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Some people believe there is the need for an English language reform. The English language, like any other natural language, has many inconsistencies, irregularities and dialects. The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ...
The term natural language is used to distinguish languages spoken by humans for general-purpose communication from constructs such as computer-programming languages or the languages used in the study of formal logic, especially mathematical logic. ...
A dialect (from the Greek word διάλεκτος) is a variant, or variety, of a language spoken in a certain geographical area. ...
Language regulation Unlike some other languages, for example French with its Académie Française, English does not have a central regulating authority. There are many different versions of the English language. French (français, langue française) is one of the most important Romance languages, outnumbered in speakers only by Spanish and Portuguese. ...
The Académie française, or French Academy, is the pre-eminent French learned body on matters pertaining to the French language. ...
The enforcement of correct forms of English falls primarily upon newspaper editors and school teachers. Their main reference is the Oxford English Dictionary. There are other prominent dictionaries, style and grammar books also used as primary references: The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is a comprehensive multi-volume dictionary published by the Oxford University Press (OUP). ...
Some of these dictionaries are considered to be descriptive, rather than prescriptive: see prescription and description. They describe the many ways English is commonly used and list authorized spelling variants. They hold a key role in the standardization of spelling: if a variant spelling is not present, then it is considered to be incorrect. They generally do not attempt to make suggestions or guide the language towards an improved version. Fowlers Modern English Usage, often referred to simply as Fowler, is a style guide to British English usage. ...
1926 was a common year starting on Friday (link will take you to calendar). ...
1888 advertisement for Websters Dictionary Websters Dictionary is a common title given to English language dictionaries in the United States, deriving its name from American lexicographer Noah Webster. ...
In linguistics, prescription is the laying down or prescribing of normative rules of the language. ...
Need for reform Some people believe that the language has many problems that could be improved upon. Such would-be reformers often quote the difficulty native English-speaking children have learning how to spell, or the trouble people have learning English as an additional language. English as an additional language is used to refer to the learning of English by speakers of other languages. ...
Elements of reform Here are some elements of the English language which people have identified as in need of reform:
Spelling Spelling of words in English can be problematic. English has a very poor phonemic orthography (correspondence between how the words are written and how they are spoken). Most spelling reforms attempt to improve this correspondence. Homophones, for example, are confusing to new learners of English. Many of them are considered to be essential basic elements of English and would be difficult to reform. Examples: A phonemic orthography is a writing system where there is a one-to-one relationship between graphemes in the written form and phonemes in the spoken form of a language. ...
Natural languages often develop cumbersome manners of spelling words. ...
Homonyms (in Greek homoios = identical and onoma = name) are words which have the same form (orthographic/phonetic) but unrelated meaning. ...
- to, two and too
- for, four and fore
Polysemy is a related term. Polysemy (from the Greek πολυσημεία = multiple meaning) is the state of being a polyseme; i. ...
Synonyms Synonyms are also confusing to new learners of English. There is no problem when many words give small nuances to a certain meaning. The difficulty arises when a single word has multiple completely different meanings and are unnecessarily synonymous with other words. Examples: Synonyms (in ancient Greek syn συν = plus and onoma όνομα = name) are different words with similar or identical meanings. ...
- Died and expired. Died is correctly used for living creatures. Expired is also used to mean death. It should only be used for the invalidation of something after a period of time. Expired is considered by some to be an unnecessary synonym of died.
- Pretty, attractive and beautiful. Pretty is considered by some to be an unnecessary synonym of beautiful. Attractive also refers to physical properties such as magnetic attraction.
Vocabulary English is noted for the vast size of its active vocabulary. Studies into how many active items of vocabulary a native speaker of English has have come to wildly differing conclusions, citing anything between 20,000 and 120,000. Many of these words are synonyms of one other. For this reason some attempts have been made to create simpler versions of English with restricted numbers of words, making it easier for non-native learners.
Examples of restricted vocabularies:
One problem with such restricted forms of the language is that native speakers of English find it difficult to reduce their speech or writing to this limited version. Students who learn Basic English are not able to follow a simple conversation between native speakers. Basic English does have a mechanism to add other words in groups of typically 50 words per subject. Basic English is a simplified English language with a small number of words created by Charles Kay Ogden and described in his book Basic English: A General Introduction with Rules and Grammar (1930). ...
Special English is a simplified version of the English language used by the US broadcasting service Voice of America in daily broadcasts. ...
Reform agreement Deciding upon which of many possible reform choices to pursue has been the greatest obstacle of all. In the absence of a central regulating authority, reform is very difficult. The only way the language can be changed is through the adoption of some reform elements by the majority of the users.
Levels of possible reform
Status Quo No planned changes to the existing forms of language usage. Unplanned, natural changes, are of course happening every day, otherwise English would be a dead language. An extinct language is a language which is no longer natively spoken: it is estimated that one natural human language dies every two weeks. ...
Complete reforms Some people have suggested introducing a complete reform to the English spelling system without going through any intermediate stages. The Spelling Society, for example, has developed a simplified spelling system, SoundSpel. SoundSpel is one of the many English language spelling reform proposals. ...
Tentative reforms Other have suggested introducing spelling reforms in stages, along the lines of the German spelling reform of 1996.
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