Y kant we spel inglish werds rite?

  

By Nury Vittachi

*

The Hong Kong Government is reintroducing English-medium teaching to hundreds of schools. Every place I've lived in, including Sri Lanka and Malaysia, has regular heated debates on whether Asian kids should be taught in English.

                The problem is this: English is the world's most useful language, but also the most idiotic.

This becomes clear whenever I try to correct my youngest daughter's spelling.  “Knee starts with k,” I say. “And right has a g in the middle.”

                “Why?” she replies. “That is SO dumb.”

                Why? I had to agree with her. It is so dumb.

*
A bit of research showed that the finest brains in history agreed, too. Nineteenth century playwright George Bernard Shaw tried for years to force people to spell words as they sounded.

                He would have thoroughly approved of my daughter, who does this all the time.

                “Dea Dad. Pliz bi me a pakit of grin tinsul bcoz we nid it for kwyer on tyuz da,” said a reminder note she wrote for me once.  That was an easy one.

Some are a little harder. She wrote an extra-long Christmas list which took half an hour to work out. (I decided to translate it to save Santa the job.) She wanted:

Bah bee stuf;

A poni;

Joolry;

A gam boy;

Rola bladz with nee padz and Lbo padz;

A compoota;

A hamsta.

And so on.
*
I was moaning about this at a gathering of elite intellectuals, okay, a bar, when a guy told me that the answer was for all of us to switch to speaking Bulgarian.

This is not as odd an idea as it seems. Bulgarian is apparently the only language in the world where everything is written EXACTLY as it sounds. As a result, speakers can learn to read and write in minutes.

"Make a bulk order of Teach Yourself Bulgarian and you can instantly create a multi-lingual family," he said.

Because I am prudent ("stingy") when it comes to spending money, I did a bit more research. I discovered that the vocabulary appears to cater exclusively for Bulgarian interests, which consists of consuming vinegar bean soup and becoming madly intoxicated on Bulgarian spirits. Not a lot of call for this in my daughter’s social circles. Maybe when she reaches her teens.
*
Someone else suggested we learn Lojban.  This is a phonetic language using words drawn equally from six of the world’s biggest languages: English, Mandarin, Spanish, Arabic, Hindi and Russian. The creators have published books and articles in the language.

Unfortunately no one can read them. We can all read the odd word here and there (they use "mi" for "me" for example) but no one can read a whole sentence.
*
 Surely somebody somewhere must be doing something to make the English language less ludicrous? Is there no worldwide movement to fix it?

I sat down at the computer to do some research. But my older daughter had left her “instant message” function on the screen, and I started to get lots of messages from her friends in little boxes mid-screen.

                “R U home?” said one.

                “Hav u dun yr math hmwk?” said another.

                “Any1 logd on?” said a third.

                Yes. There it was. Internet slang: unimaginably vast amounts of text, and almost every word was written in clear, simple, phonetic English.

                 George Bernard Shaw would have loved it.

Comments

[Farah]

i alwyz usd 2 b vry gud wid spelngs bak in skul whch is 5 yrs ago bt now wid savin tym while chatn n txtn i gt so much usd 2 dis stufz dat i now hav 2 fumbl wid da corct spelngs. (but whatever u say it looks cool and incomprehensible which is good for hiding stuffs from mom's wandering eyes..haha)

[Vineet]

Don't know about Bulgarian but Sanskrit and almost all Indian vernacular languages, particularly Hindi, are written exactly as they are spoken. I think the technical term for it is "context-free" and I believe Sanskrit and its derivatives (like Hindi) are the only "context-free" spoken languages in teh world. Except for Bulgarian perhaps.
Which is why I never remember having a Hindi dictation test, because if you can pronounce it right, you can speak it right. And Hindi is the top five most widely used languages in the world so probably worth highlighting, unlike Sanskrit, whic is not widely used anymore.

[Dancer]

English really is the most stupid language ever. People are taught so many linguistic rules but the exceptions are enormous. By the way, I have been told that English was pronounced exactly as it was spelt some time in the 16th century. I wonder what changed that ...

