103 yrs of awesome.

hahah he said 'Cum'

That was friggen awesome.

And I totally agree, the English language is dum.

But it also irritates the living shite out of me when people can't spell or use punctuation properly.

(How hard is it to learn their/there/they're and your/you're ?)

He's wrong but he's cool.

Any language where you can pronounce "fish" and "ghoti" the same way is at least a little questionable to me.
{EDIT} I think I should have worded this better. Any language where you can spell the word fish, f.i.s.h. and g.h.o.t.i. I find slightly questionable. That is if you take the gh from the word"rough" the o from the word "women" and the ti from the word "nation."

>> ^gorillaman:
He's wrong but he's cool.


How, exactly, is he wrong sir gm?

I think all languages need to go through an overhaul. They say the longer a language exists the more it falls out of order with its original rules, this is where the absurdity of "silent letters" comes in. So join with me world, lets go through and drop all the letters we dont need anymore. Yes it might seem like a overly simplistic completely phonetic language but hey at least myself and the guy at Dell customer service can actually have a conversation we can both understand.

Now that people make dictionaries, it's harder for superfluous words to die out.

The english language is funny, but it isn't like someone sat down and invented it. It is a mixture of many cultures that were meshed together throughout the course of England's history. I forget the exact history involved, but who wants a language that makes perfect sense anyway? That would just be boring.

Every letter is sacred.
You heretics!

..and Dan Quayle couldn't even spell his last name correctly.

>> ^spoco2:
How, exactly, is he wrong sir gm?

He's wrong because words spell concepts, not just sounds. Etymology is at least as important to meaning as pronunciation.

>> ^gorillaman:
>> ^spoco2:
How, exactly, is he wrong sir gm?
He's wrong because words spell concepts, not just sounds. Etymology is at least as important to meaning as pronunciation.


I kind of get what you are saying, but would you mind elaborating a little bit more? thanks

also, this guy seems to be or have been the chairman of the American Literacy Council which is founded by the American Philological Association. Doesn't etymology use philology to a certain extent? So maybe this is not a serious claim don't you think?

The problem with a phonetic language is that people who speak different dialects (Bostonians, Southerners, Jamaicans) will naturally be inclined to spell the words as THEY would spell them, and since there is no central dialectical authority with English, no one would consent to the overhaul.

Look at the Chinese language. Someone from Hong Kong would be speaking mostly gibberish to someone from Beijing. But written Chinese is the same for everyone in China, so they can still communicate with each other.

gm is right, words communicate concepts and ideas, and not sounds for the most part.

Every year, The Spelling Society that advocates this silly overhaul of English protests outside the National Spelling Bee. It really would cause way too many problems and solve none.

How, exactly, is he wrong sir gm?

Take there, their and they're as an example. If we were to spell them phonetically then they would all be the same. Now try to make sense of the following sentence:

"There over there with there children."

Translate: "They're over there with their children."

So spelling, and punctuation, add more information to the meaning of the words than merely how they are pronounced.

language is perhaps the greatest triumph of the free market. can you imagine a more essential, intricate, and pervasive "product" than language?

>> ^Arg:
How, exactly, is he wrong sir gm?
Take there, their and they're as an example. If we were to spell them phonetically then they would all be the same. Now try to make sense of the following sentence:
"There over there with there children."
Translate: "They're over there with their children."
So spelling, and punctuation, add more information to the meaning of the words than merely how they are pronounced.


Yes, but he's not entirely just pointing out differences like this. The their/they're/there examples are providing clarification in the written word over three words that sound identical (Which is pretty silly to begin with), so they have a place.

But really, the words HE shows are pretty silly in that anyone trying to learn the language can't learn some conventions and stick to them because there's a host of exceptions to every one.

"Etymology is at least as important to meaning as pronunciation." There is something in that, as the spelling of some words can give you an idea of their origin and, as such, sometimes clarify the meaning of the word... so yes.

