spelling reform in English speaking countries

On January 29 2011 00:25 Perscienter wrote:
English is the most important lingua franca in the world and it still lacks a coherent spelling and pronunciation. Especially the former needs to be reformed. Since English has been introduced as a second language in so many countries, it often deteriorates in this regions. Then again not even the U.S.-Americans speak Oxford British English. They had to invent their own style for whatever reasons in the first place.

My suggestion is this: adopt the British spelling. U.S.-exclusive vocabulary should be included in the language. Only one English language should be taught in today's schools over the world.

Is it really so difficult to write harbour with a 'u'?

What do you think?

On January 29 2011 00:39 nalgene wrote:
There's no set rules for English pronunciation and you would only learn them later rather than early on.

Prefix/Suffix aren't taught with a set system either. [ VES ] instead of [ FS ]

Dys, Un, Im, Melan,

The 'u' does change the pronunciation.

The spelling does change it to a long vowel in [O] ---> [OU]

'payed' is wrong, but there's a different sound to 'paid'

On January 29 2011 00:28 Hawk wrote:
Extra u's in words be stupid. Plus, American English is part of this country's identity. It reminds the Brits every day that we are so awesome that we needed our own specialized language to convey this awesomeness.

also, there are hardly any kind of issues that arise from this. Mostly Brits or Americans telling one another that they spell like retards, that's about it. Either spelling is understood by either group

On January 29 2011 00:29 ghermination wrote:
Yeah and make those damned Peruvians, Chileans, Argentineans, Paraguayans, Uruguayans, and members of dozens of other Spanish speaking countries speak REAL Spanish! Not their stupid made up dialects!

Countries change languages based on their own culture. Dialects are just natural and it's not possible to get rid of them.

On January 29 2011 00:39 Shockk wrote:


We've had a spelling reform in Germany not so long ago, remember? The goal was to simplify the language and to make it easier to learn and use for non-germans.

The result was a horrible failures. It's been 15 years and people in Germany/Austria/Switzerland still refuse to use the new version, schools were not sure how to handle things (and some still are). While it may have been made easier for some, it produced some linguistic abominations ("delphin" -> "delfin" comes to mind *shudder*).

Languages should develop naturally, and they're certainly not something that could be regulated. Let alone internationally.

On January 29 2011 00:25 Perscienter wrote:
English is the most important lingua franca in the world and it still lacks a coherent spelling and pronunciation. Especially the former needs to be reformed. Since English has been introduced as a second language in so many countries, it often deteriorates in this regions. Then again not even the U.S.-Americans speak Oxford British English. They had to invent their own style for whatever reasons in the first place.

My suggestion is this: adopt the British spelling. U.S.-exclusive vocabulary should be included in the language. Only one English language should be taught in today's schools over the world.

Is it really so difficult to write harbour with a 'u'?

What do you think?

On January 29 2011 01:02 Jemmani wrote:
Spain spanish and mexican spanish are very different also. Does that mean anyone speaking one or the other should change?

On January 29 2011 00:25 Perscienter wrote:
They had to invent their own style for whatever reasons in the first place.

spell things properly dammit!

blue with an E
through with an ough
colour with a u


it clearly(doesnt) make(s) sense why we made english more complicated than it needs to be

silly americans making things easier!

On January 29 2011 01:20 Duban wrote:


You do realize that we spell it blue, and through right? Yeah there's no u in color though.

On January 29 2011 01:14 Perscienter wrote:

Yes, that is very annoying. Especially when poorer countries deviate, because they often don't have infrastructure to develop and supply their own official sub class of the language. They just mess things up and confuse the people.

On January 29 2011 01:06 kazansky wrote:



I actually don't understand your problem.
For international english, OBE is the spelling of choice, so its normed.
Well, the americans spell differently when they're with themselves. But who is bothered?
As a German you might know that Austria and Switzerland has a different spelling aswell, and it is no problem whatsoever.

On January 29 2011 01:11 Cloud wrote:
You should be more worried about internet lingo which is actually destroying the English language.

On January 29 2011 01:17 gongryong wrote:
Language only needs two things to be successful: to communicate and be flexible.
The communication part may not always be absolute hence the second part. Yet, flexibility is itself checked by the limits of communication. Language can only remain relevant if it evolves with the context and consciousness of the users. A fixed and final language easily dies or becomes a novelty.

On January 29 2011 01:17 gongryong wrote:
As an aside, English as a lingua franca is a function of power, and not an innate strength of the language.

