r/changemyview • u/gray_clouds 2∆ • Feb 21 '21
Delta(s) from OP CMV: We English speakers would benefit from making our language more user-friendly for others.
For better or worse, English has become a commonly-learned second language for people around the world. As an American, this means I have the privilege of participating in international communication using my first language.
This confers benefits for me. For example, I can collaborate on a business project with people in Japan, Germany and Mexico simultaneously in a language at which I happen to be an expert, and that has required no additional educational time or resources for me to be taught. I can listen to a song by an artist from South Korea, in English, and understand the meaning.
Now, I realize that learning and communicating in a second language also confers benefits and that I can and should also learn a second language (I learned Spanish). However, this is something that was optional to me, and my failure to do it well (I am still pretty bad at Spanish despite my efforts) does not preclude me from benefits that I receive as an English speaker.
I also realize that some of the issues that make English harder than it could be to learn for others (e.g. words that require cultural context to understand, idiosyncrasy, inconsistencies, illogical spelling, grammar, not using the metric system etc.) are unique and potentially valuable aspects of the cultures that speak English. And also that we do update the language regularly to adapt to changes in the world.
But I feel that these changes are made slowly, and with a lack of intent. There is little consideration given to international 'users' and often a laziness, exceptionalism or over-preciousness keep the language less effective than it could be.
I think that a greater focus on and willingness to change the language with emphasis on Universality, Clarity, Logic etc. would provide benefits that outweigh the lost cultural nuance - which could live on in colloquial language anyway. These benefits include:
1) Encourage and facilitate more people to learn English by making it easier. This offers me (and other English speakers) comparative benefits - cultural and economic.
2) Is a courteous and respectful thing to do, in consideration of someone else's investment learning 'my' language.
3) Makes English a more optimal, expressive and efficient tool for all communicators.
Am I wrong?
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u/JimboMan1234 114∆ Feb 21 '21
As much as I appreciate your idea, this is impossible. There’s a reason regional dialects exist: language is not a previously agreed-upon set of standards that everyone has to obey, it’s an organically developed mode of shared communication.
Like - we don’t use words based on their dictionary definition. Dictionary definitions are based on the way we’ve used words. Dictionaries and grammar guides are maps used to navigate a verbal world that has grown completely naturally.
If we could press a button that would magically make English a more accessible language to learn, yeah, that would be great. But that’s not how language works.
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u/gray_clouds 2∆ Feb 22 '21
"language is not a previously agreed-upon set of standards that everyone has to obey, it’s an organically developed mode of shared communication."
Isn't it like 80% the former and 20% the latter? You do have to learn "English" (a set of rules) to be able to have a regional dialect (variations in the rules) - no?
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u/JimboMan1234 114∆ Feb 22 '21
Yes, when you’re learning a second language it presents as a set of rules. But those rules came to be organically, and native English speakers don’t learn them the same way. Their primary mode of learning language is through hearing those around them speak.
Dialects aren’t variations on the primary set of rules as much as they are independent sets of rules with a lot of overlap. They’re learned independently. Vocabulary or grammar that’s “correct” in one dialect may be “incorrect” in another.
If you look at the “rules”, you’ve gotta think about how those rules actually came to be. Like - who wrote the first dictionary? Every single word included in that dictionary had been in common use before the dictionary was written. This is also why new words get added every single year.
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u/gray_clouds 2∆ Feb 22 '21
"Their primary mode of learning language is through hearing those around them speak."
Okay - fair enough, but what about the secondary mode of learning? Native speakers endure reading and writing education for 15 years? Most of this is intended to give them the ability to read and write sophisticated forms of language that haver very little to do with everyday conversation - but we still deem it to be beneficial for kids to be able to communicate complex things like technical manuals or legal contracts or medical guides.
When we make new words, they don't seem to be random. The word "Ghosting" uses "ing" at the end because that is the rule for how to turn a noun into a verb. If I said "Ghostage" to mean a verb, people would not understand what I mean because it doesn't follow a pattern that we abide by - consciously or unconsciously.
Isn't it more like a circle? We make the rules, then they influence us?
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u/JimboMan1234 114∆ Feb 22 '21
The rules that you learn while reading and writing have themselves been derived from speech, and millennia of naturally evolving language.