But... his examples? Not so much.

^ the reverse is true too.
"polish polish balls"

If pronounced,the statement would be very different depending on which one was the country and which is the action of making something shiny.

So I say go phonetic, and add new words where needed to get rid of confusion. IMO, until a computer can read the language, it's not clear enough.

"polish polish balls"

To be pedantic, correct use of punctuation should clear up your example. Proper nouns should be capitalised.

>> ^Fjnbk:
The problem with a phonetic language is that people who speak different dialects (Bostonians, Southerners, Jamaicans) will naturally be inclined to spell the words as THEY would spell them, and since there is no central dialectical authority with English, no one would consent to the overhaul.

But at least there would be a standard that they could learn so they wouldn't have to guess how to spell/pronounce similar words.

To make matters worse, you can throw text messaging into the mix. My wife is a school teacher and she has a hard time with is the kids using text message abbreviations on their papers. The kids don't even realize their doing it either! After seeing some of the abbreviations on this webpage I said, "OMG" ;-)

http://www.webopedia.com/quick_ref/textmessageabbreviations.asp

>> ^Jordass:
I think all languages need to go through an overhaul. They say the longer a language exists the more it falls out of order with its original rules, this is where the absurdity of "silent letters" comes in. So join with me world, lets go through and drop all the letters we dont need anymore. Yes it might seem like a overly simplistic completely phonetic language but hey at least myself and the guy at Dell customer service can actually have a conversation we can both understand.


Don't you mean:
"languages need to go throo an overhaul.",
"drop all the leters we dont need anymore." and
"compleetly funetic langwij"?

it's really not hard to learn how to spell. i can't believe someone would advocate changing "bomb" to "bom" in order to improve literacy rates among immigrants. that's just retarded.

>> ^hueco_tanks:
>> ^Jordass:
I think all languages need to go through an overhaul. They say the longer a language exists the more it falls out of order with its original rules, this is where the absurdity of "silent letters" comes in. So join with me world, lets go through and drop all the letters we dont need anymore. Yes it might seem like a overly simplistic completely phonetic language but hey at least myself and the guy at Dell customer service can actually have a conversation we can both understand.

Don't you mean:
"languages need to go throo an overhaul.",
"drop all the leters we dont need anymore." and
"compleetly funetic langwij"?


Fun-etic or Fon-etic?

No surprise you made a mistake? I don't see you with a fungineering degree!

*hums whalers on the moon*

english is mashed up and that's a good thing. maybe it even helped english speaking people to invent stuff, because invention is all about mashing things up together in new ways, and i believe the language you "think" in has a difference on the culture. maybe it helped english poetry to be more colourful. maybe there's a reason why english humour is famous.

so you could make english functional and efficient and lose out on all the good stuff if you want....

like lithuanian, which was standardised relatively recently, with strict phonetic spelling and all sorts of accents. You want that? By the way lithuanian poetry: not so famous. even the lithuanians don't like it.

I think it's important to remember that this video is supposed to be fun.

Yeah, BABY!

Esperanto for everyone!

>> ^garmachi:
I think it's important to remember that this video is supposed to be fun.


it's important to remember it's not actually succeeding.

>> ^Arg:
"polish polish balls"
To be pedantic, correct use of punctuation should clear up your example. Proper nouns should be capitalised.


but that wouldnt really work, since the beginning of a sentence should also be capitalized. "Polish Polish balls."

I do like me some Polish balls.

Erm.

>> ^210woggy:
My wife is a school teacher and she has a hard time with is the kids using text message abbreviations on their papers. The kids don't even realize their doing it either!

Never mind the kids; she's going to flip when she sees what you wrote.

There's the issue of words with various pronunciations, too. See Daniel Tammet's blog on the subject here.

If you don't know who Daniel is, you should go find out.

SERVED!

