8 ms·

I wonder if a better solution for a "universal" language would be a Simplified English, where the English language as spoken in the US/UK is greatly simplified

I wonder if a better solution for a "universal" language would be a Simplified English, where the English language as spoken in the US/UK is greatly simplified in terms of rules, spelling etc. Go with the Esperanto idea of a common verb tense rule (I go, He go -> I goed, He goed), and clean up the spelling (tough -> tuf, though -> tho). Most people in the world have a grasp of English based on the Internet and entertainment, maybe making it even easier to learn would help them become proficient in it.

Riverheart 8y ago
Oh, you mean the proposal by the European Commission :) https://www.davidpbrown.co.uk/jokes/european-commission.html https://www.davidpbrown.co.uk/jokes/european-commission.html
outside1234 8y ago
Especially since this is effectively what is happening - when I speak English with someone from a non-native country I essentially drop into much simpler non-idiomatic vocab set.
- SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
  Saw this a lot in Indonesia and Malaysia where specially “manglish” is common. They have a need for English, but not all the rules. Cognates sometimes take their more obvious English phonetic spelling. Issue with those two languages specifically is they don’t have great past present and future tenses. “I have a car” and ^“I had car”* are initially similar and you need to differentiate later, “I have a car but I sell it, so I won’t drive you”. so English with its tenses is important - but “P as in pterodactyl” isn’t.
  - inawarminister 8y ago
    Eh? Pernah (had) and dulu (before) are our modifiers to make past tenses, and so is akan for future tense (the exact same usage as will, and less confusing!) Indonesian English is only used by a few people (mostly urban youngsters), but from what I know Manglish is common because some Malaysians refuse/don't see the point in learning Malay, which is sad...
    - SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
      I don’t speak it, so IDK. It was just explained to me that tenses weren’t always there. But, that was explained to me by a primarily English Malay speaker which - goes to the topic you mentioned which is sad.
kevinios 8y ago
I would love that, but there is one potential issue: English is really hard to pronounce well, and therefore it takes years to understand it well. There are many ways to pronounce the same combination of letters, depending which word they are part of (like "ough", etc.). Words have emphasis that also make them more difficult to pronounce. Many non-native English speaker I know (myself included) still have a hard time understanding some English words after 15-20 years or more of English as a second language and having lived in English-speaking countries for years. A native English speaker could still pronounce a word and they would have very little idea how to write it, and therefore won't be able to look it up in a dictionary. On the contrary, after a few minutes/hours of learning Spanish pronunciation, one is usually able to write words that they hear pronounced slowly, since they are written as they are pronounced and there is only "one" way to pronounce them. Same for Esperanto I believe, or language like Korean (although it's a different alphabet so it takes more time for anyone used to the latin alphabet, but it is still phonetic).
- myth2018 8y ago
  > A native English speaker could still pronounce a word and they would have very little idea how to write it, and therefore won't be able to look it up in a dictionary. Not by coincidence, in USA they have spelling challenges aired nationwide.
  - __david__ 8y ago
    Oh wow, I had never considered that spelling bees might be uniquely English (the language).
    - myth2018 8y ago
      It's not uniquely english
      - kevinios 8y ago
        Indeed, and I suppose spelling bees makes sense for any language that is not written exactly as it is pronounced, French being one of them. From what I've read so far, Esperanto only has a single way to write every sound it uses, so it would be much less challenging.
notahacker 8y ago
Fixing the spelling in a way which pleases everyone is a challenge (pure phonetic spelling likely makes it significantly harder to read for Latin-language speakers as well as English speakers, for example) But in general the quirks in English are quite easy to drop without losing meaning, things like definite and definite articles can be made optional and then you end up with something not dissimilar to how many basic ESL speakers from different countries communicate with each other anyway...
- __david__ 8y ago
  Fixing the spelling reminds me of Mark Twain's (intentionally humorous) essay: http://guidetogrammar.org/grammar/twain.htm http://guidetogrammar.org/grammar/twain.htm
KhoomeiK 8y ago
There are already a number of English-based conlangs, creoles, and pidgins that are effectively what you described. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-based_creole_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-based_creole_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English-based_pidgins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English-based_pidgins This one especially: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tok_Pisin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tok_Pisin
- thomasfoster96 8y ago
  Tok Pisin and other English-based creoles are not simplified English though – they’re languages in their own right where English has served as a major influence. I don’t think that many English speakers would view Tok Pisin inflecting verbs for transivity, having inclusive/exclusive and dual/trial pronouns and making extensive use of reduplication as being simpler.
qwerty456127 8y ago
> tough -> tuf, though -> tho Looks a lot like Scots :-) Whatever, inventing a new language (even based on another one heavily) only makes sense if it is going to be better than all the other existing by orders of magnitude. IMHO just making an existing language slightly easier to learn while annoying all the existing speakers (English speakers reading a text won't immediately recognize tuf as tough) does not qualify. As long as we don't manage to produce a distinct engineered language so unquestionably amazing that a huge part of the people would adopt it readily the only viable alternative remaining is just sticking with an existing language that is reasonably easy to learn (e.g. English is usually considered easier to learn than Chinese or even than French but I'd love to know if it actually is easier for people whose native language is neither Indo-European nor Sino-Tibetan and uses a different kind of alphabet) and already is spoken by a significant portion of the whole set of people it is meant for.

