Linguistics Thread

In this thread, we fix whatever is wrong with the English Language and make it a more viable AuxLang.

We all agree there's something wrong with it, so what would you do to repair it?

Other urls found in this thread:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_personal_pronouns
twitter.com/NSFWRedditVideo

I think we should make all weak verbs strong

>the weak should fear the strong

First of all you'd need a spelling reform.
It's pathetic that they never matched their spelling and their pronunciation.

The spelling and pronunciation perfectly matched... in the year 1400

With a spelling reform, we're going to need more letters/get rid of old ones.
We have two different "th" sounds but no symbol of it (anymore).
How do you spell "church" when we don't even have a "ch" symbol?

>he's starting with word reformation before sound
>the absolute madman

>you may never live with a language that is spelt exactly how it's pronounced.

Learn Serbo-Croatian.

Consonant sounds are the least of English's problems. The number of English vowels can be in the teens depending on dialect.

Japanese

>Japanese

The best way to make English better is through Anglish. Cast aside the outlandish wordstock and remake the English tongue as a selfstanding and soulful well of speech.

Also fix the fucking spelling

But if we're hacking off vowels, a hell of a lot of words will become homophones.

Are you implying we need stressed and accents like the french?

I like the way you think.

But how?

しゃ = sha, not shiya
せんぱい = sempai, not senpai

Adopt Lojban spelling, grammar, and words.

Now English is Lojban. Now English is good.

.i mi ca gleki .i mi jinvi lo du'u do nitcu lo nu cilre fi lo lojbo

>ん
It can be either a bilabial nasal /m/ or a uvular nasal /ɴ/.
They make pretty similar sounds and it's almost always the latter so I still say Japanese is close enough to being "read and say".

>Lojban
Literally why better than Loglan?

Because it's far more fleshed out, has a more comprehensive grammar, and isn't as English-biased.

Can one of you explain to a nonlinguist what the holy hell that mess is

I'm no lojban expert, but think of it like speaking code.
From what I can understand, it's something like
>I am happy
>In my opinion we have a need to learn lojban

Wew lad, not even close on either count.
Lojban is a constructed language. It isn't "code" - it just has an artificial grammar that actually makes a lot of sense once learned. A correct direct translation of what I said is:

I am (currently, verbose) happy. I opine the fact that you need the event of learning about the topic Lojban.

Simple translation is: I'm happy, I think you need to learn Lojban.

Mohawk

I'm not a linguist, and I learned it pretty easily. It is really intuitive for a programmer to learn.

>Wew lad, not even close on either count.
>it was pretty close

You got the semantic meaning of the translation correct, but not the actual syntactic translation at all.

Spanish speaker here.
You need verb conjugation reform, accents and pronunciation reform.

>accents
Romance language, please go. We are trying to make things simpler, not add even more.

still a bit rude

does such a language even exist?
I don't think it does, even those with a low phoneme-grapheme ratio like Czech have (relatively) lots of exceptions.

A lot of conlangs do that.
Fuck, most conlangs I know of use the IPA for that exact reason.

>constructed languages
pig disgusting

>fix whatever is wrong with the English Language
Can't fix what ain't don' be broked, boi.

whaddup, here come dat boi

This.

Don't want some chinese bullshit where the tone spoken completely changes a word.

Weeeel shitfire! U bois sure do come mighty speedy like. Wuz the Sheriff chasin' u? Whyle ur here to get teh fixin', com'on tend to dis here noose. Been feelin' purty light of late

Who's pronunciation? Should we, for example, put an 'h' in street?

I keep hearing that there is no "True" pronunciation of English, but I disagree.
If language is defined my mutual intelligibility, then if there was one dialect that all could understand then it is the true way, regardless of number of speakers.
Received Pronunciation is the correct English dialect because speakers may not understand GA, AAVE, IE, SAE etc, but everyone can understand RP.
Think of the scene in Hot Fuzz with the farmer. Everyone could understand Simon Pegg, even if he can only understand one person, so he is speaking the "correct way", except he was speaking Eastern London. Take that and apply it to a global level and we have a working pronunciation.

> then if there was one dialect that all could understand then it is the true way, regardless of number of speakers.
So there is an 'h' in shtreet.

BRING BAD THE LETTER FOR THE SOUND OF "TH" IN "THE"

COME ON SENPAI IT MAKES SENSE

RP doesn't aspirate the s there.