>> ^xxovercastxx:
>> ^210woggy:
My wife is a school teacher and she has a hard time with is the kids using text message abbreviations on their papers. The kids don't even realize their doing it either!
Never mind the kids; she's going to flip when she sees what you wrote.

English is beautiful the way she is, you bastards. Leave her wonderful spellings alone!

This just loses so much of the character of the language.

In order to mitigate my image as a pedantic whiner I will let this guy continue to speak for me.

Maybe this would be easier for all?
http://www.videosift.com/video/simple-English-lesson-F-U-N-E-X

*parody *comedy

*MINKneedsahug

Adding video to channels (Comedy, Parody) - requested by Issykitty.

>> ^Arg:
How, exactly, is he wrong sir gm?
Take there, their and they're as an example. If we were to spell them phonetically then they would all be the same. Now try to make sense of the following sentence:
"There over there with there children."

This phrase is unambiguous because of English's strict word ordering. Every native speaker will intone this sentence as "They're over there with there children" because an English sentence is Subject-Verb-Object. For example, try pronouncing this: "There they're with there children". Most native speaker would be reluctant to pronounce this because it's actually a grammatical conundrum. This last phrase is in fact impossible. If you do pronounce it, you will pronounce it as the equivalent of the the first one, that is "They're there with there children". When you change the word order, you CANNOT contract the subject and the verb. You would naturally say: "There they are with there children". (Here I'm writing "their" as "there" just to show that there's no ambiguity whatsoever between those two words, because they're both words but not verbs)

So, in reality there's no need to "translate". When you pronounce the first phrase, you will understand it just fine. The real problem here is that reading is not the same as speaking, unless you read aloud or subvocalize. But any which way you read, when writing you cannot convey the intonation of the voice. That's one of the greatest pitfalls of alphabets. For example, in this case to be phonetically correct, you would have to specify by a typographic mark that the first "there" is actually a spoken contraction of two originally distinct sounds "they" and "r", so that a reader who doesn't know English very well can put the correct intonation on the correct words. That way the sentence becomes as clear as it needs to be phonetically. Of course, it's not always as easy as that, and to convey pure spoken language in a textual form without all the usual typographical baggage that you find in linguistics is impossible. Even Germans do not always pronounce exactly as they should, but for example all the different nuances of the sound "a" are all rendered as the letter "a" and only that letter. When a whole word is pronounced differently it becomes a matter of dialect and not of pronunciation per se.

Another example: in French, intonation is always on the first syllable of a word, so individual words are easy to separate. Add to that a strict word order plus a plethora of articles and you get yourself a quite clear language that can be written however you fancy.

So spelling, and punctuation, add more information to the meaning of the words than merely how they are pronounced.

They do, but it's a pittance because a spelling not based on pronunciation is too arbitrary. When retracing the origins of a word, pronunciation is much more useful than spelling. If spelling changed without equivalent modification in the pronunciation, it would make the linguists' job harder. But it almost always happens in reverse: the pronunciation changes and then some guy decides he's going to spell it the way he pronounces it. And the linguists thank him. But some old words get spelled in new ways and some others keep their original spellings, and in the end you get the orthographical mess that is known as English (or French for that matter).

^Bidouleroux

Thanks for taking the time to write such a well argued response. I read it with interest.

Humans don't seem to cope well with invented languages. There needs to be some sort of cultural identity tied with a language for it to thrive, it seems.

For example, take two (relatively) well known artificial languages: Esperanto and Klingon.

Esperanto was invented to be the kind of ideal language implied by the video -- simple rules to make it easy to learn. Klingon on the other hand, was designed by a dorky linguist who's a fan of Star Trek, and it is supposedly an incredibly difficult language to learn, since the linguist packed it with obscure traits from obscure languages to make it "seem alien".

Which language is used more often? Klingon, by far.

So to those of you who propose adopting an artificial language, remember to make an artificial culture for it, to make it popular.

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo

Any language that allows such a sentence is purely awesome.

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