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English is the world's first global lingua franca, and has so much momentum it's likely to stay that way for centuries.
There's a lot to recommend English: a huge vocabulary, simple grammar, and expressive flexibility.
And then there's spelling.
Should we reform English spelling to make it phonetically consistent? That means as long as you can pronounce a word, you can spell it once you know the rules. No exceptions to memorize.
For those who would say this is impossible, Chinese provided an example of an undertaking of similar scope when it simplified its characters.
There are only two downsides to this I can see, the first being that English's loose phonetics currently allow for more verbal diversity than, say, German. English dialects and pidgins all use the same spelling, with some minor differences, yet are pronounced differently. A stricter phonetical system would privilege a single dialect.
The second downside is that many historical written works would be inaccessible to those who did not also have some familiarity with traditional English spelling. These could be translated however.
As to the upsides, they are almost too numerous to list. The main one I see is that it would make English even easier to learn as a second language and cement its status as the language of humanity for centuries if not millennia.
You want vanilla.
You want Boston to sound the same as Houston. You want to remove the subtle differences between Nashville "southern" and Atlanta "southern". Pittsburgh is completely different then rural Appalachia PA.
Y’all, You’uns, Yinz, Youse, ... all acceptable depending on where you live. Even if you could get everyone on the same page, regional diversity just due to separation is going to reoccur.
I'm from California, and it said I was from California. I think one of the specific questions that nails it down to California (and not just Western US) was the one about the freeway/highway.
Me too. As I (SoCal) was filling in the questionnaire, I knew "freeway" would be definitive.
The "cot" / "caught" thing threw me though. I always thought they sounded exactly the same.
Also the pop and soda....we usually called them "soft drinks".
DH laughs at me for saying "git" instead of "get". Well, he says "bury" like "worry"...LOL. He's from NJ.
Me too. As I (SoCal) was filling in the questionnaire, I knew "freeway" would be definitive.
The "cot" / "caught" thing threw me though. I always thought they sounded exactly the same.
Also the pop and soda....we usually called them "soft drinks".
I use soda / soft drinks pretty interchangeably, but NEVER pop. One of the first things I noticed when my brother and sister-in-law relocated from SoCal to the Seattle area years ago was that they suddenly starting saying "pop."
Cot/caught are the same to me too, but I believe that's the case across most of the Western US.
You said that you've noticed your brother's Seattle speech patterns. Perhaps they may have influenced you more than you thought?
Absolutely not. He moved away over 30 years ago and I've only seen him for brief two- or three-day vacations every few years. And, actually, the only specifically Seattle influence to his speech that I have noticed is the one I mentioned, "pop."
The words that were selected by the quiz as most influential in selecting my three cities were "kitty-corner" (not something people say very often, and I was torn between choosing it and "diagonal") and "firefly" (which don't actually exist here; I've only heard about them). Probably I learned those words from my parents, who were raised in Chicago.
Me too. As I (SoCal) was filling in the questionnaire, I knew "freeway" would be definitive.
The "cot" / "caught" thing threw me though. I always thought they sounded exactly the same.
Also the pop and soda....we usually called them "soft drinks".
DH laughs at me for saying "git" instead of "get". Well, he says "bury" like "worry"...LOL. He's from NJ.
Ha, I was talking to someone on the phone once in the Midwest and she told me I had to call someone named Don, so I said, "May I have his phone number?" She said, "Don is a she, not a he." Apparently the person I needed to speak with was DAWN. Must be those same people who drive an Otto.
That "aw" sound gets lost in some parts of the country, while in NJ we often put it IN where it doesn't really go. Cawfee, tawk.
And now I'm wondering how ELSE you could possibly say "bury". Boory?
And now I'm wondering how ELSE you could possibly say "bury". Boory?
On the West Coast, "bury" sounds like "Barry." Or maybe "berry." Those sound the same to me. Anyway, "bury" rhymes with "very."
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Boory?
Anyway, "bury" rhymes with "very."
