Fixing the Problems in the English Language

@pigeon:

I wasn't talking about medical jargon — most of that is based on Latin and Greek anyway — I was actually speaking about Engineering, Aviation, Transport, let alone all the various English-speaking military Forces, which despite NATO's attempts at standardisation, have different jargon (and MLAs) according to every service...

edited 23rd Aug '12 3:36:40 AM by Greenmantle

It's not so bad that it's unspeakable, and people have a tendency to take a "if it works, don't fix it" sort of attitude, while I take the attitude "if it isn't perfect, work until it is" with things I care about.

They can write poems and songs and stuff in the non-fixed English, just as many Roman poets often wrote in Greek.

Also, you don't need ambiguity for all creative writing. Writing novels would work just as well in my modified English.

No, languages don't need ambiguity.

Also, people could just choose to, you know, not speak my modified English. I'm not going to go around and force anyone to do so...

The same could be said about many of these jargons. If an Engineer gets something wrong because of an issue with jargon being unclear, a building could have problems with its structure, and collapse, which could kill people. If someone in Aviation gets something wrong because the jargon was unclear, two planes could crash, which would kill people. Jargon can remain jargon, and if there's something that means something in, say, medical jargon and something else in, say, engineering jargon, it is less important because most people only learn the jargon of their field, so few would know both medical jargon and engineering jargon.

edited 23rd Aug '12 3:41:56 AM by deathpigeon

But doesn't that mean that they fall outside your Grand Scheme, and thus lead to confusion and ambiguity, which you hate?

And you haven't replied to the point I made earlier, which basically states that if you control the language, you control political debate, thus giving you a lot of Political Power?

WRT Jargon: So you're saying that people will pick up the meaning intended from the context they're conversing within?

They fall out of the grand scheme because they are specialized words designed to be clear in what they mean to people who understand them. Basically, they are things that are already like what I'm trying to design things to be like.

I responded in this post, I just messed up on the formatting. I can fix that.

Er, no... How is anything I said about jargon saying that?

edited 23rd Aug '12 3:55:30 AM by deathpigeon

But if you need to speak the non-fixed English to write a song or a poem properly, then the new language is no longer perfect.

Besides, the English language is already working constantly to improve itself. It doesn't need to be overhauled completely, because it's working on itself already all over the world. Languages have a tendency to do that over time on their own, and anything new that gets added to the language will have both advantages and disadvantages. It's impossible to create a perfect language.

Novels rely on ambiguity too, though. Anyone who's sat through a high school English class will know that any novelist worth their salt relies on nuances in language to get every layer of meaning across in their story. Any kind of creative writing relies on ambiguity to a certain extent.

That's true, but wouldn't it be better to create a language that people would actually want to speak?

Easy. You're saying that a person will be able to tell, from context, if a person is talking about clinical medical depression, meteorological depression, and geographic depression. Hence using the same word for all of those doesn't matter.

This is exactly what people have been saying regarding regular English.

edited 23rd Aug '12 3:59:11 AM by LoniJay

Of course it isn't perfect. Nothing is. However, it's a good deal closer to that.

No, it isn't constantly working to improve itself. It is constantly changing with no real purpose, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse.

Also, I am not overhauling it completely. What I'm doing is more like taking a hastily drawn sketch, and inking it with clear lines. I'm modifying it and working with what is already there.

Ambiguity isn't necessary for nuance. Ambiguity isn't necessary for subtlety. Ambiguity isn't necessary for symbolism or metaphor or simile. Ambiguity isn't necessary for writing novels.

I didn't say that no one would want to speak it. All I said that, if people didn't want to speak it, they didn't have to. No more. No less.

...No, that's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying that each set of jargon is like an expansion pack of words which are generally far more precise, far more accurate, and far less ambiguous than regular English. In addition, almost everyone only get one expansion pack, so there's no need to worry about overlap between expansion packs.

I disagree. Medical terminology makes its way into regular English all the time. You know what 'clinical depression', 'pneumonia', 'hernia' and 'slipped disc' mean, don't you?

Anyway, if people can be expected to tell the difference between depression and depression, they can tell the difference between bow and bow. It's the exact same skill.

...

...

...

...

I'm gonna have to disagree with the basic premises of the OP. You don't fix languages from the top down. Languages change over time to meet the needs of the speaking population.

edited 23rd Aug '12 4:18:04 AM by RadicalTaoist

It changes so that people can communicate better. I can't think of a time it's changed for the worse. The loss of some distinctions between singular and plural pronouns was because they were not needed, and languages naturally slowly become more clear and efficient.

The best instances I can think of it migrating for worse is all the euphemisms.

Well, honestly, one way to solve the problem of "phonetic spellings" and "everyone uses vowels differently" is to get rid of vowels in writing entirely. That honestly wouldn't be that difficult. While actually language doesn't change from the top-down, writing systems can and often do.

edited 23rd Aug '12 4:28:44 AM by ohsointocats

Actually, this kind of reminds me of biological evolution. Animals aren't perfectly designed to fit their environment, but that's OK. They work just fine the way they are.

Sure, you could build a robot from scratch that's 'perfectly designed' in every single way. But why would you bother? It would be so much work, and it would probably end up being inferior to the natural animals anyway.