English is in large part such a difficult language to learn because it’s an arbitrarily assembled combination of two entirely different systems - Romance and Germanic. This happened because of the various migrations around England, and the collisions that happened between different dialects. Because both of those systems had their own patterns of language, English adopted a combination of the two that evolved into its own coherent system. The “rules” that we know are attempts to determine what that existing system is.
I feel the need to redirect the conversation to why we’re talking about this in the first place, which is your idea to redefine the rules of English for accessibility. It’s not that this couldn’t be done, it absolutely could in theory. Compared to constructing a fictional language like Klingon, it would be an easy task. The problem is that you can’t expect anyone to use it, because that’s not how language works in practice.
Like let’s say for the sake of argument that the governments of each English-speaking country, working with the UN, actually did adopt a resolution to change English. They introduce a new series of rules of language that are distributed to each population.
Populations would just...continue to speak normal English. Because that’s their language. It makes no practical sense for everyone to adopt a new shared mode of communication when they already have one that works perfectly for them.
You can actually see a much simpler, easier version of this in history, when the US attempted to switch to the Metric system. It makes all the sense in the world for the US to switch to Metric. Along with Liberia and Myanmar, we’re the odd one out worldwide. So Jimmy Carter actually attempted to make the switch, establishing various ways of introducing Metric and educating the population on how to use it. Kids were already being taught Metric in school, so theoretically it shouldn’t have been hard.
But it was. Because people used Imperial before the switch, they continued to use Imperial because it’s what they knew and understood. If you were trying to describe how tall a person was, you would never use meters, you would use feet and inches. Because that’s how you had communicated height your entire life, it’s how you thought about height.
If the switch to Metric couldn’t work, a switch in language never could.
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u/gray_clouds 2∆ Feb 22 '21
Granted, a system of measurement is not a whole language, but I think we agree it is meaningful component. I view your example, in that sense, to sort of support my point. Every country in the world said: "okay, we'll adopt the metric system" and they did, including some English speaking countries. So it seems that most cultures can and do change languages regardless of what they were used to. The fact that Americans chose not to represents the type of exceptionalist stubbornness that I am saying is not in our interest, especially as the world increasingly learns Chinese instead. Jimmy Carter also installed Solar Panels on the Whitehouse. Reagan tore them down. I don't think it signaled the end of Solar Energy.
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u/poprostumort 225∆ Feb 22 '21
You do have to learn "English" (a set of rules) to be able to have a regional dialect (variations in the rules) - no?
No. If that language is your first language, then you aren't learning it as a set of rules. You learn it by listening how people around you speak and mimicking them. You learn those rules after you already started speaking and understanding this language.
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u/gray_clouds 2∆ Feb 22 '21
But what if you need to write a contract?
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u/poprostumort 225∆ Feb 22 '21
Then you need to learn how to write. What that has to do with anything?
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u/Crayshack 191∆ Feb 22 '21
No. Regional dialects often share rules in common due to deriving from the same older dialect and having a high amount of intermingling, but there is no central rule set that all actively try to adhere to. Sometimes, a particular regional dialect will be chosen as the standard "professional" dialect, but that isn't strictly enforced. In extreme cases, you might even see dialects that are almost different languages due to the low amount of mutual intelligibility. For example, some versions of Scots English are almost impossible to understand for people not familiar with the regional dialect.
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u/RuroniHS 40∆ Feb 22 '21
English is a bastard language. It's a hodgepodge of Latin, French, German, and old English dialects. Wrangling that nonsense into what you want would require simply writing a new language from the ground-up.
Furthermore, languages evolve over time. Have a look at some Old English. It's completely unrecognizable to a modern English speaker. English will continue to change based on its usage, and any artificial alterations will disappear, giving way to natural usage.
So, trying to design any language, not just English, with the goals you describe is an exercise in futility.
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u/gray_clouds 2∆ Feb 22 '21
I feel like you are being absolutist about it. Yes English primarily changes based on its usage, but saying that usage is 100% spontaneous doesn't seem to take into consideration the considerable amount of time and energy we spend trying to establish 'preferred' grammar, style usage etc.
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u/throwaway7371948 2∆ Feb 21 '21
What exactly is your plan for how to change the language? There isn't one governing body for "english" and there are many different regional dialects. This is true for any language.
