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Great Vowel Shift

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Re: Great Vowel Shift

#41

Post by sltkr »

anticristi wrote: post #19
ngokevin wrote: post #16

Here's what it'd look like (taken from Reddit): "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…

I dont vant tu teik saids, but German haz diklention und konjugation, vich maiks it a suboptimal lingua franka. Not tu mention meni iregular verbs. Mai vot gos tu som nordik languag like Svedish.

Does German have (significantly) more irregular verbs than English?

Re: Great Vowel Shift

#42

Post by anticristi »

mywittyname wrote: post #36
ngokevin wrote: post #16

Here's what it'd look like (taken from Reddit): "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 is cute, up until the point where it starts reaching and makes changes which are important for the sound of the language. The e in many words isn't silent, it's a modifier. Kit and kite are different words. "th", "z", "w", and "v" are all really different sounds. While certain accents (or children) do occasionally conflate them, in basically every case, it's technically incorrect. Zebra, Webra, Vebra, and Thebra…

So basically English spelling is trapped in a local minimum. An small change will make spelling closer to some dialect, and further from most other dialects. The current situation is suboptimal for everyone, but at least it's a Nash equilibrium.

Re: Great Vowel Shift

#43

Post by mywittyname »

gxqoz wrote: post #20
ngokevin wrote: post #16

Here's what it'd look like (taken from Reddit): "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…

The Economist had a recent article on why spelling reform never really gains traction. Basically, those in power to change it have no incentive to do so: https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2021/04/10/why-its-...

People also fucking haaaate changes in language. Especially older people.

I had a 85 year old (yes) technical writing professor in college who insisted that we do our papers using the "Queen's English" that he learned growing up in Catholic school. He even went so far as to write a damn book outlining his rules for English writing because none of the existing style guides out there matched his view of the language.

You'll never get people like that to adopt any sort of change to the language.

Re: Great Vowel Shift

#44

Post by gxqoz »

anticristi wrote: post #31
gxqoz wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

John McWhorter has argued a few times on the Lexicon Valley podcast that although English has many problems (especially spelling), it's not a terrible lingua franca. Many complexities from other languages do not exist in it. Obviously, any artificial language is going to be much simpler. But these have never caught on for a variety of reasons.

I don't know John McWhorter, but is this the "second languages are hard" argument? I tend to get annoyed when people compare the relative difficulty of learning a language they spoke 16 365 18 hours vs ... 18 hours.

McWhorter is a linguist (as well as a political commentator). His argument isn't that English is easier because people already speak it natively. Instead, English lost a lot of its complexity (especially around suffixes) during the Viking invasions when it was taken up by adult speakers.

This doesn't mean that learning the language is easy--no language really is. And English has some things that make it harder to master, especially its very large vocabulary.

Some of it is covered in this recent episode: https://slate.com/podcasts/lexicon-valley/2021/03/english-la...

Re: Great Vowel Shift

#46

Post by hashmush »

nemetroid wrote: post #25

The pre-shift vowels are quite similar to how modern Swedish is pronounced.

For the front ones, maybe. But for the back ones Old Swedish went through "stora vokaldansen" (the great vowel dance) leading to "ut" (out) being pronounced /ʉːt/ rather than /uːt/.

Re: Great Vowel Shift

#47

Post by soldehierro »

dkdbejwi383 wrote: post #27
anticristi wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont vant tu teik saids, but German haz diklention und konjugation, vich maiks it a suboptimal lingua franka. Not tu mention meni iregular verbs. Mai vot gos tu som nordik languag like Svedish.

You're not going to get a lot of support here, unless you change your vote to Rust.

Esperanto > Rust

Re: Great Vowel Shift

#49

Post by soldehierro »

keiferski wrote: post #24
gxqoz wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

John McWhorter has argued a few times on the Lexicon Valley podcast that although English has many problems (especially spelling), it's not a terrible lingua franca. Many complexities from other languages do not exist in it. Obviously, any artificial language is going to be much simpler. But these have never caught on for a variety of reasons.

English is a great lingua franca IMO because of its inherent decentralization and willingness to accept new words. There is no academy regulating its use, as is the case with French and Spanish.

In the case of Spanish, I can't speak for French, having an academy (the RAE in this case) regulating the language sounds like a problem on paper, but really isn't a problem in practice. The RAE accepts Americanisms and treats American Spanish just as it would European Spanish (referring to the continent(s), not the country) and encourages lingusitic diversity. Anglicisms are only discouraged when an acceptable Spanish alternative is in WIDE use (but never prohibited, as can be evidenced by the sheer quantity of anglicisms in the Spanish language.)

Spanish is very willing to accept new words, and as diverse as English in terms of decentralization. Grammar doesn't make or break a lingua franca, number of speakers does, which is where English really shines.

So what does the RAE do you ask? They write grammars and compile dictionaries, describe phonology and answer people's questions on Twitter. Just like what Merriam Webster or Oxford would do, but the RAE has official backing and creates consensus among the hispanophone countries. English is a regulated language, just not officially regulated.

Re: Great Vowel Shift

#50

Post by rootbear »

anticristi wrote: post #42
mywittyname wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is cute, up until the point where it starts reaching and makes changes which are important for the sound of the language. The e in many words isn't silent, it's a modifier. Kit and kite are different words. "th", "z", "w", and "v" are all really different sounds. While certain accents (or children) do occasionally conflate them, in basically every case, it's technically incorrect. Zebra, Webra, Vebra, and Thebra…

So basically English spelling is trapped in a local minimum. An small change will make spelling closer to some dialect, and further from most other dialects. The current situation is suboptimal for everyone, but at least it's a Nash equilibrium.

I personally think there's a lot of room for improvements that would work in nearly all English dialects. The "ough" mess, for example, could stand some clean up. But in general, yes, there is too much variation in English around the world to "fix" it now.
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