The North Wind and the Sun were disputing which was the stronger, when a traveler came along wrapped in a warm cloak.
They agreed that the one who first succeeded in making the traveler take his cloak off should be considered stronger than the other.
Then the North Wind blew as hard as he could, but the more he blew the more closely did the traveler fold his cloak around him;
and at last the North Wind gave up the attempt. Then the Sun shined out warmly, and immediately the traveler took off his cloak.
And so the North Wind was obliged to confess that the Sun was the stronger of the two.

Ðë Norþ Wind and ðë Sän wër dispjūting wič wäs ðë strāngër, wen ei travëlër keim ëlāng rapd in ei wārm klouk.
Ðei ëgrīd ðat ðë wun hū fërst säksīdid in meiking ðë travëlër teik hiz klouk āf šud bī kënsidërd strānger ðan ðë äðër
Ðen ðë Norþ Wind blū az hārd az hī kud, bät ðë mor hī blū ðë mor klouslī did ðë travëlër fold hiz klouk ëraund him;
and at last ðë Norþ Wind geiv äp ðë atemt. Ðen ðë Sän šaind aut wārmlī, and imīdīëtlī ðë travëlër tuk āf hiz klouk.
And so ðë Norþ Wind wäs ëblaiǧd tū kënfes ðat ðë Sän wäs ðë strāngër ëv ðë tū.

You mean a Thorn, Þ, þ?
Does that help seeing as again the thorn is used for both voiced and voiceless versions.

Linguist here.

Wanting to reform spelling is autistic.

What the fuck is wrong with you people?

>Wanting to reform spelling is autistic.
It really isn't, especially with a language such as English where so many sounds don't have their own letters.

So?

>Linguist here.
Armchair Linguist*

Good comeback, you sure knocked his argument down.

So there's really nothing bad about it. It may make for a lot more efficient alphabet.

>such as English where so many sounds don't have their own letters.
Learn 2 lines of French then come back to me. English hit a nice ratio.

>lets use symbols where the only difference is a dot, two dots, or a line to determine them.
For handwriting, how many people are going to mix up those two "i"s?

Don't get me wrong, I like the way it's structured, the grouping adds some logic to it, but there must be better ways to differentiate between them.
Adding a schwa, or an ash wouldn't go awry.

That's not really an argument. I never said French was perfect, either.

It's a fair point.

What's the point of having a symbol for every sound when we can do perfectly fine without them?

>when we can do perfectly fine without them?
This is your problem.
It's not perfectly fine, there are so many dialects that are becoming mutually unintelligible, not to mention that it's so hard for people to learn as a second language.

>not to mention that it's so hard for people to learn as a second language
Surely, you don't mean English?

waj dy u þink so
fo igzampl spelin' rifom ov 1917 impryvt rashn langvic veri mac

>It's not perfectly fine, there are so many dialects that are becoming mutually unintelligible
How will changing the writing system help that? Even though people speak differently they still write mostly the same.

But a New York Accent is the one true way, regardless of number of speakers.

Who said we were just changing the writing system?

.i mu'i ma do'o na djica lonu cilre fi lo lojbo .i mi djuno lo du'u lo lojbo cu mutce xamgu

Except nobody writes like this. English doesn't need reforming. It will change to adapt to speakers' use of it.

>Uaj du ju fink sou
>For ikzempәl, dә speling riform of 1917 impruft rašәn lengvič veri mač
Here's a better version.

Bring back thorn and eth, give sh and ch their own letters, make s and z and d and t phonetic and rigid (to bring to a standard is not "standardise", it's " standardize" for example), use yall as a second person plural, and just let the vowels do whatever the fuck they want. So long as consonants are held together vows can shift around. Use non-phonetic spelling to differentiate homophones (soul vs sole). Bring back Anglish as necessary.

This only applies to American English of course, Brita can do as they please.

>retaining homophones
>not revamping the grammar and vocabulary entirely

wew

And what then? Bring in tones and linguistic gender as if we were barbarians? I think not.

.i na go'i .i do mabla mitcinse .i e'o ko catra do

literally newspeak - the thread

You have no fucking idea what newspeak is, do you?

And really what would this change?

That is doubleplusungood.

Supreme autist here, I'm pretty sure that the other user was just using IPA. IPA is pretty frustrating because of the laziness with the symbols. It's just a bunch of edited Latin/Greek letters. So one day I got bored and drew up a new alphabet with original characters for every sound.

Predictably it wasn't easy and more than a few letters look the same. But at least it isn't some fucking i with a line or some shit.