On January 29 2011 00:25 Perscienter wrote:
English is the most important lingua franca in the world and it still lacks a coherent spelling and pronunciation. Especially the former needs to be reformed. Since English has been introduced as a second language in so many countries, it often deteriorates in this regions. Then again not even the U.S.-Americans speak Oxford British English. They had to invent their own style for whatever reasons in the first place.

My suggestion is this: adopt the British spelling. U.S.-exclusive vocabulary should be included in the language. Only one English language should be taught in today's schools over the world.

Is it really so difficult to write harbour with a 'u'?

What do you think?

On January 29 2011 01:34 NoobSkills wrote:


English as a language has been introduced as a second language because of the USA not because of England. So, if people are learning English to talk to those from the USA then it would probably be a good idea to learn the United State's way of spelling and pronuciation. I myself know 3 languages and all of them have many dialects. It doesn't all form into one narrow picture just because we want it to.

Is it really so difficult to exclude the 'u'?

On January 29 2011 01:45 SweeTLemonS[TPR] wrote:


It makes more sense to drop the u, because it isn't pronounced, and it's easier to write without the "u."

I agree to the issue of internet lingo needing to be abolished. I hate people who say "We aren't in English class." No, we aren't, but you should still make your writing understandable, and when you type like a fucking retard, it's not understandable. It's barely above jibberish at that point, and most of what gets written on the internet is jibberish. Seriously, how fucking hard is it to hit "y" and "o" before the "u?" GAH! It drives me crazy. It took me like 3 seconds to write "you" with quotes around each letter, it takes less than a second to write out the whole word. It's like Newspeak from 1984, I swear.

I know there isn't really a correlation between proper spelling and intelligence, but I'll be damned if I've ever met someone I consider very intelligent that types like a fucking retard.

it still lacks a coherent spelling and pronunciation.... adopt the British spelling.

On January 29 2011 00:29 KwarK wrote:
I'm much more worried about 'payed' and 'layed'. It seems I see these abominations more regularly than I see the correct spelling recently and it makes me sad. Before we get to work on using just one set of acceptable spellings we should teach people to spell.

On January 29 2011 01:21 SpiritoftheTunA wrote:

Our traffic signs and fast food signs spell it thru, tho.

On January 29 2011 02:08 Landok wrote:
And its Defense, not defence!!!!!!

On January 29 2011 02:15 KwarK wrote:

Don't be silly. The American spelling of defence is attack.

On January 29 2011 02:15 KwarK wrote:

Don't be silly. The American spelling of defence is attack.

On January 29 2011 00:59 GloomyBeaR wrote:
I used to teach ESL. Teaching the difference between British and American English is a pain in the ass, but that's what dialects do. Also, there is no Academie Francaise (sp? lol) for English, i.e. no governing body determines what is official. The highest level of authority you have to report to is your grammar teacher.

Interesting note: apparently MSWord thinks all passive sentences are grammatically incorrect

On January 29 2011 01:28 Perscienter wrote:

I have no problem with that. Our German (unified) language still changes. If there was a governing body for English language as a whole, then this would not impede the evolution of the English language.

It's not only a function of power. English was elected to be the lingua franca because of its clear alphabet for example. It's really to most people less difficult to learn than Spanish and especially German and French.

On January 29 2011 01:28 Perscienter wrote:


No one is for themselves any more.
What's the difference between Austrian, Switzerland and German spelling?

On January 29 2011 02:08 Landok wrote:
And its Defense, not defence!!!!!!

On January 29 2011 02:53 Empyrean wrote:


Both are acceptable. Using the third person possessive when you actually mean to use the contraction of the third person singular "it is" is not.

On January 29 2011 02:33 muse5187 wrote:
I don't really see the problem, it's not like you cant communicate because of spelling or pronunciation. Besides inside American English there are multiple spellings/pronunciations for words. Kwark our parents always tell us "the best defense is an offense" is that an American saying?

On January 29 2011 02:59 eight.BiT wrote:
Anyone in the US notice the kids who try and be a little different and use the extra 'u'? (like colour) What's the deal? -_-

On January 29 2011 02:59 eight.BiT wrote:
Anyone in the US notice the kids who try and be a little different and use the extra 'u'? (like colour) What's the deal? -_-

On January 29 2011 03:04 pfods wrote:


It depends on how you're taught. For whatever reason (can't remember when I learned it) I spell theater theatre and dialog as dialogue. I used to spell defense as defence until people on broodwar made fun of me for it.

I don't think it has anything to do with "kids" trying to be different. I do it completely subconsciously.

On January 29 2011 00:25 Perscienter wrote:
English is the most important lingua franca in the world and it still lacks a coherent spelling and pronunciation. Especially the former needs to be reformed. Since English has been introduced as a second language in so many countries, it often deteriorates in this regions. Then again not even the U.S.-Americans speak Oxford British English. They had to invent their own style for whatever reasons in the first place.

