters in the Victorian era, when paper was so expensive that cramming more words onto each page was of paramount importance?
I guess what I'm saying is, I don't believe the sky is falling.