>use yall as a second person plural
hello white trash

Really, Serbian is the only of the Serbo-Croat language branch that follows Vuk's phonetic rule. Croatians never translitarate phrases written with the Latin alphabet; Bosnians, usually, write Turcisms and Ottomanisms with the English transliteration.

>Supreme autist
You were right, but I'm still mirin'
I want to fault it, but it seems pretty solid to me, no real way to mistake one of another.

I would agree with you, but we need two things in English.
A second person plural
A singular third person epicene.
The generic "he" is crap from the start, and this "singular they" is a fucking botch job at best.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_personal_pronouns
>the table
>those fucking overlaps at random with the "you"s
>that abomination of an overlap for the "him" "her" "his" "hers" area.

Why don't we just do away with the categories of number and gender altogether? Plenty of languages get along fine without them.

The lack of dual and genders isn't something to strive for, to be honest.

Tone spoken already changes a word you moron. You just dont have any sign to mark it.

>Wanting to reform spelling is autistic.

>through
>enough
>thorough
>bough
>though
>drought
>thought
>bought
>brought

lel

>reformed english version

The North Wind and the Sun were disputing which was the stronger, when a traveler came along wrapped in a warm cloak.
They agreed that the one who first succeeded in making the traveler take his cloak off should be considered stronger than the other.
Then the North Wind blew as hard as he could, but the more he blew the more closely did the traveler fold his cloak around him;
and at last the North Wind gave up the attempt. Then the Sun shined out warmly, and immediately the traveler took off his cloak.
And so the North Wind was obliged to confess that the Sun was the stronger of the two.

De Nort Wuind and de Son guer disputin guich guas de stronguer, guen a traveler caim alon gurapd in a guarm clouk.
Dei agrid dad de uan ju firs suxided in meikin de traveler teik jis clouk of shuld bi considerd stronguer dan de oder.
Den de Nort Guind blu as jard as ji culd, but the mor ji blu de mor clousely did de traveler fold jis clouk araun jim; and at last de Nort Guind gueiv op de atempt. Den de Son xaind aut guarmly, and imidiatly de traveler tuk of jis clouk.
And sou de Nort Guind guas oblaigd tu confes dad de Son guas de stronguer of de tu.

I was even trying to sound these out without knowing all the phonetic symbols and i realized there is no way to make a universal sound using just vowels.

Kind of upsetting, maybe I do have the autisms after all.

desu english spelling is a bit like chinese characters. no matter how different two people's dialect is spoken, they'll always understand written english. I like it in this respect.

More importantly, the Japanese don't really care how you pronounce ん or す, or the R/L consonant. It's the same sound to them.

>or the R/L consonant.
That's because they have neither a /ɹ̠/ or a /l/ sound, they have /ɾ/, /ɺ/ and possibly /ɽ/, which is more like a flapped /d/.
The point is they use a different sound entirely for transcribing "r" and "l"

>That's because they have neither a /ɹ̠/ or a /l/ sound, they have /ɾ/, /ɺ/ and possibly /ɽ/
But /ɾ/, /ɺ/ and /ɽ/ are all acceptable pronunciations for those syllables in the ら group to them, that's what I meant.

sha and shiya are distinctly different though, しゃ vs. しや

Fuck off you prescriptivist scum

しゃ is often more like sh'a or even shya in onomatopeia too.

Actually it's the ones who want to reform language who are the prescriptivists. You don't even know what the term means.

What's your point, pedantic retard?

This.

The more Germanic we make the language the more everything falls back into place. 1066 caused everything to become disjointed.

>matching the spelling
>mohawk
dont make me laugh.

Finnish.

even finnish is not always pronounced the way it is spelled, it labializes n in np or theres velarization of n in nk clusters

I'm not an linguist, but i am Finnish. Could you give me some examples of what you just said?

just study some minority language. they normally got writing so late, linguistics were already discovered so they got good writing. check out what the lakota language consortium did for lakota.

Can somebody explain why intentionally setting standards for a language is objectively better than letting the language evolve over time as it is used?

There is nothing wrong with the english language. It might be one of the main reasons America conquers the world.

This is what I've been pointing out throughout the thread. Language reformism is idiotic and mostly based on mysticism, unless they're talking about improving methods for language learning in schools or something like that.

As in the literal pitch of voice used. Name me 3 English words that change in definition by difference of tone.

not him but "and", "fuck", and "hey".