My suggestion is this: adopt the British spelling. U.S.-exclusive vocabulary should be included in the language. Only one English language should be taught in today's schools over the world.

Is it really so difficult to write harbour with a 'u'?

What do you think?

On January 29 2011 03:11 Jerubaal wrote:


Could be partially my own connotations but...

I sat down in the theater.
I like to act in the theatre.

This wall will act as a good defence.
We will mount a strong defense.

Click off the dialog box.
Wilde writes some pretty dialogue.

On January 29 2011 00:35 HardCorey wrote:
I think that Grammar is considerably more important than spelling. English grammar is very complicated and most people don't even understand the basics and just assume that they are grammatically correct because it, "just sounds right."

On January 29 2011 03:36 ggrrg wrote:
I don't see any particular reason why British English should be adopted all over the world. You haven't given one either. On the other hand, a worldwide readjustment to BE would cause complications in all countries involved.



The words of a man that hasn't studied any other languages.
English grammar is kind of easy in comparison to Romance languages, a piece of cake in comparison to Slavic and Scandinavian languages, and not even comparable to something like Finnish.

Mark Twain:
"My philological studies have satisfied me that a gifted person ought to learn English (barring spelling and pronouncing) in thirty hours, French in thirty days, and German in thirty years."

On January 29 2011 03:16 pfods wrote:


No.

Spelling and pronunciation are not an issue in English. I can understand someone from Britain, Canada, and Australia just fine. The slightly different way they spell things isn't at all difficult for me to understand, or the majority of people. You may think otherwise being from Germany, where regional dialects vary a lot more(the exception in English is Glaswegian. Seriously, someone explain that nonsense to me).

The only possible issue is slang words, which, in the age of instantaneous communication, british slang becomes known over here within minutes, and vice versa. We no longer live in a time where languages develop separately for months or years at a time, like with british and american english changing so much.

The only real problem English has is grammar, which is probably impossible to fix without destroying the language.

Examples:

Homophones are really annoying
Words like 'so' that have no meaning or all the meaning, depending on how they're used
Contractions are weird things
Exceptions. Holy shit does English have a million rules, each with a million exceptions in certain circumstances.

These are only really a problem for people who are learning English as a second language, though.

On January 29 2011 03:41 pfods wrote:


I'm sorry but english grammar is pretty much the #1 reason why so much of the world has trouble learning english

On January 29 2011 03:50 Fraidnot wrote:

I'd say that spelling is English's greatest problem! So many words are spelled completely different then how they actually sound. on top of that we have like 900,000 words and there is not a single spelling rule that holds true for them all. This is partially because English devours everything it comes in contact with and we have thousands of words with different origins, all of which have different ways to spell things. If these words had unified spelling rules it would make English so much simpler.

Grammar isn't half the problem, you can screw that up and people will still understand what you're talking about. If you mix up good and well, people will still understand what you're saying. That's not true for every language out there. You mix up the o sound with ou in Hungarian they will stare you down because they don't know what you're even trying to say.

On January 29 2011 02:50 kazansky wrote:
Example: Kassa. Look it up if you don't know, not part of the topic.

On January 29 2011 03:52 NoobSkills wrote:


Every language has it's own rules. English has very little variation in those rules. I before E except after C. Sure there are 5 words that do not follow that rule, but in every other language there are 50. Now as far as sentence structure not following the norm of most languages, new grammar rules, vocab, ect it would be a hard language to pick up whereas learning French after knowing Spanish would be much easier. But then again why would you want to learn French.

Spelling isn't an issue in English, especially between different dialects.

On January 29 2011 00:44 theSAiNT wrote:


I'm afraid that's just not true. English is NOT a phonetic language (whatever your teachers may tell you.) The pronunciation of words is not a direct function of spelling unlike in some other languages (Spanish I believe is close to phonetic).

Harbor (American) and Harbour (UK) should be pronounced the same.

On January 29 2011 04:11 Shikyo wrote:

Yep, I know pretty well since Finnish is 100% a phonetic language and English is a complete opposite. In Finnish, you can say a word even if you've never heard it before since the letters are always pronounced the exact same way. In English, the difference between the "e" in "envy" and "cheese" is quite clear.

English isn't anywhere close to phonetic. -.-

On January 29 2011 03:36 ggrrg wrote:
I don't see any particular reason why British English should be adopted all over the world. You haven't given one either. On the other hand, a worldwide readjustment to BE would cause complications in all countries involved.



