http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11304255



Interesting article.

I find myself caught between two mindsets. On the one hand I'm a long-standing Grammar and Spelling Police Officer and want people to speak and, especially, write "correct" English. On the other hand I see English starting to lose some of its unnecessary peculiarities and standardise organically.

For instance, take the word "Through". Having married a German and having been a teacher, I know just how stupid that spelling is and part of me rejoices when I see it spelled "Thru" - a spelling that would be much easier to learn and read. However at the same time part of me cries a little at someone else somehow not conforming to an arbitrary "standard".

It seems funny to me that I keep thinking of "English" as somehow fixed and constant. Then I talk to my wife and find out just how difficult English is to learn and think surely we could make it easier. But then I try to learn German and realise just how easy some aspects of English are (two articles, non-productive cases, one second-person pronoun etc.). I wrote my own Dvorak keyboard layout because I couldn't write Umlauts easily with my old one; only after that did I find out that umlauts are lazy printers' shorthand for a missing "e".

I can't help wondering, therefore, just how much of our language we could afford to lose or let change. After all it might just get easier.

Thoughts?

That sounds like the ending of a Sex and the City episode!

As for languages I am truly disgusted by the quality of English spoken and written by younger people today. I'm more worried about loss of standards in schools than English turning in to slang.

You see that's the thing. I could go thru your last line and find lots of mistakes in it - I can see four straight away. However I understand it perfectly well and so does it matter all that much?

I think we forget just how much of "Queen's English" is already slang e.g. the word "English", the phrase "Queen's English and the abbreviation "e.g.". Hell, English itself came about as a result of Old German ceasing to be spoken properly.

Over here we have the sheer nonsense of funding Ulster-Scots and Irish for the ten people who 'speak' each, and I'm told Gerry Adams' speeches in Irish are especially laughable too...

Oh the irony.

Itz all jus tawkin innit m8. Yous can understand wot im sayin so shut up.

brap brap

I completely understand the changing nature of language and I dont expect QE (especially on a forum!) but some basic grammar and spelling here and there makes me happy.

Your / you're / their / they're / there / dual / duel ........ that kind of thing!

Not really.

It was a reference to the first post:

Over at CVG there was a Fanboy war with one person declaring:-

"your stupid"

But that only indicates poor education rather than a feeble mind surely?

Not really, I suppose, if you accept you're making your own mistakes - which given the last sentence of your quote, suggests that you do and are disquieted by it.

Either way, dying languages, eh?

I'm in two minds on the issue. It's up to the people to keep a tongue alive. It'd be a shame if it passes and we lose the knowledge of it.

As for a 'standardised' English, I'm all for it.

But, but, but....

...does it depend on why the language died? For instance there are so few Irish and Gaelic speakers because of the actions of the British Government. Should the English therefore have to pay to to keep some form of Gaelic alive? Would it have died even if the English hadn't tried to supress it?


But will it lose something in the standardisation?

And who gets to choose?

If it were up to me, I have a long list of things that would die and other good practices that would be borrowed from other languages.

The popularity of a language to the detriment of another is hardly the fault of the people who speak it, more the fault of the people who chose to adopt it.



It might not lose anything, but it gains all the benefits of a standard - widespread understanding. What's the point (outside anthropology) of a language spoken by a dozen folk in a village somewhere?

We get to choose, as it happens. We get to choose by the usage we choose to employ, and the success of it's uptake. Overtime, it becomes incorporated into the language, and is officially recognised by various bodies who pay attention to such things. Such as the Oxford Dictionary and it's inclusion of the word 'chillax'.

I can picture Carrie's cursor flashing, now you've said that!

I have to disagree. As much as I hate the yoof corrupting our language, culture is transient - language included. It's a living language because it's adapting and changing all the time. Just because the pace of change has increased of late, doesn't make it any different to any other language. Elements of slang and foreign language or regional phrases are continually adapted and included. A hell of a lot of French is present in modern English anyway.

The fact is:
Young people want things to change,
Middle aged people want things to remain unchanged and,
Old people want things to be the way they were.

Languages evolve, but grammar is very important for basic understanding, imagine if one decided to only have one "as", 'your' etc. It'd be incredibly difficult to understand what's happening.
I like the current spelling of languages, because it tells a story, possibly because i studied latin and some greek and i like trying to find roots when i'm not sure how to spell smtg. Simplified form would make it incredibly more difficult to link words together and learn foreign languages i believe

On the one had I'd say let it die, it's a natural process. On the other hand I'd say study it, write down the findings and at least keep it on life support incase someone wants/needs to use it in the future.

As to English, I know I'm not a perfect speaker of English, or a perfect writer, but I hope that most of what I say is legible. I am, perhaps, a little heavy handed with the commas on here, but then on here I tend to write with a bit more of a conversational tone.