4 ms·

You have a solid point, grounded in realism, and one very reminiscent of the U.S. tax system, embracing many hundreds of forms and requiring countless hours for

You have a solid point, grounded in realism, and one very reminiscent of the U.S. tax system, embracing many hundreds of forms and requiring countless hours for filers to spend poring over obscure rules ("so I can rent out my house two weeks a year tax free?"), vs. the Hong Kong one-page and done tax reporting system. "It's just the way we do things in America." A parallel policy, for reference, would be the decision by China in the 1950s to adopt a simplified system of Chinese characters (the so-called 简体字), breaking with millennia of tradition. Now, most of the world learns (to my private despair) the simplified system when studying Chinese. Billions of hours cumulatively saved in learning and writing the complexities of the older 繁體字. Foolish China. And, I presume that being a traditionalist you eschew the crippling changes to American spelling of the past and use only "colour", "centre", and "theatre"? The horror of it all. And, one must also note, it's "havoc", not "havok", which is the rational, and hence forbidden, spelling

mcpackieh 3y ago
Here's realism: There is no authoritarian communist party of the English speaking world which may impose the kind of reform you proposed, so your idea is thankfully dead on arrival. You clearly covet that kind of power though, which is disturbing. If the scope of the change you're proposing is limited to petty changes like color to colour or vice versa, then I'm confident that your changes would be ineffectual at improving literacy rates. There is no evidence that one spelling or the other is easier for children to learn. But petty inconsequential changes like that are not what you're actually after. I think that you, with your obvious admiration for murderous authoritarian regimes and grandstanding against tradition, want to make 'traditional English' unintelligible to people who are only taught your new English. In this way you might hope to build a wall between young people and literature and other cultural materials from the past. Another Cultural Revolution is what you want, right? Tear down all that is old, purge society of traditional culture and probably murder millions of people along the way. Just as the CCP did. 枪杆子里面出政权 You admire and covet this kind of power, I can tell. Your little off topic mini-rant about tax policy tells me that you are not merely a would-be language reformer, but temporarily embarrassed head of state as well. Why not tell us about your agricultural policy too? I'm sure that somehow relates to the discussion just as tax policy does. Let me guess, step one is killing all the sparrows who eat our seeds. You attribute to me a wish to forbid certain spellings, but which of us truly has this wish? Me, who has nothing but apathetic tolerance for the differences between American English and British English? Or you, who wishes to impose harebrained reform on the entire English speaking world and shamelessly uses the CCP as your model for how this might be done? The English language will continue to change over time, as it always has, as all languages do naturally. What will not ever happen is a new system of writing being imposed on the entire English speaking world by fiat. Even if you became Supreme Leader of the People's Republic of America and forced your new system on the entire country, you would be dismayed to find that the overwhelming majority of English speakers do not live in America, nor any other single country. There is no single central authority for the English language, no governing body to capture. Imposing reform like you suggest is literally impossible so your proposal is beyond worthless. English is used by too many people in too many countries, you can't conqueror and subjugate them all.
- tatrajim 3y ago
  Whoa, as the Brits say "Honi soit qui mal y pense"! Your hermeneutic skills seem a mite lacking today. Did you miss my ironic comment on the PRC imposition of simplified characters: "to my private despair"? I do loathe them and salute Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, and Hong Kong for resisting their use. Then, too, PRC Chinese pinyin (Chang -> Zhang, Chin -> Qin etc) is especially ugly. Nevertheless, it's hard to deny that English spelling is slowly trudging to the point, where almost no one, including PhDs, can reliably write sustained prose without a spell checker. Hence all the internet use of U, gud, watsup, gimme, etc. etc. It's not the case for other languages that writing is so out of synch with pronunciation. Koreans can learn to read years faster because their alphabet fits the language around them. In your world, it would seem (correct me if I'm wrong) that you shrug your shoulders and tell the children, "hey, just grit your teeth and learn this clunky writing system that will scar many of you for life as too stupid to read or spell, all the people out there in the world demand you pay the price, while they whiz ahead with their easy systems". I'm dubious of almost all invocations of "structural racism", but this might be an exception.
  - mcpackieh 3y ago
    You claim the PRC's imposed language changes are "to your private despair" as you publicly extol the supposed practical virtue of what they did and hold it up as a model for what you'd like done to English. You offer up token criticism of what the PRC did then lead immediately into "Nevertheless..." praise for the supposed benefits of what they did. I have seen this manner of duplicitous authoritarian apologia many times before, you aren't half as clever as you think. Far from making things easier for children, you aim to make it far harder for them to access their cultural heritage by deliberately neglecting to teach them the language skills needed to access all extant English literature. I don't believe for an instant that this has escaped your consideration. You wish to deface the past so you can rewrite history; it's a form of book burning. And structural racism? I guarantee you that any English speaking family with the means to do so would have their children privately taught to read traditional modern English, even if they had to do it themselves personally. You would create an underclass of quasi-literate English speakers, how is that supposed to address structural inequality? What you propose is not intended to promote equality, drop the bullshit.