The words of a man that hasn't studied any other languages.
English grammar is kind of easy in comparison to Romance languages, a piece of cake in comparison to Slavic and Scandinavian languages, and not even comparable to something like Finnish.

Mark Twain:
"My philological studies have satisfied me that a gifted person ought to learn English (barring spelling and pronouncing) in thirty hours, French in thirty days, and German in thirty years."

On January 29 2011 04:13 domovoi wrote:

Let's not get carried away. Chinese is nowhere close to phonetic. English is pretty phonetic (especially its consonants), but there are a billion exceptions/alternate pronunciations one must memorize.

On January 29 2011 04:28 Achilles wrote:
I didn't think any American spellings were taught in schools

On January 29 2011 04:29 yema1 wrote:
If there's anything that I dislike about British English it's the extra u's. The American version is more correct in my opinion because it's more like Latin.

Color
Dolor
Honos, honoris (gen)

The Brits fucked up at some point and decided to add superfluous letters, that doesn't mean we should.

On January 29 2011 04:29 yema1 wrote:
If there's anything that I dislike about British English it's the extra u's. The American version is more correct in my opinion because it's more like Latin.

Color
Dolor
Honos, honoris (gen)

The Brits fucked up at some point and decided to add superfluous letters, that doesn't mean we should.

On January 29 2011 04:29 yema1 wrote:
If there's anything that I dislike about British English it's the extra u's. The American version is more correct in my opinion because it's more like Latin.

Color
Dolor
Honos, honoris (gen)

The Brits fucked up at some point and decided to add superfluous letters, that doesn't mean we should.

On January 29 2011 04:29 Jerubaal wrote:



Some imprecise language here. The attribute of 'phoneticness' they are comparing is the regularity of the letters to their pronunciation. Chinese doesn't even belong in the discussion because it's not a phonetic language.

On January 29 2011 04:16 elkram wrote:
Mark Twain - "A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling"
- For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g
j" anomali wonse and for all.

Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli.

Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud
hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.

Mark Twain has got you beat on the spelling issue by at least 100 years.

On January 29 2011 04:37 Myles wrote:


This right here wins the thread.

English may be a hard to learn language, but the main reason is do to our nonsensical grammar. Spelling might make it difficult to look at a written word and say it properly, but the grammar makes it hard to understand what is being said at all regardless of how it's spelled.

On January 29 2011 04:49 Maenander wrote:

So what is so hard about the grammar? Am I missing something? English actually uses a lot of great simplifications, I like it.

On January 29 2011 00:25 Perscienter wrote:
English is the most important lingua franca in the world and it still lacks a coherent spelling and pronunciation. Especially the former needs to be reformed. Since English has been introduced as a second language in so many countries, it often deteriorates in this regions. Then again not even the U.S.-Americans speak Oxford British English. They had to invent their own style for whatever reasons in the first place.

My suggestion is this: adopt the British spelling. U.S.-exclusive vocabulary should be included in the language. Only one English language should be taught in today's schools over the world.

Is it really so difficult to write harbour with a 'u'?

What do you think?

Since English has been introduced as a second language in so many countries, it often deteriorates in this regions

On January 29 2011 05:04 Myles wrote:


I can't comment on how German works as I only learned it for a week in high school, but compared to Spanish our verb conjugations are plain stupid. Someone earlier posted a bit on it, but many times you have to add an extra word while other times you don't. We also have so many words that are said and spelled the same but mean very different things. And of course how everyone loves to say we break our own rules way more than other languages(though I've heard that its an exaggeration, so I can't say for sure).

On January 29 2011 05:31 Ownos wrote:


Hahahaha

English deteriotes in THIS country alone. We have like 73% literacy rate.

On January 29 2011 05:53 tofucake wrote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_the_United_States
Read a bit.

Literacy:

definition: age 15 and over can read and write
total population: 99%
male: 99%
female: 99% (2003 est.)

On January 29 2011 05:06 tofucake wrote:

After a bit of time, you'll also have no problem with Irish, Scottish, and English.

Nobody will ever understand Bostonian.

On January 29 2011 05:50 Perscienter wrote:
Yes, it would lead to quicker learning.

theater or theatre
specter or spectre
honor or honour
dialogue or dialog
defence or defense
in a team or on a team
drugs or drug
brackets or squared brackets

JUST CHOSE ONE OF THEM! NO MORE FANCY MY PEOPLE ARE SO SPECIAL WE NEED A DIFFERENT SPELLING, PLEASE!

Changing spectre into specter only happens, if you do not know how to spell an 'r'.

Fall and autumn are allowed to co-exist.

It is an issue for me, because I'm reading a lot on the Internet. Many sources even mix the two versions up.