Riverheart 8y ago

Oh, you mean the proposal by the European Commission :) https://www.davidpbrown.co.uk/jokes/european-commission.html https://www.davidpbrown.co.uk/jokes/european-commission.html

outside1234 8y ago

Especially since this is effectively what is happening - when I speak English with someone from a non-native country I essentially drop into much simpler non-idiomatic vocab set.

SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
Saw this a lot in Indonesia and Malaysia where specially “manglish” is common. They have a need for English, but not all the rules. Cognates sometimes take their more obvious English phonetic spelling. Issue with those two languages specifically is they don’t have great past present and future tenses. “I have a car” and ^“I had car”* are initially similar and you need to differentiate later, “I have a car but I sell it, so I won’t drive you”. so English with its tenses is important - but “P as in pterodactyl” isn’t.
- inawarminister 8y ago
  Eh? Pernah (had) and dulu (before) are our modifiers to make past tenses, and so is akan for future tense (the exact same usage as will, and less confusing!) Indonesian English is only used by a few people (mostly urban youngsters), but from what I know Manglish is common because some Malaysians refuse/don't see the point in learning Malay, which is sad...
  - SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
    I don’t speak it, so IDK. It was just explained to me that tenses weren’t always there. But, that was explained to me by a primarily English Malay speaker which - goes to the topic you mentioned which is sad.

kevinios 8y ago

I would love that, but there is one potential issue: English is really hard to pronounce well, and therefore it takes years to understand it well. There are many ways to pronounce the same combination of letters, depending which word they are part of (like "ough", etc.). Words have emphasis that also make them more difficult to pronounce. Many non-native English speaker I know (myself included) still have a hard time understanding some English words after 15-20 years or more of English as a second language and having lived in English-speaking countries for years. A native English speaker could still pronounce a word and they would have very little idea how to write it, and therefore won't be able to look it up in a dictionary. On the contrary, after a few minutes/hours of learning Spanish pronunciation, one is usually able to write words that they hear pronounced slowly, since they are written as they are pronounced and there is only "one" way to pronounce them. Same for Esperanto I believe, or language like Korean (although it's a different alphabet so it takes more time for anyone used to the latin alphabet, but it is still phonetic).

myth2018 8y ago
> A native English speaker could still pronounce a word and they would have very little idea how to write it, and therefore won't be able to look it up in a dictionary. Not by coincidence, in USA they have spelling challenges aired nationwide.
- __david__ 8y ago
  Oh wow, I had never considered that spelling bees might be uniquely English (the language).
  - myth2018 8y ago
    It's not uniquely english
    - kevinios 8y ago
      Indeed, and I suppose spelling bees makes sense for any language that is not written exactly as it is pronounced, French being one of them. From what I've read so far, Esperanto only has a single way to write every sound it uses, so it would be much less challenging.

notahacker 8y ago

Fixing the spelling in a way which pleases everyone is a challenge (pure phonetic spelling likely makes it significantly harder to read for Latin-language speakers as well as English speakers, for example) But in general the quirks in English are quite easy to drop without losing meaning, things like definite and definite articles can be made optional and then you end up with something not dissimilar to how many basic ESL speakers from different countries communicate with each other anyway...

__david__ 8y ago
Fixing the spelling reminds me of Mark Twain's (intentionally humorous) essay: http://guidetogrammar.org/grammar/twain.htm http://guidetogrammar.org/grammar/twain.htm

KhoomeiK 8y ago

There are already a number of English-based conlangs, creoles, and pidgins that are effectively what you described. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-based_creole_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-based_creole_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English-based_pidgins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English-based_pidgins This one especially: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tok_Pisin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tok_Pisin

thomasfoster96 8y ago
Tok Pisin and other English-based creoles are not simplified English though – they’re languages in their own right where English has served as a major influence. I don’t think that many English speakers would view Tok Pisin inflecting verbs for transivity, having inclusive/exclusive and dual/trial pronouns and making extensive use of reduplication as being simpler.

qwerty456127 8y ago

> tough -> tuf, though -> tho Looks a lot like Scots :-) Whatever, inventing a new language (even based on another one heavily) only makes sense if it is going to be better than all the other existing by orders of magnitude. IMHO just making an existing language slightly easier to learn while annoying all the existing speakers (English speakers reading a text won't immediately recognize tuf as tough) does not qualify. As long as we don't manage to produce a distinct engineered language so unquestionably amazing that a huge part of the people would adopt it readily the only viable alternative remaining is just sticking with an existing language that is reasonably easy to learn (e.g. English is usually considered easier to learn than Chinese or even than French but I'd love to know if it actually is easier for people whose native language is neither Indo-European nor Sino-Tibetan and uses a different kind of alphabet) and already is spoken by a significant portion of the whole set of people it is meant for.