Tag Archives: English

The future of the English language.

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The following was sent to me by a friend, the original source is unknown, and google wasn’t much of a help.

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

As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan that would become 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 ‘k’. This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one 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.

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It’s National Punctuation Day!

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Haven’t heard of it? National Punctuation Day honors and celebrates “…the lowly comma,correctly used quotes and other proper uses of periods, semicolons and the ever-mysterious [and ignored] ellipsis.” Want to know more? There exists a wealth of information on the web about punctuation in general—and of course you are just dying to learn about it; if you just want to know about the day itself, it has its own website with lots of information and history: here.

For the more astute reader, you will notice that all standard English punctuation has had a chance to shine in this short post (except the parenthesis that is.)

English Conundrums

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A long time ago I found the following poem, and I believe it is the best indicator that the English language needs to be reworked.

The first poem is a modern reincarnation of “The Chaos” (1922) by G. Nolst Trenite, a.k.a. “Charivarius” (1870-1946). The original (which you can read below this one) was a little more Shakespearean.

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh, hear my prayer.

Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it’s written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

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Diffusion as Evidenced Through the English Language

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I think this selection of words shows evidences the many ways words enter into the English vocabulary.
Itinerary:
Itinerary began as the word itinerarium from Latin which means “account of a journey”.

Mouse:
Mouse began as the Greek word m?s it the evolved over time to be (in chronological order) m?s in Latin, maus in German, m?s in Old English, then finally as mous in Middle English. This word is interesting for two reasons the first is that it has a rather long etymology and the second is that English first borrowed the word directly from Latin and then later borrowed it in a different form from the Germans.

Algebra:
Algebra began as the Arabic word al-jabr and then when introduced into Latin it was rewritten into Algebra where it remains.

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