The English Language ???

Then perhaps we should have chosen Welsh as the national language. Surely it can't be any worse than English.

 

Well, there's a 'Welsh Tract' in Pennsylvania, I believe. My own relatives moved on to Argentina to preserve the language, however.

 

With the last two dominating world hyper powers, Great Britain and the US, being English speaking, it's no wonder English is a dominating language on the World stage.

It probably could use an update in the spelling department though.

Though. Why do I have to write it like that?

 

i think is pretty well accepted that english is one of the most difficult languages to learn

 

It's a French word, one would think that it would be appropriate to pronounce it as close to the French pronunciation....voll-a-till rather than voll-uh-tile.

 

That's an interesting subject in itself - how to deal with 'absorbed' words in a language - should they retain their former forms and pronunciations or not? With words that were absorbed a long time ago, they obviously become a part of the language into which they have been absorbed, so generally get treated as any other word in that language would be.

For example, 'stadium' comes to English from Greek origins, but via Latin, so what should its plural be? The original Greek word is different, so that doesn't matter, but should it be 'stadiums' or 'stadia'? Both are used, of course.

Similarly, the dog breed name corgi, which is Welsh - should the plural be 'corgis' or 'corgwn' - again, both are used, but which is 'correct'?

Then there is 'herb' - should the 'h' be silent or not? In the US it seems usually to be silent, in the UK it isn't ( apparently it hasn't been used like that since the 19th century, from what I can tell on a brief search). The origins are latin (with an 'h', so it shouldn't be silent), but via old French (without, so it should!).

The answer to all of these is, of course, that language is a living, evolving and developing thing, and that even in this global world, different populations of speakers will develop it in different ways. That's a good thing - that is how new forms of language develop. Of course, it means that some things you say (or the way that you say things) in the US will be different from other people in the US, and probably even more different from people in England (who will say things differently from people in somewhere like Wales, where there is a strong influence from another language too).

Some people will always focus on 'correct' forms, and complain about things that are 'incorrect', but the reality is they will always be fighting a losing battle. The language will change, and pronunciation and forms will change, in all kinds of ways that such 'correct-ists' can do nothing at all about. As long as it is all understandable and makes some kind of reasonable sense, there's not much point in worrying about it (even if certain forms can be kind of offensive to the ears of those brought up in certain linguistic environments!).

At least in English we don't have any equivalent of the Académie française trying to tell us what kind of word, or version of word, is 'allowed'!

 

a little bit offtopic. I think that English is very strange. I say this because watching movies on http://www.archive.org/ a very big difference in the pronunciation

 

As an example http://www.archive.org/details/Houseint1954
and http://www.archive.org/details/gov.fdr.301

 

Absolutely not, believe me. It's the easiest. And I hear many people say so.
My native languages are Russian and Ukranian. I've tried to learn English, French, Spanish, German, Arabic, Persian, Polish, Italian (only the first three more or less successfully), so I can compare.

There'a another funny thing I found

Eye Halve a Spelling Chequer- back to top.
Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rarely ever wrong.

Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect in it's weigh
My chequer tolled me sew.

-- Sauce unknown

http://www.learnthat.org/pages/view/fun_facts.html

 

if the plural of mouse is mice ... what is the plural of spouse?

 

I know this as word as the F-Word.

 

Well it depends. But I have to say that is quite difficult.

I am learning Finnish and Russian, and I have to say that Russian is a nightmare. About Finnish I can't say so much because just I've started, but it's quite difficult.

I've learned some Japanese too, and it's quite difficult, but I think that like English the beginner level is easy, but get a proficient level is very hard. How shows the OP, that in a profecient level give many troubles because there are many meanings of the same words and similar things, that make this language quite difficult.

I am Spanish and Catalan native speaker, and I can say that these languages also have their problems mainly the second.

 

Well, I think that all Romanic languages have an Academy like the French. THe Spanish has the "Real Academia del español", the Catalan "L'Institut d'Estudis Catalans", the Galician I don't remember the name, the same the portuguese, and I think that Italian, too.