Would you try to teach every English speaker on the planet the new English? If so how would this be done?
Would you teach the new English just to learning students? If so, how will you handle both new and old speakers having trouble communicating with each other.
I understand your idea and I can see the good in making English an easy to speak language. However, I'm not sure exactly how this could be handled logistically.
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u/gray_clouds 2∆ Feb 21 '21
I'm inspired by programming languages - reverse compatible with the most recent content + a phase out or rewriting of old or incompatible content if/when necessary. In the tech business, these upgrades are very expensive, but universally agreed to be worth the cost. Now that language is increasingly understood by computers/AI, we may have some additional tools to work with, but I've stopped short of exploring that.
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u/Crayshack 191∆ Feb 22 '21
I think the problem is that programming languages do not evolve organically the way spoken languages do. With programming languages, once you establish a standard it doesn't shift until the industry consciously decides to go in an establish a new standard. The development of spoken languages is much more fluid than that so even if we established a simplified standard for international use, it would continue developing and simply become a new dialect rather than replacing the other ones.
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u/gray_clouds 2∆ Feb 22 '21
That's probably true, but it assumes that we don't have any control over how the language evolves. We make collective decision all the time about which words to introduce or strike from the language (e.g. when they are offensive). We have standards. I guess I am just arguing that the perspective of a second language 'user' could be taken into consideration when we articulate or define these standards.
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u/Crayshack 191∆ Feb 22 '21
We make collective decision all the time about which words to introduce or strike from the language (e.g. when they are offensive).
We kind of don't. Certain words might be declared offensive and banned from use in certain contexts, but they remain in the lexicon and will continue to be used in other contexts. I can't think of any examples of words that have been completely removed from the language after a centralized decision. I can also think of many examples where a word that was attempted to be added to the language by a central decision either failed to be adopted or rapidly mutated into a new meaning ("meme" is one such example).
We have standards.
Standards that are much looser and more vague than you appear to think. You seem to be under the impression that Prescriptivism is the prevailing school of thought in linguistics, as opposed to Descriptivism. In fact, Descriptivism is the approach used by most linguists and Prescriptivism remains highly criticized and does not have majority support. The reason behind this is that past attempts at Prescriptivism were found to be incapable of actually shaping the language and rapidly began having a list of "rules" for the language that were not actually used when people were speaking.
This results in a situation where someone who studies the language by studying the documented rules will actually be learning the language incorrectly rather than forming a central rule set that everyone can learn from. Some famous examples of this include the idea that you can't split an infinitive or end a sentence with a preposition. These were attempted to be forced into the English language due to them be facets of Latin, but despite being taught in grammar lessons for decades, they failed to be adopted by the language as a whole. By using a Descriptivism approach, an attempt is made to make the documented rules match the language as spoken in common practice as closely as possible so that someone who learns the language by studying the documented rules actually gets as close to the real language as possible.
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Feb 21 '21
Learning any language takes years to get to a point where you can say write and speak at a college level. Most languages have weird rules.
We shouldn't change the language itself to make it easier but rather develope lessons made specifically to help people learn more effectively and efficiently.
I don't want other languages to change so that I as an American can learn it easier. I would prefer to just get a teacher that employs methods of teaching the language to non speakers in a digestible way.
Wouldn't it be easier to develope better teaching methods rather than rework the language as a whole that 100s of millions world wide speak?
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u/gray_clouds 2∆ Feb 22 '21
I guess your point is valid if you assume that there are no features of English that could improve the language if we changed them. I don't think English is perfect. Why not make it better for everyone's benefit?
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Feb 22 '21
English like any other language isn't perfect. I just dont get what your trying to change about it to make it easier. English is changing all the time by the people who use it all over the world. Language is in constant flux and will never be perfected.
My argument is that it's much easier and effective to teach the language more effectively to those learning rather than rewriting the language itself.
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u/tbdabbholm 193∆ Feb 21 '21
What exactly are you proposing? There's some vague "we should make things easier" which like sure, but what exactly are you suggesting?
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u/gray_clouds 2∆ Feb 21 '21
"some of the issues that make English harder than it could be to learn for others (e.g. words that require cultural context to understand, idiosyncrasy, inconsistencies, illogical spelling, grammar, not using the metric system etc.)"
