The future of English

This holds relevant in continuation of some discussions that arose mid way, on English in my other thread. Given below is the copied matter from an e-mail my friend has sent me this morning.


To "europe-anise" English :
The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility.

As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan that would become known as "Euro-English". This would bring it closer to German.

In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of "k". This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter. There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f". This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible!

Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling.

Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent "e" in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away.

By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v".

During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensi bl riten styl.

Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru.

Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas.

If zis mad you smil, pleas pas on to oza pepl

So funny, Dinu!
Luckily its only a suggestion in how we "write".
Not a mandate in how we "speak".
Language 'evolves' doesn't it? One day R will replace ARE, OUR.
As far as English/American goes,,,,,, thanks to text messaging.

Evenchually, the purpus of communikashun takes priority. How it's done will not be a matter of consern at all! Yes, the langwages have evolved. English dikshonary has, not for nothing, kept on growing bigger with new words from different langwages, including Hindi (our national language) as well as other dialects. The popularity of words over the years is the reason for akseptans. In colleges and schools, Madame is being called Maam in a funny tone.

Too funny Dinu! German spelling was already "updated" to make work processing easier. I still want to circle "spelling errors" in magazines that now use the "neu Deutsch" spelling method.
To add to the confusion, if a word is mispronounced continuously by a large enough population, the mispronunciation will be added to the dictionary. LOL!
Two cases in point:
moot vs mute - moot is an adjective meaning debatable,as in a "moot point". I often hear folks pronounce this phrase as "mute point". If the point is silent (mute), how is it debatable?

fort(e) vs forte - the difference here being whether or not the e is pronounced at the end of the word. The first,where the e at the end of the work is silent, denotes strength and comes to English from old French. The second, where the e is pronounced at the end of the word, denotes loudness and is a musical term from the Italian. My old English teacher would become nearly apoplectic when one of the students would say "that's not me forte" and pronounce the silent e at the end. "We are discussing your strengths,not your ability to make noise" he would rail against the unlucky student who mispronounced this one. Needless to say, I'll never forget which pronunciation to use.
:)

Amusing, GM. It's the perfekshonists that get affekted. The 'happy-go-lucky' type never care for these alterations and just follow. Another thing that has to be added to the confusion is the doubles. The doubles, as the 'f' in difference, diffusion, etc.

Ah Dinu, once upon a time there were spelling rules to let us know how to handle these.
"If you want a short vowel sound you need to follow it with two consonants"
eg Baker vs backer

I don't think spelling rules are taught anymore.

I speak/write three varieties of English: British, American, and Canadian. Depending on the culture of the person I am communicating with, I have to remember to refer to either "lorries" or "trucks"; "handbags" or "pocketbooks" or "purses"; "the loo" or "toilets" or "bathrooms" or "washrooms"; and so on. I have to remember to put the "u" back into "labor" for the Brits and Canadians. My Canadian computer has an American spell-checker, which is very annoying. Computer spell-checkers are annoying for another reason: they sound the alert when a word is spelled incorrectly, but not when it is the wrong word. English has so many words that sound alike but are differentiated by their spelling, such as "their" and "they're", "your" and "you're", "see" and "sea", etc. Spell-checkers will never replace proof-readers!

Yes indeed, that the computer warnings are very annoying. It is because they have just a small %ge of words on hand. So we must depend on our own vocabulary instead of saying that a particular word is not in the computer. It has great limitations when it comes to the dictionary. The best option is the printed one or keep the website dictionary.com as handy as possible to consult. Most software is American and all British spelling gets a red line. I don't use the spell-check at all for that reason. You are right, June. Proof-readers can never replace their e-counterparts.

Dinu

I use the spell checker primarily to catch my typos. Some fingers are faster than others on the keyboard. I'm a great one for the article "hte".

Colour, honour, harbour, favour etc used to be spelled with the u in the US as well, at least when I was in grammar school. Not sure if this was a regional thing or not. Also not sure when they dropped them.