On January 29 2011 00:39 Shockk wrote:Languages should develop naturally, and they're certainly not something that could be regulated. Let alone internationally.

On January 29 2011 06:24 CheezDip wrote:
I would like a new word to represent a singular person of unspecified gender. Not a fan of the singular useage of They, Their, Them.

On January 29 2011 00:29 KwarK wrote:
I'm much more worried about 'payed' and 'layed'. It seems I see these abominations more regularly than I see the correct spelling recently and it makes me sad. Before we get to work on using just one set of acceptable spellings we should teach people to spell.

On January 29 2011 06:34 HansMoleman wrote:
No, we must fight for individualism. A Global ANYTHING is a bad thing.

On January 29 2011 02:15 KwarK wrote:

Don't be silly. The American spelling of defence is attack.

On January 29 2011 06:18 Dagobert wrote:
May I refer you to the fact that grammar and spelling mistakes come naturally, while correct grammar and spelling is the result of adherence to regulations?

On January 29 2011 06:39 couches wrote:
Accents, local slangs and local dialects will still change the language even if there's a standard. There's no stopping that.


honor
color
judgment
harbor
or gtfo



I wouldn't mind getting rid of boston accents fwiw.

On January 29 2011 07:09 Gummy wrote:

We should make the written language phonetic so that people can actually read!
Wi shud mayk Thuh wriitiin layngwij fuhnetiic sou That pipuhl kan akchwuhli rid.

On January 29 2011 06:40 Jerubaal wrote:
+ Show Spoiler +

I must apologize (which isn't really an apology), but this sentence really jumped out at me. 'doesn't really have much of a linguistic history...Poet, play-writes authors': What the fuck?

And if the cultures around the world aren't exposed to English through commercialism- Coke, McDonalds and Cher- then how pray tell are they going to be exposed to it?

You're also making the archaeologist's mistake of thinking that the peak of the culture is representative of the whole culture. I assure you a gratuitous amount of shit has been written in British English. That no one bothered to save it doesn't mean that every chimney-sweep read Alexander Pope. To compare the collective legacy of British literature to today's lowest forms is misleading.

On January 29 2011 07:39 Scrimpton wrote:


Sorry if that's how it reads.

However i feel your being a bit presumptuous in assuming that I believe "the peak of culture is representative of the whole culture"
I feel you have been put on the defensive by my statement, which i suppose was bound to happen to somebodfy at somepoint, but I'd liken it to admitting that.. compared to egypt, Britain doesn't have the same level of historical architecture. Sure we have some impressive buildings and structures, wonderful engineers, but i don't think big ben is compatible to the pyramids.

In the same vein I don't think you can compare 100-200 years of American authorship to 1000+ years of Germanic/Anglo Germanic, renaissance and modern English pennings.

Again this isn't to diminish what has been achieved culturally within the field of writing for America, but more to shed some light and respect onto the work such as Cædmon's Hymn, possibly 1500 years old, and one of the first if not THE FIRST historic recorded anglo-saxon poets, beowulf estimated at around 1000ad, And this is skipping earlier works from scotland Involving tales and writings of Pictish kings and battles.

Perhaps my Comparison of Orwell -> Meyer comes across unfair, I'd suggest that it is unfair to cast aside 1500 years of literature simple because your culture wasn't around for 1200 years of that time.
Again not a slight against american culture, more a sign of respect and awe at the germanic languages themself.

IF this comes off overly pompous and professorial.. then.. FUCK YEAR.
if it comes off as the drivvel of a knobend, then yeah i'll have to accept that

On January 29 2011 06:18 Dagobert wrote:

May I refer you to the fact that grammar and spelling mistakes come naturally, while correct grammar and spelling is the result of adherence to regulations?

English is a language with so-called opaque (also called 'deep') pronunciation. Since the English writing system uses both morphological as well as phonological cues to form words, it's referred to as a morphophonological transcription. What this means is that half the time you can derive the meaning of a word from the way it's written, even if this gives you no clue whatsoever about how to pronounce it. This is true both for general stress patterns ('centrifugal', 'spherical' or just simply 'guitar', which is pronounced with a iambic, not the trochaic stress pattern which is more common) as well as syllabic pronunciation.

Just compare [to], [too] and [two], [there], [their] and [they're]. Probably two of the most frequently violated sets of words sounding alike. Maybe a result of phonemic poverty of the English language, who knows. To reiterate, language requires regulation in order to be intelligible.

(Indian English for instance is barely intelligible to foreigners since Indians make frequent use of 'unnatural' abbreviations of words as a result of 'popularisation' of certain terms.)