To Vineet,

If that's the case, what happens if someone speaks Hindi with a foreign accent. Can people still get the word right?

[meila]

I find it very interesting that this site is mostly people from non-English backgrounds swapping ideas and comments in English.
I did not know that Hindi is pronounced as it is written. Perhaps that would be a good language to learn.
As for dancer's comment, I heard that the original 16th century English pronounciations were kept by the colonialists who left England at that time and can be found in places settled a few hundred years ago, including Boston, Australia, new zealand, etc.

[Farah]

Hindi is a relatively easy language to learn because in Bangladesh people understand and know to speak in it even though they never learned it in the first place. Call it the daily soap influence but these folks dont find any trouble at it, well except for reading and writing that is. But since it's related to Sanskrit and so is Bengali it's not that hard to pick up the words sometimes. But grammar can be a whole different issue.

[Dan]

The "spell it the way you say it" movement is strong. And much of that strength goes to mobile phone texting. The problem is understanding when to use it and when not.

After I spent more than an hour going over the syllabus for a university journalism class, which included the emphasis on correct grammar and spelling, a student asked if "text-English" spelling and structure were acceptable in the papers.

At first I thought the students were having fun with the new instructor -- this was the first time I was teaching a college-level course. But then it became clear this was a serious question.

All I could do was ask, "What part of 'Use correct English spelling and grammar' did you not understand?"

C U L8R

[stevo]

I agree completely that English spelling is atrocious.
But there are quite a few languages that are written as spoken (or very nearly so). In Europe there are Spanish, Italian, German, Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Basque, Norwegian, Swedish, and Finnish. And there is also Esperanto, deliberately designed to be one-to-one isomorphic between speech and writing.

[Nury]

It's scary that your students wanted to write essays in phone shorthand, Dan.

I have no trouble with people writing in txt language IF they are writing sms texts. But if they are writing other things -- essays, letters, short stories -- they need to be in conventional English. I know some young people will object to this, but I think it is really just a matter of precision.

C U L8R

is simply not as precise as:

"I'll meet you by the tree next to the coffee shop when the moon hits its zenith."

And if you writing journalism or academic essays or books, precision is all-important.

As for Stevo's comments, I think he's right -- European languages are far more logical than English.

I've just come back from Holland and while I don't know a word of Dutch, it was so easy to look at the words and guess the pronunciation and the meaning correctly.

[Rika]

Yeah well, my German comes in handy when pronuncing Indian names. I often get them intoduced by English people and I ALWAYS ask them to spell it out. As soon as I think that in German including where the stresses would go I am amazingly close to the correct pronunciation. It's not working for Vietnamese, though :o( and I wouldn't recommend it anyway. What's the correct spelling of a single word if there are such things like grammar or choice of words...

Only recently learned the hard way that 'putting you feet up' and 'putting your legs up' can be understood very differently. All the correct spelling didn't help in this one ;o)

And in the end of the day it's all about communicating. If I want to be understood I have to use the code the recipient is using. If I consider my message as very important than I have to be very diligent - no matter how much I feel like moaning about it.

So as long as there are old people like me the young and 'want to be young' ones will have to use a more or less proper English - otherwise they won't get the jewellery or the computer. Ha, power of language saving my checkbook!

And be honest: the English spelling is ridiculous but somehow funny, and the English are usually very laid back about this (as opposed to the Germans!) but the grammar is much easier to comprehend than most of the other languages.

(written without spell checker)

[Leo]

I still remember how bad I have done for my phonetics and phonology, and I only did a fairly well for my Grammar...though I was able to explain the errors...

Anyway, English is Innglish.

[Kev]

hmm i don´t know about Hindi and Bulgarian but what about Latin? I know that it is a "dead" language but I think this is another language in which you write the same way you pronaunce.
when I am wrong forget this comment^^

[Ben]

Compared to some languages, English is written how it is spoken. It just happens to be that the roots of English are fairly diverse, and different pronunciations come from different roots. English incorporates whatever languages the ancient Britons used, Latin, Anglo-Saxon, Norman French, Greek, Old Norse, German and probably several others. Because there is such a wide variety of roots, there is also a wide variety of pronunciations. It may not be long before the Asian "la" becomes ubiquitous in the language as well. I'd like to see the dictionary definition of that term.