Well, the point is that I like the English system, but in the meanwhile I think that is good to have an academy that creates a standard, because it makes easier to unify the different forms of writting. At least one for British, other for American and other for Australian, that are the main dialect groups of English.

 

Si senior. Boo-eeek.

 

Well, I think that all Romanic languages have an Academy like the French. THe Spanish has the "RAE, Real Academia Española", the Catalan "L'Institut d'Estudis Catalans", the Galician I don't remember the name, the same the portuguese, and I think that Italian, too.

Well, the point is that I like the English system, but in the meanwhile I think that is good to have an academy that creates a standard, because it makes easier to unify the different forms of writting. At least one for British, other for American and other for Australian, that are the main dialect groups of English.

 

Currently I'm learning German. Seeing as it's the only language (besides English of course) that I've attempted to learn seriously so far, I can't say if it's easier or harder then other languages though.

 

Why should there need to be enforcement of a 'standard' version of a living language, particularly if it is operated like the one in France where it refuses to acknowledge the words that are actually being used by people already and invents new words to replace them? I won't go into why it would be particularly bad to have such a unified 'British' lingistic institution - some of our countries have had more than our fair share of historical 'language enforcement', dominated by the interests of the more populous nation next door! There's also a very serious point there about the way that such institutions can be very effective authorities for resisting the continuation of minority languages and dialects, and that is not, in my opinion, a good thing.

 

Many times I dislike all these academies, but in some way I consider that at least an unification of the writting styles, could be good.

For example labour-labor. Many times as you indicated in previous comments in this thread people don't know how write correctly a plural of some words.

It is not necessary to be so absurdly strict like our institutions, but maybe an intermediate point could be good.

Maybe just to fix grammar rules, and all the lexic control be like now. Totally free.

 

Then you run into the issues of which spelling to use. Webster's or Oxford's? Personally, I think US spelling should be standard. We are the largest single native-speaking group of Anglophones in the world and are the only country that has kept English relevant from the late 20th century to the present. But try telling that to the English and you get a long list of platitudes hurled at you about how they "invented" it and how, therefore, their usage is the proper one.

 

It's pretty standard in the US, which is fine! It was based on concious decisions to change spelling (and it doesn't matter whether that was right or wrong - it happened, so that's that!), and some of the changes seem to be based partly on American pronunciation (which is different to the English). We will always have a bit of banter about which is 'correct' now and again, of course, but when it comes down to it both of them are are - they are slightly different versions of the same language. I don't see it causes a major problem for the world if you say either and I say either.....let's call the whole thing off!!!

 

None is correct or incorrect, well we can say that all are correct. But depending of their context.

For example writting in American English for British English can make this text strange and a bit less understable than British English.

Ah, and about English, there is a written version for the Scotts and Irish?

 

Well neither the Americans or Brits pronounce the "gh' in night. I think there are a couple of words that we all could agree that their spelling can be updated.

 

How would you write that? Nit, nait?

 

It could be update, but the question is whether it really needs to be. Do the benefits of doing it outweigh all of the hassles (and costs) associated with it?

Then, of course, is the question of who decides on such matters, and what is the scope of their authority? Is creating a 'language authority' with such sweeping powers really a wise, or necessary, move?

In theory, the idea of simplifying spelling is perfectly reasonable, but the practical difficulties (and dangers), especially since it would have to be done in a 'top down' process conducted by some 'authority', may simply not make it a wise or worthwhile exercise. Since it works perfectly well as it is, personally I'd tend towards the 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' theory!

 

There will certainly be words that are used by the Scots, Irish and Welsh that are colloquial and different from those used in England, and they would certainly also be written down (for as long as England doesn't have a French-style language academy that is able to say that they aren't words that are 'permitted'!). The same would be true of different regions within England, of course. Different accents wouldn't normally be written, but who really has the right to say that a Yorkshireman, for example, is 'incorrect' if he writes 'the internet' down as 't'internet'? Writing 'bucket' down in an 'accented' form of 'bookit' would seem a little unnecessary (and harder for other people to understand, obviously), but there are other things that I can't see any reason to define as 'unacceptable' - as long as the intended recipient can read it, I don't see a problem.