I don't think this video is very good. He goes on for nearly three minutes about how English has lots of synonyms from all these other languages. Then, he gets to the point, which is the suggestion he has for English which has nothing to do with the Huguenots. Then, he gives only one example of a sentence where the tense of read is ambiguous.
He made it sound like he put a lot of though into it too. Why does he stop at read/read? Surely English has more such ambiguous forms.
How the hell do you suggest improvements for something that is so culturally ingrained and diverse as a language? It's like saying "I made a meme" when memetics is by its very nature something that isn't created for the sole purpose of being. It's just something that is.
I wouldn't do it for English, but languages are changed artificially all the time.
There's all these [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spelling_reform]spelling reforms[/url]. Most notably the dozens undertaken by the Japanese, and the one the Germans did in 1996. Modern Hebrew is a constructed language.
Then there's all those languages that were improved by going extinct, like Occitan or those moribund languages they speak in Siberia. Some of them were destroyed due to a government ban, or at least, education in a different language. Cultural ingrainment can be overcome.
[QUOTE=RetaDepa;44638280]How the hell do you suggest improvements for something that is so culturally ingrained and diverse as a language? It's like saying "I made a meme" when memetics is by its very nature something that isn't created for the sole purpose of being. It's just something that is.[/QUOTE]
Changing past tense "read" to "red" wouldn't be some mind boggling change for English speakers. And I don't honestly think he was making real suggestions for improvements, he was just expressing his thoughts on the matter. Cases like "read" and "read" are one of the most challenging aspects of English, and many people think about these things all the time.
Anyway, this guy also makes really cool videos about ancient weapons and ancient fighting. If you're interested in that stuff, check out his channel.
[QUOTE=Krinkels;44638255]I don't think this video is very good. He goes on for nearly three minutes about how English has lots of synonyms from all these other languages. Then, he gets to the point, which is the suggestion he has for English which has nothing to do with the Huguenots. Then, he gives only one example of a sentence where the tense of read is ambiguous.
He made it sound like he put a lot of though into it too. Why does he stop at read/read? Surely English has more such ambiguous forms.[/QUOTE]
He was giving an example, of course there are hundreds of other words like read/read
Read/Raed.
There simple, everyone go home.
i like him a lot, watch his other videos
btw i was looking at my new watch while watching them
[QUOTE=Zenreon117;44638817]Read/Raed.
There simple, everyone go home.[/QUOTE]
this is much less readable than his proposed solution
[editline]25th April 2014[/editline]
and iirc rae basically sounds like ray
Even though he made it up, I kind of like "velocitous."
Can we start using that?
I personally think we should introduce accents to English. For instance, you could have though (the most common usage), toúgĥ (since it sounds like a 'u' and the circumflex on the h indicates an 'f' noise), boroúgh (the u noise, but with no 'f' so the h remains unaccented), bóugh (since the o is used to make an 'ow' sound), and in all honesty hiccough should probably just become hiccup. You could have a grave accent also for 'soft' letters, like c̀, j̀ (this doesn't show up well though) and g̀, for words like bourg̀eois and c̀ity. The only things I can think of which really wouldn't work would be words which don't look like they sound, in which case the question is between leaving them as exceptions or changing the spellings.
[editline]25th April 2014[/editline]
Realised that I forgot about through. Maybe that could be thrôugh, since the o is lengthened?
let's just go with newspeak from 1984, much simpler
[QUOTE=endorphinsam;44638393]He was giving an example, of course there are hundreds of other words like read/read[/QUOTE]
If he wants to fix them all, he needs to say how. He can't just go, "change read to red and then change all the other ambiguous words similarly," because there is no similarly. In this case, he needs an exhaustive list, not just one example.
[QUOTE=Jamsponge;44639242]I personally think we should introduce accents to English. For instance, you could have though (the most common usage), toúgĥ (since it sounds like a 'u' and the circumflex on the h indicates an 'f' noise), boroúgh (the u noise, but with no 'f' so the h remains unaccented), bóugh (since the o is used to make an 'ow' sound), and in all honesty hiccough should probably just become hiccup. You could have a grave accent also for 'soft' letters, like c̀, j̀ (this doesn't show up well though) and g̀, for words like bourg̀eois and c̀ity. The only things I can think of which really wouldn't work would be words which don't look like they sound, in which case the question is between leaving them as exceptions or changing the spellings.
[editline]25th April 2014[/editline]
Realised that I forgot about through. Maybe that could be thrôugh, since the o is lengthened?[/QUOTE]
these suck. english is specially good because it doesn't have unnecessary shit like this to it.
i know because portuguese is an overly complicated language :)
[QUOTE=RetaDepa;44638280]How the hell do you suggest improvements for something that is so culturally ingrained and diverse as a language?[/QUOTE]
It used to be pretty easy. It's why the s from the latin word insula was added to the word iland to make island.
[QUOTE=MenteR;44641171]these suck. english is specially good because it doesn't have unnecessary shit like this to it.
i know because portuguese is an overly complicated language :)[/QUOTE]
English is a very easy language to comprehend at a basic level, but is unbelievably difficult to get 'right'. Our pronunciation gives very little guide to our spelling, and vice versa. I know some people verging on 20 who still can't spell fairly common words because our language is bizarre and it's not taught well enough because you pretty much just have to be taught every single exception. Adding accents, even if it's not quite as comprehensive as I've outlined there, would make things a little bit easier wivowt terning Inglish intoo a fonetik langwidge.
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