On January 29 2011 06:38 Scrimpton wrote:



communication is key to advancement of anything.
the speed of our technological advancements is largely thanks to the easing and speed of global communication. Now imagine this, but with everyone speaking the same language and nothing being misinterpreted by translations that dont have direct equivalents etc.

You can stay "individual" by wearing your skinny jeans and dying your hear, but in this topic, a global language would only serve to open borders and opportunities.

Feel free to argue against that point, I'd be interested to see if there is another side to this.

On January 29 2011 03:41 pfods wrote:


I'm sorry but english grammar is pretty much the #1 reason why so much of the world has trouble learning english

On January 29 2011 08:27 ggrrg wrote:


This is not supposed to sound rude, but I'm absolutely certain that you have never learned any foreign language.
Grammar rules in English are not only very few but also very simple.
First of all there is basically no conjugations in English with "be" being the only exception I can think of of the top of my head and of course the added "s" in 3rd person simple present:
simple past:
I/you/he/she/it/we/you/they went/played/sang/etc.
simple future I:
I/you/he/she/it/we/you/they will go/play/sing/etc.
And it's the same in all other tenses. In languages like French or German (and many more as a matter of fact) you conjugate differently for every person and for all tenses. There are of course some rules but there are also many irregular verbs, which increases the difficulty by a lot.

In English it's also pretty clear cut when to use every tense (past and future progressive tenses are somewhat tricky but neither are they a necessity to speak fluently nor are they that difficult). In French for example it's a total pain in the ass to figure out, how to utilize tenses properly (especially past tenses and subjonctif).

Another thing that makes English significantly easier than any language in Europe that I'm aware of is the lack of genders. In other languages you have to learn the gender for every single word you know (In French/Spanish/Italian only 2 genders, German/Bulgarian/Russian amongst others even 3 genders).

In the end, the main reason (at least in my eyes, but I'm certain that many people will agree with me) that makes English grammar look like a joke in comparison to a multitude of other languages is the lack of declensions. That's tables upon tables of grammatic rules that you have to learn for all cases in a given language. For example, in German you have 4 cases, in Latin - 5, in Russian - 6, in Finnish - 15. For somebody who's never had to deal with declensions, I guess, it's not even possible to imagine how hard it is to learn all the rules and irregularities related to them. A little anecdote that I believe could help you at least get a glimpse on this problem: I know dozens of people who come from different European countries and have intensely studied German for years in high school. Those people have come to Germany and have been living here for years (many of them study in the same university I do) and not a single one can speak without making any mistakes with declensions because of the insane difficulty they bear.


In my opinion, the main difficulty in the English language is the spelling and the pronunciation, because both lack rules (or at least have too many exceptions). Unlike German or Bulgarian, in English you rarely spell a word the way you pronounce it. The lack of rules for pronunciation also complicates things (e.g. "ea": cleave vs meadow).
Another difficulty in English is the extensive use of prepositions after verbs (e.g. come in, come out, come off, come on, come about, come along, come by, etc). This is one of the most difficult things in the English language, and rarely seen in any other language. However, you really don't need to know all of those different forms to speak correctly and fluently.


I am not a native English speaker. In fact, it's only my third language. My mother tongue is Bulgarian. I learned to speak German and English fluently and have studied French, Spanish and Latin. From my experience, I can assure you that the English grammar is by far the easiest one. French and Spanish grammar rules are probably the next ones that follow in difficulty, but still significantly more complicated than English. As far as German and Bulgarian grammar is concerned, I deem it impossible for most people to learn to use it correctly unless they have moved and lived there at age 10-11 or younger.

On January 29 2011 08:38 Jerubaal wrote:
Clearly we should just all speak Akkadian.

The only good language is a dead language.

On January 29 2011 01:14 Perscienter wrote:

Yes, that is very annoying. Especially when poorer countries deviate, because they often don't have infrastructure to develop and supply their own official sub class of the language. They just mess things up and confuse the people.

On January 29 2011 13:51 pfods wrote:


I've studied arabic and spanish, and a little german and japanese.

Prepositions are grammar, by the way.

And I really don't believe you've studied english extensively. Being a native speaker, and having had to study my own grammar, I can assure you it is very complicated, and rife with rules and exceptions. Verb conjugation in english is varied in almost every word and there are far more examples than just to be as how conjugation changes.

But there is more to grammar than conjugation, and not a lot of it has to do necessarily with how 'complicated' it is, but sometimes just how different it is. Plus. you have the added bonus of being a gamer, which GREATLY increases your learning of basic english.

