Fixing the Problems in the English Language

Since this topic is taking over another thread, I'm creating this thread to stop the derail there.

Basically, I view English as a good language, but a very flawed one. I am seeking to fix those flaws.

In doing this, I seek to improve it in four standards, in particular:

1. Precision: The tightness of a words set of definitions. A word that means fire and heat would be much more precise than one that means fire and sword as fire and heat are more similar to each other than fire and a sword.
2. Accuracy: How little a word's meanings conflict. For example, a word that means torch and flamethrower would be more accurate than one that means torch and fire extinguisher, as flamethrower and torch are both things that create fire, while a torch and a fire extinguisher do very different things.
3. Lack of ambiguity: The clarity of what is meant by a word.
4. Elegance: Having a clear, steady, and beautiful flow and rhythm.

My plan for doing so is as follows:

1. Look at the grammar on its own, and modify it so that it can achieve internal consistency, which is a major problem I have with the English language.
2. Modify the existing vocabulary to match it up with the new consistent grammar without changing the words so much that they are unrecognizable.
3. Go through the language, and change some things, and drop some things, to get rid of unnecessary rules and forms, as well as clear up inherent ambiguity, such as by removing the singular they, and replacing it with a new pronoun, re-adding "thou" to distinguish between the singular and plural second person, differentiating between the inclusive and exclusive we, and many other things.
4. Go through the language, and change the spellings to be phonetic, which will be helped by my addition of accents, umlauts, and macrons to my arsenal, as well as slightly changing the pronunciation of homophones. To account for differences in accents and dialect, I will err on the side of keeping consonants and on not merging vowels. *
   The part on accent differences courtesy of Zersk.
5. Create simple, and easy to remember, variations on words with a lot of meanings, especially those which have a large spread of meanings, rather than very similar meanings and assign each meaning a variation.
6. Review my newly fixed English language, and determine if I've missed anything.

In this thread, one can discuss the value of fixing the language, any improvements on the plan, or anything I may have missed.

edited 23rd Aug '12 3:44:38 AM by deathpigeon

Uh... how exactly do you measure elegance of a language? Any language? I mean, that's literally an immeasurable quality you've chosen there, and as it's something that differs both in an individual's opinion and in an individual's skill with the language.

Also, taking the ambiguity out of a language takes out a lot of the nuances. And if a person can't understand the difference between the words "fire", "heat", "fire extinguisher" and "sword" then they don't really know the language well at all.

Also, they've tried something similar with Esperanto. That hasn't caught on. Changes to language can't be forced like this. And any living language is subject to change by the speakers, as they develop slang, as words slowly change meaning and gather new associations (gay being the most well known example) and as words get dropped from use.

Frankly, you're going to end up with New Double Speak or whatever, and no one's going to like it because it simply won't convey the messages well enough. Our language is more precise than you seem to think.

"Go through the language, and change the spellings to be phonetic, which will be helped by my addition of accents, umlauts, and macrons to my arsenal, as well as slightly changing the pronunciation of homophones."

My phonetic spelling is different from your phonetic spelling is different from my New Zealand uncle's phonetic spelling is different from my friend in Yorkshire's phonetic spelling. Even with dozens of accent marks, spelling will only become less standard and clear if you try to do that.

—

Languages grow and morph naturally as culture changes. We have words now which are completely foreign to a person of Victorian times, and other words which meant something very different back then. They undoubtedly had words we no longer use as well. The ambiguity and potential for change in language makes it easier to express new ideas.

—

What do you want to do about synonyms like red, scarlet, crimson, vermillion, rogue, ruby, cherry, coral, rose, etc.?

It isn't measured because it isn't quantitative, it's qualitative, and, as you said, the elegance of someone's speech does very much depend upon how skilled they are at the language. An elegant language is one that makes it easier to speak elegantly.

