Change a language today! (General discussion) Language Learning Forum

Change a language today!
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Language Learning Forum : General discussion

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meramarina
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Message 41 of 85

12 December 2010 at 6:10pm | IP Logged

Everybody hates English orthography! There's good reason for that, because it does often seem to be nonsensical. So, spelling reform might make it easier on us all, but if it were up to me, I'd make it more difficult, so difficult, in fact, that I'd be the only one able to spell correctly, and that would keep me consistently employed. But of course that's selfish and spelling is hard enough for me, too.

What I would really, really like is a Multilingual Magical Gender Detector that can instantly tell the gender of any word. Eliminate years of study and practice with one handy little device!

But languages would not be nearly as interesting without their peculiarities and complications, so I'll take them as they are.
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ellasevia
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Message 42 of 85

12 December 2010 at 6:12pm | IP Logged

getreallanguage wrote:

Iversen wrote:

Raari wrote:

I second the idea that English should regain common use of thou.

Me too, but only because we then can reserve "you" for the plural. In Danish we say "du", and I hope I never meet our otherwise friendly queen because she might expect me to use the old polite form "De". If I met our prime minister I would certainly just say "du".

But now we are at the pronouns: I'm sick and tired of having to say "he" and "she" - English (and a lot of other languages including my own) are in dire need of a gender neutral pronoun. Or flip a coin to decide which one of the two has to go.

Standard English already has such a thing as a gender neutral pronoun for the third person singular. It's called the 'singular they'. Ever since I found out about it I've been happily using it. It's a lot shorter and nicer than having to say 'he or she', when you want to be all gender neutral about it.

As for a 'plural you' distinct from 'singular you', nonstandard American English has many distinct forms for 'plural you'. Examples include y'all, you all, y'alls, all y'all, yous, yinz and you guys, the latter of which seems to be steadily becoming standard, at least in less formal speech. I've even heard 'you guys' on Fox News, from an editorialist with his own daily evening show. Those are examples of Subject/Object forms of these pronouns. Some of these also have their own distinct possessive forms. Isn't American English fun?

Is that really standard English? I was always told that using the 'singular they' was informal and not correct English... That doesn't keep me from using it everyday though.

For those words for a 'plural you,' the only ones that I've ever heard with any commonness are "you guys" and "y'all." The former sounds okay to me, and I probably use it myself sometimes, but the latter sounds horribly dialectal (even within American English) and annoying, as do the others on that list.
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Siberiano
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Message 43 of 85

12 December 2010 at 7:58pm | IP Logged

kyssäkaali wrote:

This is an example of how I would not want the orthography to be changed. Looks terrible. While I feel a lot of people would disagree with me, I believe English needs a massive amount of diacritics and every vowel should be represented by its own letter, not by combining two random characters.

Гайз, старт юзынг Сайрылык, ѳэ проблэм ўылл дысаппиар.
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Siberiano
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Message 44 of 85

12 December 2010 at 8:09pm | IP Logged

I'd make American dialects of Spanish, and Andaluzian too, identic to the central Spanish dialect. So that I didn't have to deal with phrases like:

"Conperdondeladama, quelachupenysiganchupando.", "Vohtamben lateneadentro."
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hrhenry
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Message 45 of 85

12 December 2010 at 8:09pm | IP Logged

Siberiano wrote:

Гайз, старт юзынг Сайрылык, ѳэ проблэм ўылл дысаппиар.

Google Translate gave that a noble try and came back with:

We are not yet able to translate from Kyrgyz to English :-)

R.
==
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leosmith
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Message 46 of 85

12 December 2010 at 8:10pm | IP Logged

Siberiano wrote:

Гайз, старт юзынг Сайрылык, ѳэ проблэм ўылл дысаппиар.

аи си зэр из стыл инов водка ин саибирия
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Siberiano
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Message 47 of 85

12 December 2010 at 8:11pm | IP Logged

xD

It's English spelled in Russian, with a few other characters. The interesting thing about Cyrillic is that in all the languages it was introduced to, it was possible to avoid phonetic collisions (like Spaniards pronouncing "Cinderella" as "Thindereya")
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Siberiano
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Message 48 of 85

12 December 2010 at 8:12pm | IP Logged

leosmith wrote:

Siberiano wrote:

Гайз, старт юзынг Сайрылык, ѳэ проблэм ўылл дысаппиар.

аи си зэр из стыл инов водка ин саибирия

щюа

Edited by Siberiano on 12 December 2010 at 8:12pm

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