La-(intj.) a superfluous term used at the end of a sentence to make it sound better.
e.g. "C U @ LKF 2mrrw?" "OK la"

[stariel]

i'm quite surprised when you said bulgarian language is the only spelled-as-you say-it language. don't forget malay. malay too is spelt exactly the way you say it.

btw, the 'la', or its other 'formal' version 'lah', originated from malay :)

[fardel]

Latin language may be pronounced as it is written,
It ony take twenty year to learn and understand it.

[Nury]

I agree with you, Fardel -- Latin is a wonderful language, but feels like hard work. I studied ancient Greek when I was young, which is much the same.

As for the other information about languages in which words are spelled as they sound, thanks for the info. It just makes me more convinced that English is on illogical language.

English is a funny language, though. At the same time as being really complex and irrational, it can be stripped down to its bare essentials and learned very quickly. There's always a version of English that is used for international discussions. In the old days it used to be Pidgin English. There's a modern equivalent, I feel sure, but it is a bit harder to define. I feel the urge to do some research on the subject.

Perhaps it should be called "Globalese".

[fardel]

English is , for a foreigner, as logical as the famous word GHOTI pronounced FISH;

[fardel]

Isn't there any similarity between a language and its people's logic?
where is the logic in:
1 Driving on the left side of the road, and not on the right side?
2 putting adjective BEFORE the word, and not after?
3 Putting the name and picture at THE END of a passport, and not in front?
4 Being the only European country to refuse the Euro currency ?

[hurricaneMax]

yes. inglis is ridiklus. Especially d grammer.
I mean wats the diff between:
" I ran there yestday" Vs. " I run there yestday"...both said d same thing, no?

The best is Hokkien. No grammer to worry about.

[Santox]

Your posting reminded me of a conversation I overhead, over tea in Malaysia.
A:" I have a pis of Kek and some biskuts, a pis of eppel and a glus of lime jus".
B: "Hmm...., I have some fly mee,(or should I try fly lice),fly chickn, hot hot chili gravi. I like drink air bandung best...."
Wiping their sweaty foreheads.
A: "Today so hot, hah....No rain, got sun onli. One week al-ladi."
B: " Ya loh, no rain, so hot, sure die!"

[Mr Jam]

Dear Santox, I really loved your dialogue -- it conjures up a typical conversation in Malaysia so well. I know people pour scorn on Malglish, but I like it -- it is easy to learn and easy to understand. This is the opposite of formal English, which is impossible to get right.
Thanks, Nury

[fardel]

It is amazing that, with all the ways of saying things , people can still understand each other;
Isn't it great to find local color and flavour in a language which is spoken ( almost) by so many,in so many different countries?
It creates a kind of bond when two foreigners try communicate in a language which is not his/her motherlanguage;
And it spices up travelling!

[airdrummer]

making english uniphonic was a dream of alexander graham bell, too, but i would like to point out that english's difficulties are the result of its power: no other language has as large a vocabulary; english accepts words from everywhere. keeping the original spelling preserves a word's heritage, something we insist upon in a multi-cultural society; why not in our language?

i'd also like to point out the similarity to english of unix: both are maddeningly difficult to learn, but also immensely powerful & expressive.

and finally, as an adherent of the sapir-worf hypothesis, i'd like to point out that spanish is a uniphonic language, which brought us the inquisition and the sad political history of s.america...

there is a reason why english is the language of democracy: it makes u realize there is more than 1 way...

[Arsinoe Faust]

Try Bahasa Indonesia. In Bahasa Indonesia, words spoken exactly as they are written.
And the active-passive tense rules are simple.
:)

[luiz alberto]

you say it becouse you don't know too much about portuguese that is known as the most stupid language of the wrold.
learning português means studyng for the whole life and admit that you will never ever know it well.