I'm not an expert, but surely not while leaving it as English, it wouldn't... Bone is very different to bane and bean.

edited 23rd Aug '12 4:29:39 AM by LoniJay

The eradication of non-phonetic spellings is pretty far up there. Below converting to metric, but still fairly high up there.

Now that's just horse shit. There's a reason we replaced animals with machines in construction and most of our daily lives.

edited 23rd Aug '12 4:31:48 AM by Deboss

Hebrew-speakers manage with that sort of ambiguity just fine.

Yes, but that's Hebrew. Presumably their writing system has been built to accommodate that from the start. Ours hasn't.

And who says you couldn't design a writing system like that that could accomodate it from the start?

Unlike language itself, it's really not uncommon for someone to sit down one day and say, "I'm going to make up a way to write this down!" and then do exactly that. I mean, that's what happened to Korean and many other languages.

"Horacio the moralist [...] disconcerted and surly in the city where love is called by all the names of all the streets, all the buildings, all the flats, all the rooms, all the beds, all the dreams, all the things forgotten and remembered." - Hopscotch, Julio Cortázar.

Here, the ambiguity in the use of "called" gives multiple nuances to this sentence - in the sense of love being named by the streets, buildings, flats etc., that love is everything in the city, and the imagery of the parts of the city calling out to love. It emphasises the theme of "Paris is a metaphor" in the novel, and of the love which surrounds Horacio, but which he is unable to grasp.

Another example, this time from poetry:

"Dying
Is an art, like everything else,
I do it exceptionally well."

This stanza from Sylvia Plath's "Lady Lazarus" relies on ambiguity. Is this "art" in the sense of "craft" as hinted by "exceptionally well"? Is it continuing the theatre/circus motif? Not in the words themselves, but should it be interpreted as "dying is an art like everything else AND I do it exceptionally well", or as "Dying is an art - I do it exceptionally well as I do everything else", thus injecting an ironic boastfulness into the poem*

Edit: And because I love Adam Hills, a paraphrased joke:

"There was once an inflatable boy who went to an inflatable school, where all the teachers were inflatable, all the students were inflatable, all the buildings were inflatable. One day, he got in trouble for bringing a pin to school. The principal called him to his office and said, 'Son, you've let me down, you've let yourself down and you've let the whole school down.'"

I don't think this needs explaining.

edited 23rd Aug '12 4:48:35 AM by Yuanchosaan

And, once the terminology makes it way into regular English, it will be in the domain of the project, but not before that.

I'm no saying they can't. I'm saying they shouldn't have to.

Once again, purpose is given to something that is done without purpose. It doesn't change for any purpose, good or bad.

If I were seeking to fix Hebrew or Arabic (which does it as well), pretty much the first thing I would do would be to add vowels back in.

And, yet, there is little to no inherent ambiguity to called. All of the ambiguity to called in that was not inherent to the word. I'm getting rid of only the ambiguity inherent to the language.

And the fix will hamper poetry and jokes. I get that. I just find improving the ability of people to communicate ideas to be more important than the ability to tell jokes or write poetry.

edited 23rd Aug '12 4:49:25 AM by deathpigeon

What is the difficulty understanding the various differences, meanings, and subtleties of the language, if you are a fully fluent and native speaker? Why are you focused on completely eliminating ambiguity?

"Once again, purpose is given to something that is done without purpose. It doesn't change for any purpose, good or bad."

It changes because people use it differently in subtle ways so the changes become integrated in the language. The different ways of use are done because people aim to be clear and efficient. This makes the language change to be more clear and efficient. It does not change of its own accord but because people wish to communicate something new or communicate in a different way. Changes to the language give them the ability to do that.

Language does not change when such changes are not needed. As long as things are clear and efficient, there is no need for change. People get along fine currently and language will develope as and when culture does, not otherwise.

"Called" is used in this sentence to mean "to cry out to" and "named". How is that not inherent in the word?

I feel that if changing English so severely wipes out entire ways of expressing oneself - poetry, types of novels, jokes, puns - then it's not worth speaking.

edited 23rd Aug '12 4:54:39 AM by Yuanchosaan

I am not focusing on it because of the difficulty of figuring out the meaning. I'm doing so because it will make what is said match up with what is meant much more precisely and because people shouldn't have to figure it out. Plus, I'm not focusing only on ambiguity.

Once again, I disagree. People often use it differently for reasons completely other than to be more clear and efficient. Politicians often use things differently to obfuscate the truth, or to get rid of all meaning. Writers often use things differently because it sounds better. Those are two places that change language a lot.

To me, as long as there is something I can improve, I will seek to improve it.

Not entirely. The use of called as "named" would more accurately be considered "called first", and isn't that ambiguous.

Most novels, many jokes, and many puns wouldn't go away. Most novels do not need ambiguity. Many jokes don't even have any ambiguity in them. Many puns are about similar words to each other, rather than one with many meanings.

edited 23rd Aug '12 5:01:00 AM by deathpigeon

And how on earth would that improve languages?

Before trying to rewrite the basics of a language spoken by over half billion people, and logically following that, all the other languages with the same "problems" spoken by 7 billion people, you could start by finding someone, ANYONE who agrees with your niche theory that the existence of homophones is actually a problem.