Tag Archives: language

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.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible.

Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling.

Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent ‘e’ in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away.

By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing ‘th’ with ‘z’ and ‘w’with ‘v’.

During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary ‘o’ kan be dropd from vords kontaining ‘ou’ and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensibl riten styl.

Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi TU understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru.

Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas.

fin

It is especially funny to me because I have always supported the simplification of the English language, and I’m currently learning German.

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. This word demonstrates how words are many times absorbed into English with only minor modification to fit the alphabet and phonetic structure. The word itself spread with mathematics allowing the word to popularize without much change. This evidences that technical vocabularies have a much easier time spreading in their original form than nontechnical vocabularies. This unchanging vocabulary allows the science to spread quickly and at the same time allows the different groups understand each other allowing scientists to be able to effectively transmit ideas and technology in ways that other groups cannot.

Tea:
Tea is a direct absorption of the Chinese (Amoy) word te. This word evidences the assimilation of words through commerce and trade. The word tea, like algebra, spread with the product it was named for. However, unlike algebra it remained in its original form not for scientific understanding but for marketing purposes. Tea began was a very expensive resource and to change its name would also remove the prior marketing and “buzz” that helped to popularize the product in the first place.

Juggernaut:
Juggernaut began as the word jagannthah from Sanskrit which is the title of the god Krishna. This word demonstrates the frequent perversion that occurs when new words are introduced and removed from their native dialects. The word Juggernaut was assimilated to mean a large and dangerous object because in its native India the word referred to Krishna whose idol would be pulled on a large cart through the streets. Allegedly when this occurred devotees would throw themselves on the ground in front of the cart to be trampled and crushed. This manipulation of meanings also occurred with the words dictator (Latin) and tyrant (Greek) which originally referred to a person appointed temporarily appointed in times of need and a person who came to power through extralegal means respectively. However, they were adopted into English to refer to people who were generally considered evil and cruel.