It won't take out nuance. This isn't about getting rid of small differences in the meanings of specific words, as they aren't all that ambiguous since what is meant by the word isn't that different, so thinking the speaker intends one thing the word can mean rather than another thing it can mean would not usually destroy the meaning entirely, so it is rather clear what is meant, which is a case of precision helping get rid of ambiguity. This is mainly about getting rid of large differences, like how bow can refer to the action where you bend your body, a weapon, a tool for playing violins, or a type of knot.

Well, I'll add my own attempt at this to the lot. It might not catch on, but that doesn't mean I can't try.

I'm attempting to achieve a greater ability to convey what is meant, so, if people can't convey their thoughts well with this, I will have failed, and it deserves not to catch on.

However, I do feel like you are underestimating how imprecise this language is, and how much could be fixed.

I will be forced to do some sort of judgement call on that, or figure out a way to be inclusive of different pronunciations. Possibly the best way I could do it is look at the different pronunciations of each word from around the world, and see how they are said by most people, or, failing that, what similarities there are.

Ambiguity is not required for a language to have the potential to change.

I have no problem with them. They each have specific meanings, and allow for a person to be able to more clearly and specifically say what he/she/it intends, which is exactly the sort of thing I like.

edited 23rd Aug '12 12:42:34 AM by deathpigeon

Yup - you can't make english phonetically spelt until you've eliminated all accents. Everybody pronounces vowels differently, and who are you to tell, for example, Scottish or Irish people that they're talking wrong?

Anyway, quite often words have two different meanings simply because they have the same root. Your bow example - a violin bow and an archery bow are more or less the same thing. A 'shell' can mean multiple things (some form of explosive, an egg shell, the outer covering of a sea creature), but all of them have their roots in what the thing actually is.

As another example - 'depression' can mean 'the state of being sad', or it can mean 'a lowering of the surface of something; a hole or pit', or 'the act of pushing something down'. There's nothing wrong with that ambiguity, because in most cases context will tell you what I mean. Nobody is going to think that I'm saying "This liver has sad patches all over it" if I say it has multiple depressions, for example.

I'm not saying something like "anyone who pronounces English words differently than I'm spelling them phonetically is pronouncing them wrong". Not at all. I am saying that, in order to make a better language, I had to make a judgement call, and, for whatever reason, I went in a different direction than their accent.

I understand that words that have multiple meanings are because of the roots. In fact, looking at the roots may help to give me inspiration for what the variations on the word will be. This is not to say that someone will see "The corporal ordered his men to shoot shells at the enemy bunker," and believe that "shell" meant "an egg shell." However, by making the different meanings be variations on the word shell, that would be a far more accurate representation of the intent of the sentence.

What if what they intend to say is ambigious?

There's also 'depression' as in "an area of low air pressure" — what about technical terms, radio-speak and acronyms? There are literally millions of those...

For a lot of people, their accent is part of their national identity — and their regional identity as well, a mark of their culture. People won't follow it if one person thinks one way is better...

Are you trying to make a One World Order?

edited 23rd Aug '12 1:10:05 AM by Greenmantle

It just seems to me, pigeon, that you're trying to fix a problem that doesn't exist. If nobody is likely to think that I mean 'sadness' when I actually mean 'hole', why do I need to learn three or four or a dozen different words for it? What does it achieve, except for making my language harder to speak than it already is?

Speaking for my own life, medical terminology (for example) is stuffed full of jargon as it is. So are a lot of fields. Adding more terms we need to learn to regular English for no good purpose is only going to make stuff worse. It will make it harder to say what you mean, not easier.

edited 23rd Aug '12 1:41:01 AM by LoniJay

These are not unique "problems" of english. EVERY language has irregularities, useful phrases that other languages lack, phrases that THEY lack but others have, ambigous meanings, and unique grammar rules. Not to mention that they all constantly evolve, obtaining new words, slang modifications of old ones,and dropping useless ones.

There is no such thing as a broken language, because if a language would be missing a word, it could always be aquired. If a word would be too ambigous for common usage, it COULDN'T be used.