On January 29 2011 08:04 mikado wrote:
Knit-picking. Who cares about alternate spellings of words that make up 1% of the language.

Academic trolling.

Perscienter Germany. January 29 2011 01:28
It's not only a function of power. English was elected to be the lingua franca because of its clear alphabet for example. It's really to most people less difficult to learn than Spanish and especially German and French.

On January 29 2011 00:25 Perscienter wrote:
English is the most important lingua franca in the world and it still lacks a coherent spelling and pronunciation. Especially the former needs to be reformed

. Since English has been introduced as a second language in so many countries, it often deteriorates in this regions. Then again not even the U.S.-Americans speak Oxford British English. They had to invent their own style for whatever reasons in the first place. ... Is it really so difficult to write harbour with a 'u'?

My suggestion is this: adopt the British spelling.

On January 29 2011 07:39 Scrimpton wrote:
In the same vein I don't think you can compare 100-200 years of American authorship to 1000+ years of Germanic/Anglo Germanic, renaissance and modern English pennings.

On January 29 2011 19:48 ggrrg wrote:


First of all, I believe I did not express myself clearly about what I meant with the use of "prepositions after verbs". I wasn't talking about the general rules of how to use prepositions, which in fact are grammatical rules (those are rather simple). I had phrasal verbs in mind, which obey no grammatical rules whatsoever (I just realized that some of the examples I gave in my previous post are not phrasal verbs...). Phrasal verbs have to be learned like vocabulary.

As far as my English knowledge is concerned, I believe that it goes vastly beyong being simply "basic English" and I can guarantee you that games do not deserve any credit for that. In my 13 years of taking English classes, I have gone through numerous schoolbooks, which covered English grammar pretty extensively and I'd say I have a pretty good idea about the simplicity of it.

If you really have studied German, there is no way you could possibly claim that its grammar is simpler than the English one. I have absolutely no knowledge about Arabic or Japanese so I cannot comment on them, but in Europe there is no language that has a simpler grammar than English and I have yet to meet a person in my surroundings that has a different opinion.

edit: I just have to edit this in... verb conjugations!? really?. This is the main reason why so many people perceive English as extremely easy. There are basically no conjugations (bar "be" and 3rd person "s"). In every tense for every verb, there is only one conjugation for all numbers and persons. I dare you to prove me wrong.

On January 29 2011 21:06 MamiyaOtaru wrote:

This is assuming that American English just appeared as a brand new language with no connection to said tradition of Germanic/Anglo literature and language that had come before. Why do you think we speak English over here? A ton of people from England and Scotland came over here and brought the language, and what we speak today is closer to British English of 1750 than British English today is (see the rise of non-rhotic speech in England after the revolution) You can't say that our ancestors leaving England to come over here means they have no connection to what was written in England before they left, and you have that odd little fact that your spoken language has diverged more than ours since the split. But don't let that get in the way of your superiority complex

English is the most important lingua franca in the world and it still lacks a coherent spelling and pronunciation.

On January 30 2011 04:57 Befree wrote:
English has deep problems with its ridiculously random/inconsistent way of spelling. I mean look at something like -ough. Why is -ough pronounced like 10 different ways depending on the word its in?

These are some problems that need to be dealt with. Slight differences in American/British English is no where near as significant.

We need some kind of consistent phonetics instead of this case-by-case stuff.

On January 29 2011 00:25 Perscienter wrote:
English is the most important lingua franca in the world and it still lacks a coherent spelling and pronunciation. Especially the former needs to be reformed. Since English has been introduced as a second language in so many countries, it often deteriorates in this regions. Then again not even the U.S.-Americans speak Oxford British English. They had to invent their own style for whatever reasons in the first place.

My suggestion is this: adopt the British spelling. U.S.-exclusive vocabulary should be included in the language. Only one English language should be taught in today's schools over the world.

Is it really so difficult to write harbour with a 'u'?

What do you think?

...America doesn't really have much of a linguistic history in the way that british english does, Poets, play-writes authors.

On January 30 2011 08:37 Laids wrote:
Maybe this off-topic but I've always wondered :>

When did the American accent evolve into THE American accent, I mean I always just assumed it evolved from English+Scottish+Irish+native NA's english. Did George Washington have an English accent or was it around that time that the American accent was evolving,

On January 30 2011 09:44 Dr. ROCKZO wrote:
I don't really have a problem with irregularities in spelling, the only practical example of how it affects you is when you're writing a comment on youtube. Dissimilar spelling however, isn't the cause of new generation coined phrases and expressions, it's just a natural feature of cultural identity. Almost as insignificant as the "u" in harbour but important nonetheless.

The real thing we should be trying to standardize is the metric measuring system.