mcpackieh 3y ago

Here's realism: There is no authoritarian communist party of the English speaking world which may impose the kind of reform you proposed, so your idea is thankfully dead on arrival. You clearly covet that kind of power though, which is disturbing. If the scope of the change you're proposing is limited to petty changes like color to colour or vice versa, then I'm confident that your changes would be ineffectual at improving literacy rates. There is no evidence that one spelling or the other is easier for children to learn. But petty inconsequential changes like that are not what you're actually after. I think that you, with your obvious admiration for murderous authoritarian regimes and grandstanding against tradition, want to make 'traditional English' unintelligible to people who are only taught your new English. In this way you might hope to build a wall between young people and literature and other cultural materials from the past. Another Cultural Revolution is what you want, right? Tear down all that is old, purge society of traditional culture and probably murder millions of people along the way. Just as the CCP did. 枪杆子里面出政权 You admire and covet this kind of power, I can tell. Your little off topic mini-rant about tax policy tells me that you are not merely a would-be language reformer, but temporarily embarrassed head of state as well. Why not tell us about your agricultural policy too? I'm sure that somehow relates to the discussion just as tax policy does. Let me guess, step one is killing all the sparrows who eat our seeds. You attribute to me a wish to forbid certain spellings, but which of us truly has this wish? Me, who has nothing but apathetic tolerance for the differences between American English and British English? Or you, who wishes to impose harebrained reform on the entire English speaking world and shamelessly uses the CCP as your model for how this might be done? The English language will continue to change over time, as it always has, as all languages do naturally. What will not ever happen is a new system of writing being imposed on the entire English speaking world by fiat. Even if you became Supreme Leader of the People's Republic of America and forced your new system on the entire country, you would be dismayed to find that the overwhelming majority of English speakers do not live in America, nor any other single country. There is no single central authority for the English language, no governing body to capture. Imposing reform like you suggest is literally impossible so your proposal is beyond worthless. English is used by too many people in too many countries, you can't conqueror and subjugate them all.

tatrajim 3y ago
Whoa, as the Brits say "Honi soit qui mal y pense"! Your hermeneutic skills seem a mite lacking today. Did you miss my ironic comment on the PRC imposition of simplified characters: "to my private despair"? I do loathe them and salute Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, and Hong Kong for resisting their use. Then, too, PRC Chinese pinyin (Chang -> Zhang, Chin -> Qin etc) is especially ugly. Nevertheless, it's hard to deny that English spelling is slowly trudging to the point, where almost no one, including PhDs, can reliably write sustained prose without a spell checker. Hence all the internet use of U, gud, watsup, gimme, etc. etc. It's not the case for other languages that writing is so out of synch with pronunciation. Koreans can learn to read years faster because their alphabet fits the language around them. In your world, it would seem (correct me if I'm wrong) that you shrug your shoulders and tell the children, "hey, just grit your teeth and learn this clunky writing system that will scar many of you for life as too stupid to read or spell, all the people out there in the world demand you pay the price, while they whiz ahead with their easy systems". I'm dubious of almost all invocations of "structural racism", but this might be an exception.
- mcpackieh 3y ago
  You claim the PRC's imposed language changes are "to your private despair" as you publicly extol the supposed practical virtue of what they did and hold it up as a model for what you'd like done to English. You offer up token criticism of what the PRC did then lead immediately into "Nevertheless..." praise for the supposed benefits of what they did. I have seen this manner of duplicitous authoritarian apologia many times before, you aren't half as clever as you think. Far from making things easier for children, you aim to make it far harder for them to access their cultural heritage by deliberately neglecting to teach them the language skills needed to access all extant English literature. I don't believe for an instant that this has escaped your consideration. You wish to deface the past so you can rewrite history; it's a form of book burning. And structural racism? I guarantee you that any English speaking family with the means to do so would have their children privately taught to read traditional modern English, even if they had to do it themselves personally. You would create an underclass of quasi-literate English speakers, how is that supposed to address structural inequality? What you propose is not intended to promote equality, drop the bullshit.