I will repost this from the original thread

And the point I was trying to make earlier with the little history lesson before was that those goals are mutually incompatible. Much of the ambiguities and irregularities that are part of English arise from the fusion of the Germanic and Romance languages that shaped Middle and Modern English into what it is (well, before we started importing Greek and Latin wholesale for technical terms. And then turned colonial and really starting to get busy on the vocabulary raiding).

To lay it out in simple, unambiguous terms: Given its origin and history, I don't believe that you can change English into a regular, unambiguous language with a simple orthography without changing it on such a deep, fundamental level that it will no longer be recognisable as the same language any more. And possibly not even mutually intelligible with the current iteration.

I'm honestly not sure, but people tend to say what they say unambiguously, in my experience.

The beauty of technical terms is that they tend to already be precise and unambiguous because they usually have to be. I mean, if a word in medical jargon were imprecise or ambiguous, then someone could die, so most technical terms can be left alone.

I don't know that much about radio-speak, so I can't comment on it, and I will try to usually keep the starting letter of words the same, so acronyms wouldn't have to change.

Then they don't have to use the end result of this project.

No, just a better language.

What this will achieve is making what you say more accurately represent what your intent was.

Not everyone needs to know every word. People who spend there time learning more words in order to have a large vocabulary will be able to do this with the fixed English, and people who don't already make do with less words than they can, and probably could with the fixed English as well.

I never said that these were problems unique to the English language. As a matter of fact, I consider almost every language to be broken, to an extent. Not necessarily in the same exact ways, mind you.

I know its history already, and I understand where many of the problems come from. This does not mean that it is impossible to make it work. On the contrary, this almost makes it easier, for me, as I know the source of the problems, so I can more easily find all of them, and a solution for the.

For example, if I'm seeking to make a couple of grammar rules apply to all of the words, rather than just, say, 85% of them, and I know the rule is imported from German, I can focus my search on all non-Germanic words, and I will be going after the majority of the 15% that are not affected.

Alternatively, if I know where a rule is that I feel is unnecessary, or applies to few enough words that it isn't important, comes from, I can focus on the words with the same origin when fixing the rule.

edited 23rd Aug '12 1:56:00 AM by deathpigeon

@deathpigeon:

Unless, of course, they share a word with another meaning...

However, as has been said, if you control the language, you control how people think — it is something modern politicians (are supposed to) understand. Languages, for example, Welsh, have been oppressed as a form of control over an area. That is what I mean.

If you control the language, you have Political Power. Major Political Power.

The English language already accurately represents what I want it to say. It doesn't need to be less ambiguous.

Your system doesn't work like that. You're proposing that we change words when they share meaning with another. As such, you can't just learn whatever new ones you want and leave the rest alone.

Say, your example of 'bow'. A person using your language would have to learn new words - one of the archery bow, one for the knot, and one for the tree branch (bough, because you said it'd be phonetic). Your language would have to change the names of two of those things.

Quoting from the other thread:

As I said, good luck trying to make other people use your English. I seem to remember that Britain try to impose a "Queen's English" on her colonies. Wonder how well that go?

And even so, you still have to relearn the meanings of the words altogether. Tell me how are you going to make me do that and use your English again?

And anyway, how about words and phrases named after people or companies, like 'Hoover' or the Immelmann turn?

Which, to my knowledge, doesn't usually happen for the very reason that the jargon is supposed to be unambiguous to someone who knows it. If a doctor tells another doctor a piece of jargon that means two things, like the name of a test, or something, and the doctor who is listening believes the wrong one, the patient could very well die.

But I am not controlling all language. I'm not even going to force anyone to use my form of English. All I'm controlling is what's essentially a single dialect from a single language.

Not accurately enough.

And it won't be something like, say, the violin bow is now "arfla" and the archery bow is now "erisal" and the knot bow is now "judili". No, it will be like, say, the violin bow is "boughet" the archery bow is "bough" and the knot bow is "boughel". They will be variations on a theme, not completely different words.

Thank you for wishing me luck.

I won't make you. I won't make anyone. It will be entirely up to each individual whether or not he or she wishes to.