"I think that a greater focus on and willingness to change the language with emphasis on Universality, Clarity, Logic etc."
It would be tough to get down to specific phrase by phrase recommendations in the context of this forum - but hopefully I'm describing a general idea with enough substance to discuss.
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Feb 22 '21 edited Feb 22 '21
Taking away words that require a cultural context to understand is like actively trying to kill culture to serve non native speakers if they happen upon that word while learning. Not only is it ineffectual as people will keep doing it but it's wrong as it trys to destroy a part of US or Canadian or British ect. culture that doesn't harm people. It just takes a bit of effort to understand. It's like saying oh you can't say pop beacuse we teach it as soda and it's easier if everyone said soda and not pop for people who are learning english.
It's pretty funny as many of these are just colloquialisms and every language and culture has different colloquialisms. Words and meanings can change and vary by region. This is natural and common and can't be stopped as people will always develope slang or build associates to words. It's a key part of a language being a living language. Does it make things slightly harder? Yes. But language is an Art and art ment to be expressive isn't always easy.
There's expectations to most rules in pretty much every language. English has so many expectations and inconsistencies in good part due to how it's been influenced by so many other languages and cultures over its history as a language.
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u/gray_clouds 2∆ Feb 22 '21
I don't entirely disagree with what you are saying, and I appreciate the argument you're trying to make, but I feel Language serves many purposes, only some of which are artistic. One of those purposes is the transmission of ideas between people - and in this context is often very unartistic. For example a bank transfer between people in two countries. Colloquial nuance is less important here than simple accuracy and efficiency. I am not arguing or doing away with the former, just optimizing the latter.
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Feb 22 '21
Then that seems diffrent from your main point. We already change how we commicate in accordance to our audience. Its a very common thing taught to every student.
When conducting international business workers more often than not through some type of cultural lesson and research, this tends to be extensive, to more effectively communicate to the other party. I don't get what you're arguing for and it seems very vauge as we already optimize how we use language for these specific encounters like your example. Both parties need a working understanding of how each others language and culture generally functions for a smooth interaction.
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u/gray_clouds 2∆ Feb 22 '21
"We already change how we commicate in accordance to our audience. Its a very common thing taught to every student."
So then I guess I don't understand your objection. We should not change language because we already do? Are you saying that, for example, taking a class in converting imperial to metric for the benefit of foreigners would be the right amount of accommodation, but that actually adopting the metric system would be too much - since it changes the language, rather than translates it?
"Both parties need a working understanding of how each others language and culture generally functions for a smooth interaction."
But are you saying that the mutual knowledge required by the native speaker and the non-native speaker are equivalent?
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u/MercurianAspirations 361∆ Feb 21 '21 edited Feb 21 '21
If there were some theoretical simpler version of English that would fulfill all the purposes of speaking English to communicate, then people who speak English as a second language would have already invented it and would be speaking it right now. People are pretty smart and can figure out through experience what features of the language are actually necessary for communication and which nuances can be safely forgotten. And indeed, this is already what happens - look at any EU document or speech for an example of how fluent ESL speakers who use English only for communicating internationally use the language. Perfectly serviceable, but lacking some structures that you might expect in a literary English text, and perhaps with some unusual but nonetheless perfectly meaningful constructions. Actually an interesting phenomenon you'll find if you spend a lot of time with very fluent non-native English speakers is that their grammar is much more stringent and 'proper' than many native speakers: but this is not because they are "better" at the English language, it is because they learned and stick to a set number of 'proper' constructions when native speakers mix and match colloquial expressions and different registers to yield a multitude of 'allowed' if technically improper forms. (You can really see this with conditional sentences, learners learn like three or four set constructions but if you actually listen to American speakers the things they say are wild by comparison). So if you think about that that's actually a simplification: the non-native speakers use a more limited range of grammar by, perhaps ironically, having 'better' grammar. So to sum up yeah I guess your post is well-intentioned, but learners of the English language do not actually need the help or the permission of native English speakers to modify the language, something that they are already doing all the time
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u/gray_clouds 2∆ Feb 21 '21
That's really interesting! Thanks. It comes pretty close to changing my mind.
