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Yeah, we already did this quite a while ago. In 2020, which capital will you choose? London, Delhi, D.C., Canberra, &c. &c.?
by _emacsomancer_ 6y ago
Yeah, we already did this quite a while ago.
In 2020, which capital will you choose? London, Delhi, D.C., Canberra, &c. &c.?
- namibj 6y agoManhattan?
- tdeck 6y agoIn AmE the dialect would likely be "midwestern speech" since the political history of our "standard dialect" differs from that of many other countries. I would expect with English it might be best to consider the different major dialects separately, but at any point there's a tradeoff and someone gets the short end of the stick. The right way would probably be to bring in many different stakeholders from different speaking communities and hash out some compromises. Incidentally, I was once chatting with a member of the English Spelling Society (they advocate spelling reform) and asked about this very topic. Shockingly it seemed like that group hadn't thought about it all.
- _emacsomancer_ 6y ago> I would expect with English it might be best to consider the different major dialects separately, but at any point there's a tradeoff and someone gets the short end of the stick. That seems like a bad idea to me. Standard Written English (which varies only slightly, with minor spelling differences) is fairly intelligible across speakers of different dialects and even quite a few time periods. If English didn't already have a written standard, all of this might be worth considering. But actual reform would take massive effort for pretty minor benefits, which wouldn't endure long anyway given the ever constant presence of language change.