What about them?

edited 23rd Aug '12 3:57:30 AM by deathpigeon

But that way, unless I perfectly memorise all of the thousands of new words, I'm going to end up saying 'boughel' instead of 'boughtet'. Now I have actively mislead people as to what I mean, instead of saying something ambiguous and letting them figure out for themselves that I'm unlikely to want my dress to have an archery kit on the sash.

It will obscure conversation rather than making it clearer.

edited 23rd Aug '12 2:33:18 AM by LoniJay

"

What about them?"

I expect the point is that they don't have logical roots.

Actually, about the accent in orthography issue, you can fix english spelling while keeping this in mind. It's not perfect mind you, but basically when it comes to things like lack of a consonant (postvocalic r, the 'wh' cluster), just err on the side of keeping it. So 'car' would keep the R, even though many British English accents don't have them, and 'what' would keep the WH (or changed to HW), even though American English doesn't have them.

For vowels, I suppose that may be a bit trickier. Still, I suppose you could err on the non-merger (so Mary, merry, and marry would be spelt different).

In any case, English orthography is a bit different than it's... well, everything else, since it's not so much an integral part of the language as it is a consciously made way of recording it.

edited 23rd Aug '12 2:36:24 AM by Zersk

That could easily be solved by making the variation somehow relate to what the meaning it will represent is. Like, say, calling the violin bow the "boughvio" and the knot bow "boughno", or something.

...So? They don't have to have logical roots.

...That actually sounds like a really good idea. Thank you.

Also, I think I'll edit my OP about once a page to keep it current with the sort of changes I'll be doing. For example, I'll add in something like this under the step for making everything phonetic, with credit given where credit is due.

Well I can't really take much credit here, since I remembered those things from a zompist article. :p

There are so many holes in this proposal that it's hard to know where to start, but this really stands out -

Have you never read a poem? Or a song? Or a joke? Or heard a euphemism? Ambiguity is a big part of expressive writing.

Also, I don't know who you talk to, but pretty much everyone I know does what's been pointed out here, uses context to clarify ambiguous words.

... Pigeon, there is no way you could integrate that into real English. If you wander around saying 'boughvio', nobody is going to know what you mean. I'd probably assume you were talking about either a virus, or something related to cows. Boughno is even worse.

You were still the one who proposed it.

And most people don't talk to each other in poem or song, jokes can be done without ambiguity, such as most "Why did the chicken cross the road?" jokes, and euphemism is a separate issue from ambiguity. euphemism is about saying something that obviously means something else. This is usually accomplished by using less harsh words in combination to lead to an implication of something else.

And they probably won't turn out to be "boughvio" and "boughno". Those were hastily thought up ideas that were more there to illustrate the point than to actually find a variation. Remember, that is Step 5 of 6. I'm not going to get to that until after I go through the first four steps.

edited 23rd Aug '12 3:05:59 AM by deathpigeon

Building on the other examples given here...

Say that you told someone, in English, that you weathered the hot weather to go out to the withered stump on the edge of town, took off your orange hat to shoot an orange with your bow. Or that after that, you bowed to the lady slowly edging away from you, who was giving an odd look at your odd socks. Or that later that night, you got booked by a police officer for reading a book while driving, and then someone drove a nail through your tires. Or that your cat bit a bit of your ear off, and you ate eight tubs of fried ice-cream to console yourself, and then realised that your gaming console had fried itself while you were in the bathtub.

Or any number of things like that.

Even if you throw a bunch of very similar words together like that, people will still understand what you're saying from the context. If the language needed to be fixed that badly, then it would have fixed itself a long time ago, because people would have gotten sick of not being able to clarify things to each other.

But what about the people who do want to write poems, or sing songs, or make jokes using ambiguity? Even supposing you manage to make your new, unambiguous language work for everyday life, it's still not going to be a very fun language to write anything remotely creative in. Every language has ambiguity, because they all need it.

edited 23rd Aug '12 3:28:34 AM by KiriAme