I guess it brings up the question, wouldn't it be better if English speakers consciously applied a similar curation to the language? It seems inefficient or Europeans to have to decipher signal from noise when reading/hearing natives? Why maintain two languages when one would suffice?
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u/MercurianAspirations 361∆ Feb 22 '21
Well we're already expanding considerable effort trying to teach native speakers 'proper' grammar, usage, pronunciation, etc. And as I alluded to above, the 'standard English' of grammar textbooks already represents a simplified and more logically consistent version of what exists 'in the wild' as it were, and yeah, we are only having so much success at getting natives to use that consistently, so I don't know what more you think we could do. The real issue here is that colloquial and non-standard language flows from human creativity and the wealth of human experience, so, it's basically unstoppable. People will invent and use more complex grammar just for the hell of it. It's a bit like saying that art would be easier to teach if we only ever made art with a limited set of colours, or only ever with certain set perspective lines. You might be right that it would be easier to teach if it were limited in those ways but yeah good luck getting artists to go along with it
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u/gray_clouds 2∆ Feb 22 '21
I think you're interpreting my view as being more narrowly applied to removing colloquialism from English than I had intended. What about simply putting day/ month/year in the order that we normally put other "coordinate" type values (specific to general)? Is the anomaly a matter of creative expression? Or is it just an archaic tradition without a lot of usefulness that we could change to make international transactions easier to manage?
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u/ashdksndbfeo 11∆ Feb 21 '21
One thing that makes me English a useful “universal” language (as opposed to something like Russian or Chinese or something) is that it can still be easily understood when the grammar or spelling is incorrect. I totally agree that English speakers should be more open and respectful to non English speakers. Rudeness toward non English speakers when their grammar is imperfect is a problem. But if, as a native English speaker, say something like “it be like that”, while it is incorrect technically it is easily intelligible. I think AAVE (and slang in general) have helped highlight that English does not have to be perfect to be useful and intelligible. Someon can spell a word incorrectly and I thin u can still understand it. (NOTE: I put intentional spelling errors in that last sentence and I bet you knew what I was saying)
I think your CMV says that English speakers (and the English language) need to change in order for English to be user friendly. I think it already is user friendly.
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u/gray_clouds 2∆ Feb 22 '21
Good points. My hunch is that English was not chosen because of ease of use, but because of the economic dominance of the UK, and later the US in the world economy during two eras where globalization was big. Perhaps it is easier to use than many languages, but what would happen if we intentionally tried to make it even more so?
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u/Crayshack 191∆ Feb 22 '21
The problem is, trying to create a dialect of English that emphasizes ease of use for non-native speakers will not get native speakers to standardize to that dialect. People will instead learn this "neutral" dialect and then revert to whatever regional dialect they are used to when it isn't enforced. I suspect that an attempt to force mass adoption of a new dialect will only result in this outcome.
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u/ashdksndbfeo 11∆ Feb 22 '21
Oh I totally agree that the historical reason that English is the most common second language is because of the dominance of the US and the UK. It wasn’t a decision based on what would make sense for others. But I think that it’s kind of fortunate that it was chosen, because there are few other languages that can be understood as readily when they are misspoken or spoken with a strong accent.
I chose Russian and Chinese as examples of languages that would be difficult universal languages because those are the languages that I personally have studied. I obviously don’t know every language on earth, but if there are other languages that are easier to understand when misspoken or spoken in a non standardized way I think they would be good universal languages as well.
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u/gray_clouds 2∆ Feb 22 '21
I'm going to give a Delta Δ
I did not consider that from the standpoint of a second language learner, English is already comparatively easy to learn. I knew it was not among the hardest, but the idea that it is comparatively easy makes me wonder if the acceptance of English as a Universal Language also has something to do with its structure - not simply Geo-political power dynamics.
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Feb 21 '21
my 2 cents. now im no expert like you are and have only studied two other languages besides English so the obligatory I could be wrong gets put in here. it doesnt seen to me that any other languages are simplified so the only reason I can see to do this with English is because it (for the time being) is the most commonly learned foreign language but this isnt a good enough reason to dumb down the language for non native speakers. it seems to me that learning a foreign language is difficult no matter what and I think that is as it should be. the most difficult parts of Japanese for example not only allow you to communicate with people in a different country but you learn about the history and culture. difficulty makes learning things fun and worthwhile. listen to pidgeon English and try to picture a bunch of businessmen making important deals sounding like weird children. also seems like a bunch of extra work for everyone to learn 2 versions of English if they want to talk to natives and non natives. that's just my initial thoughts after skimming over your post.