When did "night" begin to turn into "nite"? Now, possibly as a consequence, I see a lot of folks using the words "sight' and "site" interchangeably. I have also seen "right" spelled "rite", which is so wrong! I feel that some of the blame has to be placed on organizations that use deliberately mis-spelled words in their advertising.

" Right" became "rite" in the mid 1970's as a way to save costs when lettering road signs. Looks like the trend percolated.

I'm not against new words coming into usage, but I worry that our vocabulary is actually getting smaller because the media are afraid to use "big words" that the under-educated may not understand.

Not just the media. I've had to curtail my vocabulary at work because so few people speak polysyllabic English anymore. It's particularly dissappointing when it's your manager that is so illiterate.

When I worked in a Human Resources department a few years ago, I was shocked to discover that many University graduates (BA's) were unable to write grammatically correct "cover letters" for their (professionally prepared) resumes. BA's are the people that companies are recruiting for management. Something has gone wrong with the education and hiring systems in North America! The best-educated people I have met recently are immigrants from China and Pakistan.

The illiterate manager I was dealing with had an MBA. I have a BSc and have a far larger vocabulary. Lately I've encountered a few graduates of a local MBA mill that have clearly taken a vocabulary building course but do not know how to pronounce the words they are using. I checked my unabridged dictionary and still see "consonance" and "dissonance" pronounced with the emphasis on the first syllable: CONsonance or DISsonance. I was a business meeting in which the speaker kept referring to disSONance and conSONance.
Several folks at the meeting did not understand what was being said. The speaker was local, not from another country.

In school, we neglected grammar. There was the Wren and Martin Book that we had to buy. But I never remember having used it more than twice. By neglecting this important basic subject, we lost valuable marks (no grades for us then). I have managed all my education that way. Even now, I don't know the answers if someone asks me about anything pertaining to the correctness of a sentence 'grammar-wise'. Perhaps I have learnt by reading and writing on my own. Being in DG for the last 5+ years also has helped immensely. And in our dept., they hold me in high esteem when it comes to "English writing". My boss says "you write well", others ask me spellings when they are in doubt, another gives me passages that need editing! Some achievement for one that has no idea about grammer except the names like verb, adverb, noun, etc. And my placement is much low in ranks. My father had the same reputation in the same institution.

Another elderly writer whom I met to show an article of mine for suggestions, he opined that one has to convey what you have to, using simple words so as to be understood by a common man. I liked that. A good friend - who in fact was responsible for inspiring me - is a writer himself. He is known as the 'vocabulary master'. So many difficult words are at his command. That's his style, his strength and knack. Sometimes when he writes a letter to me with such words, I have to consult a dictionary. He's been a writer since his school days!! He used to show me his letters and articles published in the papers and magazines even before he stepped into college. He's an inspiration to me nevertheless, though I cannot match him anywhere in vocabulary.

I agree that one should never stop learning. School gave me basic knowledge that became the foundation for everything I learned in later life. My teachers knew that discipline is necessary for study. I hated the strict rules, and "escaped" from the "prison" of a British Grammar School as soon as I had taken my General Certificate of Education exams at age 16. Then, I could not imagine extending my education to University level. Now, I wish I had....but that is water under the bridge, as they say. I have always loved reading and writing, and my life is filled with books. I buy books every week, read several at once, and one room of my house is full of the books that I might want to read again. Non-fiction subjects I enjoy are: gardening (of course), geography, travel stories, history, archaeology, food, and language. Have you read Steven Pinker's excellent book "The Language Instinct"?

Interesting. I'm happy to note your persistent interest in reading. I'm not a very avid reader of books. But read articles in the papers and magazines, esp. I was reading Abraham Lincoln's biography, but it is aborted. Gandhi's "My experiments with truth" is also aborted with about 20% still to go. With the advent of the PC, reading has taken a back seat. Am unable to catch up with the daily papers as well. Watering the plants, house maintenance, office, cricket... all take most of my time.