On January 30 2011 08:51 mav451 wrote:


I think there are too many accents to really categorize one as "American". The wiki entry for North American accents is pretty detailed:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialects_of_North_American_English

On January 30 2011 12:39 HULKAMANIA wrote:


I mean to the point where some American dialects are basically mutually unintelligible.

On January 30 2011 12:41 pfods wrote:



I think that's a bit of an exaggeration.

On January 30 2011 13:00 HULKAMANIA wrote:


You do?

Do you see a UP Yooper and an inner-city Atlanta gangster having an easy time exchanging philosophy over coffee? I don't.

I'm from Clarksville, TN. I have cousins-in-law from Thomaston, GA that I have a difficult time following in conversation, and we're both from "The South." Travel up the coast and you've got Philly, Baltimore, Brooklyn accents (which vary wildly from upper Maine). Compare those to Southwestern Chicano. Compare that OC California.

We have highly Polish-ized English in Chicago. We have highly Sinicized English in New York and San-Fran. Miami has dialects that are practically Cuban/English pidgins.

And these are only the broadest strokes, and we're still only continental. We have Alaskans, Samoans, and Puerto Ricans to consider. I don't think it's an exaggeration at all to say that members of these groups might have an incredibly hard time making themselves understood to one another.

The media is misleading in these areas because one of the prime missions of popular media is a speaking voice that can be easily parsed by the widest spectrum of the population possible. Education is misleading as well, because highly educated speakers tend to suppress their regional markers as much as possible. But, yes, the extent to which dialects differ between local, folk speakers from different states (or even different cities within the same state) might surprise you. It sure surprised me.

On January 30 2011 13:15 pfods wrote:


Then you have a problem with comprehension. There is literally no accent that should be unintelligible to you. Also, you're mixing english as a second language accents with native north american accents. That makes zero sense, as they aren't regional dialects.

On January 30 2011 13:29 HULKAMANIA wrote:
I suppose I could have a problem with comprehension, but honestly I doubt it. I'm a highly-literate, well-educated, English-language-studies graduate student. And I've been studying linguistics academically for several years now.

On January 30 2011 13:29 HULKAMANIA wrote:
However: my capacities of comprehension are beside the point. What the idea of "mutual unintelligibility" implies is that native, folk speakers of one dialect could not understand native, folk speakers of another dialect. An interested third party (me) doesn't factor in. I simply mentioned my cousins-in-law to illustrate how much dialects can vary even within regions that people traditionally assume are homogenous.

Also: second language accents are one of the many ways in which dialects are formed and characterized. Where do you think, for instance, the Minnesotan accent (think Fargo) came from? Minnesota?

If they are Americans and they speak English. They are speaking an American dialect of English by definition.

And anyway, I don't know why I'm subjecting myself to this. I can see you're well-read on dialectology and sociolinguistics, and have reasonable, nuanced opinions on the subject of language variation within these United States. I'll let you take it from here.

On January 30 2011 13:34 pfods wrote:


And I'm a 2500 diamond zerg player, ya know?



This whole part is why I don't believe the first part.

You can't take someone from mexico, teach him english, and now say he has an american accent/dialect. He has a mexican accent, and speaks a regional dialect, such as texan, south cali, etc. You can't claim this is a new dialect that was just invented, and use it to explain how someone from wisconsion can't understand him. That's completely intellectually dishonest.

This is especially true because you mention native speakers vs native speakers above, but now you add in foreigners learning english as a second language. That just isn't how it works, no matter how much you want to act like you're steven pinker or noam chomsky by name dropping.

On January 30 2011 13:38 HULKAMANIA wrote:


Anyway it's been a pleasure talking to you.

On January 30 2011 13:28 Grobyc wrote:
I find it annoying that many spellchecks (including TLs) identify words with the added u as errors.
neighbour
harbour
parlour
etc

=/

On January 30 2011 13:49 eLiE wrote:


Agreed! Gets super annoying, esp when my word file randomly changes back to US dictionary.

On January 29 2011 00:29 KwarK wrote:
I'm much more worried about 'payed' and 'layed'. It seems I see these abominations more regularly than I see the correct spelling recently and it makes me sad. Before we get to work on using just one set of acceptable spellings we should teach people to spell.

The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the EU rather than German which was the other possibility.

As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a five year phase-in plan that would be known as "Euro-English".

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 the "k". This should klear up konfusion and keyboards kan have 1 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 ekspekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkorage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of the silent "e"s in the language is disgraseful, and they should go away.

By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v". During ze fifz year, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.

After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi to understand ech ozer. Ze drem vil finali kum tru! And zen world!