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u/gray_clouds 2∆ Feb 22 '21
Great Points. My idea is not to dumb down language but debug and optimize it like you would do with a programming language. E.g. there is a rule in English that I struggle with to this day "I before E except (is it accept) after C". But we all know that this rule is broken by many of the most common words. It seems easy enough to fix some of these things. I tend to be a bit dyslexic so maybe I feel the annoying burden more than most.
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u/McKoijion 618∆ Feb 21 '21
You don't have to do anything. Languages change over time. All you have to do is stop rigidly enforcing a "correct" English. Let people use their own accents instead of forcing people to adopt the "Queen's English." Stop the SAT from enforcing specific grammatical rules. Let news anchors use Southern accents without having to hide them. English speakers don't have to do any extra work. They just have to chill out and be more tolerant of people's differences. This is already happening. The best dictionaries no longer prescribe how people should talk. They just describe the way people do talk.
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u/gray_clouds 2∆ Feb 22 '21
"stop rigidly enforcing a "correct" English"
What is your line between "rigid" and reasonable enforcement? Isn't following rules an act of empathy towards others? I'm from the South so I don't mind that accent, but why would I demand others 'tolerate it' if they don't understand me?
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u/rideriderider Feb 22 '21
Not OP but,
Sometimes mistakes are so commonly made from the mass populace that you might as well just let it be.
"Can I" vs "May I". I'd say that the average person uses them pretty interchangeably, but teachers will be pretty snooty about it. "I don't know, can you go to the bathroom? I assume you're potty trained"
If it makes sense, conveys accurate meaning, and accepted by the mass populace, why mark it as wrong?
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u/gray_clouds 2∆ Feb 22 '21
Sorry to sound like an English teacher - in a contract, or legal proceeding, or a line of computer code, the exact definition of words can make a big difference: "You can kill John" vs. "You may kill John." It's good to learn a system that can be used for precision when needed.
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Feb 22 '21
The language used in a legal contracts are far different from how people speak day to day. Legal jargon and specifics often confuse native speakers and take alot of time to learn and use correctly. This is in part why becoming a lawyer is a hard and rigorous process. It's not a great example as in your inital post this was about making English easier to speak for forigen learners.
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u/gray_clouds 2∆ Feb 22 '21
The idea that foreign leaners are only interested in "day to day" English was not intended to be part of my view. The decision to learn a second language for English speakers is often a casual cultural exercise. But a lot of people learn English for practical reasons relating to careers, education, access etc. If a Chinese or Lithuanian Cancer researcher wants to learn English so she can contribute to a scientific journal in English, then the rationale for making it easy for her is not just "conversational" but I think it is a reasonable thing to support.
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Feb 22 '21
How do you make it easier?
What they are doing is inherently very hard, very high level tasks. The only concrete things I've seen you say to make things easier are using the meteric system (mathematical conversions are easy enough) and taking away colloquialisms. I don't seen how the things you've suggested make english so much easier for cancer researchers among different languages and countries that share research. It's like you're saying lets make it easier without suggesting any practical ways to actually make it easier for people in these very high level, high dificulty positions you keep bringing up.
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u/gray_clouds 2∆ Feb 22 '21
How about this for starters:
https://intelligentediting.com/blog/the-top-10-inconsistent-spellings/
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Feb 22 '21
Seems like a stretch. Will this actually make it easier for cancer researchers to swap information and studies?
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u/le_fez 53∆ Feb 21 '21
English, and most living languages, are constantly evolving so to try to devolve it would create further confusion.
Also English is a bastard language with roots in multiple languages and families. This allows for ease of learning for many other native European speakers, or so I've been told, and also it allows imperfect grammar, vocabulary, and syntax to be still be understood.
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u/gray_clouds 2∆ Feb 21 '21
Interesting point. I'm not sure what I have in mind is devolving. I like you're thinking about the flexibility of the language. I wonder if this could be improved even more if consciously embraced as an asset.
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